Latin American music has provided listeners with high energy dance grooves for centuries. It has proliferated many modern dance music and has become a familiar soundtrack for elevators and shopping malls the world over. Here is a basic introduction to some of the more popular beats every drummer should be familiar with.
Bossa Nova
The Bossa Nova is the most basic Latin drum beat. It has a repeating bass drum pattern that mixes with the repeating cross-stick pattern to get a complex sounding groove.
Samba
The samba is one of the fastest Latin grooves that is used a lot in dance songs.
It has a repeating foot (ah 1, ah 2, etc) pattern between the bass drum and hi-hat combined with a clave pattern on the hands. The rest of the 16th notes with your hands are filled out as ghost notes. Take note of the accents on the 16th notes.
To add a little more bounce, play am open hi hat on all of the &s.
Reggae One Drop
Reggae is one of the most laid back styles of music. The one drop is a groove that has one bass drum note per bar that lands on beat 3. The groove itself is very easy to play. However, the laid back feel can be difficult to master.
The ride can be played as a straight feel or a triplet based feell.
Soca
The Soca was developed for drum set to add more syncopation to the Calypso feel. The music of Trinidad and Tobago. The constant offbeat snare keeps it driving along with the four on the floor bass drum pattern. floor bass drum pattern.
Most Soca grooves are played at very high tempos. If you want to get a bit intricate, you could play varying hi-hat patterns to keep it interesting.
These four beats are the basis for much of the common styles heard throughout popular music. They are by no means, an exhaustive list of what is available to play in these various genres. Studying them and adding variations to snare and hi hat patterns will give you some great rhythmic weapons inn your arsenal.
Remember, we offer personal 1 on 1 drum lessons at Bang On Drum Shop for all experience levels. Reach out via email at sales@bangondrums.com or call us at 519-580-1554.
