El Sabor De Los Latinos

This song samples one of my favorite salsa songs of all time, Willie Colon's "El Malo". Salsa, born out of Cuba and Puerto Rico, is an eclectic mix of African and Caribbean percussion such as the bongo, the conga, the clave, and the güiro coming together with a bass guitar, piano, and my favorite part, the horns. And it's those horns that I wanted to emphasize with this sample. Willie Colon is famous for being one of the greatest trombone salseros (salsa musician) in large part due to the raw and brash nature of his playing, so I wanted this beat to embrace that. I took the original song, then slowed and pitched down one of the main trombone solis, which we learned how to do in class.  The intro of the song has a trombone stutter near the end, which I felt was perfect for transitioning the sample to the new slower and pitched-down version. The drums were a much easier task, I wanted something simple to let the trombone shine. The closed and open hi hats and snare set the jerky and almost spasm-like rhythm while the kick adds, well, a kick and punches through the sample. I loved constructing the drums on this beat, especially since the trombone sample gave me a lot of room to work with and ensured I wouldn't be going overboard with the drums. I'm overall proud of this one, but I do want to go back and switch up the rhythms so it doesn't get so repetitive.

This song samples a corridos loop from the Soundtrap library and served as an exercise in blending together different samples. Corridos, a traditional Mexican style known for the 12-string guitar and the charcheta, or alto horn, started out as essentially old westerns in song form but later evolved into a "cartel" genre (aka narcocorridos) with drug lords commissioning the recording of songs that glorify them. This song started out as an assignment in class, we were to use sounds from our lives and one of the sounds that came to mind was chalk. More specifically the sound a stick of chalk makes when it is pressed and dragged across a chalkboard making a dotted line. I found a video of a professor from MIT who became well-known for having an incredible technique. Originally, the beat was solely the 12-string guitar loop and the chalk to compliment it, akin to the güiro in salsa. But this felt too barren, so I went back to the Soundtrap library and found the charcheta, guitar, and trombone loops to spice up the melody. This beat also marks an important soundbite that I made, my own tag. When I was working on this song in the Bel Air lounge, a friend of mine would not stop saying this one phrase and it getting on my nerves. But the way in which he said made me think, let me record this. I added some reverb and delay, pitched it up and thus, "PERO QUE WOW PAPI" was born.

For the final song, I sampled one of my favorite merengue artists, Elvis Crespo and his song "Píntame." Merengue, a predominantly Dominican genre, takes influence from the same African and Caribbean drums as salsa but instead creates a different rhythm with a güira made from a metal sheet with ridges (not to be confused with a güiro which is made from a different material) and incorporates the saxophone, one of the defining features of merengue. I chose to place special emphasis on the saxophone through this beat. I chopped up the song and ensured smooth transitions between the different sections. Of course, I can't get everything to be smooth due to how the song's tempo fluctuates slightly across the song. I used three different sections, each with a different sax melody to give some variation that I felt the other two songs lacked. This was also the first beat where I started experimenting with additional drums other than just the kick, snare, and hi hat. The middle section uses percs and various sounds in addition the base three drums. This beat like it has the most potential and will definitely be one I work on even after this semester ends. For making it within a total of 12 hours, I think this one came out pretty well.