Rhythms › Latin American rhythms
Tresillo (3+3+2) 1 (e &) a (2 e) & (a)
Learn first Lesson 6: Eighth and sixteenth combinations Lesson 7: Syncopation and ties
Tresillo is a three-stroke figure that splits eight short pulses into groups of 3 + 3 + 2: clap on pulses one, four and seven and you have it. The Spanish word means 'triplet', although the rhythm itself is not an even triplet. Tresillo is common in West African music, reached the Americas with the Atlantic slave trade, and is the basic cell of a great deal of Latin American music. The computer scientist Godfried Toussaint, who studies rhythm mathematically, calls it one of the most famous rhythms on the planet.
The habanera rhythm is tresillo with one stroke added: the second beat of the bar is filled in, giving long, short, long, long. It is named after the Cuban contradanza, known abroad as the habanera, which carried the figure to Europe and the Americas in the nineteenth century. Both figures are written here in 2/4 with sixteenth notes, as in nineteenth-century scores. Some writers notate the same rhythms in 4/4 or cut time with eighth notes, which looks slower on paper but sounds the same.
| Pattern | Count |
|---|---|
| Tresillo (3+3+2) | 1 (e &) a (2 e) & (a) |
| Habanera | 1 (e &) a 2 (e) & (a) |
| Dembow snare (the click is the kick drum) | (1 e &) a (2 e) & (a) |
Only the first stroke of tresillo lands on a beat. The second falls on the last sixteenth before beat 2 (the 'a' of 1) and the third on the 'and' of 2, so the figure pulls against the pulse. The habanera puts beat 2 back, which is why David Peñalosa describes it as tresillo combined with the main beats. Writers disagree about how tresillo should be heard: some treat 3 + 3 + 2 as an additive grouping of unequal beats, while Kofi Agawu and Peñalosa argue that in African and Afro-Cuban music it should be heard as a cross-rhythm against a steady underlying beat. Practising it over a click, as here, follows the second view.
In early Argentine tango, before the 1920s, the habanera rhythm was a standard accompaniment figure, shared with the milonga, an older Argentine song and dance form. In the 1920s tango moved from two-beat to four-beat accompaniment patterns, and a tied 3-3-2 figure, which is tresillo again, began to appear. It later became one of Astor Piazzolla's signature rhythms.
Reggaetón takes its basic beat, the dembow, from the Jamaican dancehall riddim (backing track) of Shabba Ranks's 'Dem Bow', released around 1990. In the standard version the kick drum plays every beat while the snare plays the 'a' of 1 and the 'and' of 2, twice per 4/4 bar. Kick and snare together make the habanera, and the kick on beat 1 with the two snares spells tresillo. The ethnomusicologist Wayne Marshall notes that the basic dancehall pattern can be heard as a habanera.
The usual slip is to even the figure out into a triplet, three equal claps over two beats. Tresillo's last gap is shorter than the first two, so count all eight sixteenths quietly ('1 e & a 2 e & a') until the 3 + 3 + 2 feels natural. In the habanera, the sixteenth before beat 2 tends to arrive late and crowd the beat. In the dembow exercise, resist clapping with the click: the snare strokes only work because the kick is already there.