The Salsa Rhythm App has 10 different kinds of instruments, more than 60 musical patterns and thousands of possible combinations are available to help anyone to isolate the various sounds that comprise salsa music.
Those new to salsa and Latin dancing in general sometimes find it challenging to “find the beat” when dancing. One creative salsa dancer created a “Salsa Beat Machine” as an answer to that challenge.
The Salsa Beat Machine is a free online Salsa and Merengue metronome. The idea behind it is to use it as as tool to improve your dance timing and feeling of the rhythm. Different patterns composing Salsa Music are broken down for you using an intuitive mixer-like interface. An online visualizer tab let’s you match what you hear in the music with the instrument that is currently playing. Here is a short video that explains how it works:
Here is some info direct from Uri Shaked, the creator, about his inspiration for the tool:
“I’ve been dancing Salsa for around 4 years, and today Salsa plays a major role in my life.
When I began dancing, I struggled with the rhythm of the music a lot, and it took me more than a year to get it right. I remember my friends telling me that I was off-beat, dancing on the “2” or “3”, but as I couldn’t hear any “numbers” in the music I had no idea what they were talking about and was really frustrated. Fortunately, following an advice from a close friend, I began listening to a lot of Salsa music. Without any special guidance, it took the change several months to happen, but I gradually progressed until I reached a point I could dance in time with the music.
Since then, I became a Salsa instructor myself, teaching dance and musicality to others, and also began playing salsa gigs on the piano, clave sticks, conga drums and timbales set. Learning how to feel the rhythm and to dance to the beat wasn’t an easy journey, but I am happy I did not give up. This gave me the drive to explore the music and its structure, to listen to individual instruments, find patterns, and ultimately create the tool known today as the Salsa Beat Machine.”
