Bass tumbao

Every exercise here grades you on finding "the one" — count 1, the downbeat that opens the phrase. New to that? The counting salsa lesson covers it first.

The bass tumbao is a one-measure pattern that repeats identically forever: notes on the "&" of beat 2 and on beat 4, nothing on beat 1. Like the conga, it has no asymmetry to give away which measure comes first: loop it, and every measure sounds exactly like the last one.

The note on beat 4 is loud and lands right before the downbeat, which makes it the easiest place in this exercise to jump the gun and tap early. Both downbeats ringed above, count 1 and count 5, are correct answers: a bare bass line can't tell you which half of the phrase you're in either.