Güiro

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 güiro plays the standard "caballito" pattern: a long scrape (shown larger above) on counts 1, 3, 5 and 7, held through the following "&", then two short scrapes filling the rest of that two-beat cell before the next long one.

Both downbeats ringed above (count 1 and count 5) are correct answers here. The long scrape marks every downbeat identically, so it can't tell you which one opens the phrase. This exercise grades you on locking onto the pulse itself.