A reggaeton beat is built on one rhythm: the dembow. A kick on every beat, a snare pattern that skips across the bar in a three-three-two shape, and a bassline that leans on the same off-beats. Get that groove right and almost anything melodic you put on top will sound like reggaeton. Get it wrong and no amount of sound design will rescue it.
This guide goes through the parts in the order you would build them: tempo, the dembow pattern and where it came from, percussion layers, bass, chords and melodies, arrangement and space for a vocal. The tempo figures match the BPM by genre cheat sheet, so the two never disagree.
Reggaeton BPM
Reggaeton is usually made between 88 and 100 BPM, centred around 95. Some modern tracks push a little above that, and some slower, moodier ones sit lower, but 95 is a safe place to start a session.
Unlike trap, it is not programmed half-time. The tempo you set is the tempo you feel: the kick lands on every quarter note and the groove moves at that speed. That makes it easy to confuse with its relatives. Dancehall sits a little higher, at 90 to 110, and afrobeats overlaps with both, so if you are tagging a loop, trust the number on your grid rather than the feel.
An eight-bar loop at 95 BPM is about 20 seconds, a comfortable length for something another producer will build on.
The dembow pattern
The dembow is a one-bar pattern. Count a bar in sixteenth notes, 1 to 16, with four steps to each beat.
- Kick: on steps 1, 5, 9 and 13. That is four on the floor, every beat, steady and not decorated.
- Snare or rim: on steps 4, 7, 12 and 15. Read in beats, that is the last sixteenth of beat one, the "and" of beat two, the last sixteenth of beat three and the "and" of beat four.
Take each half of the bar on its own: the kick on step 1 and the snares on 4 and 7 split those eight steps three, three, two before the next kick on step 9 starts it again, with the snares on 12 and 15. That three-three-two grouping, the tresillo, played over a steady kick is what gives the groove its lilt. It is a rhythm you can tap on a table: boom, boom-ch, boom-ch, boom-ch, repeated.
Some practical notes:
- Quantise it hard first. Listen to the bare loop for a minute before you add anything.
- Velocity. Make the first snare of each half-bar a touch harder than the second. The difference is small, but it gives the pattern a pulse instead of a stutter.
- Vary the last bar. Change the end of a four- or eight-bar phrase with a snare roll or a dropped kick, so the loop does not sit still.
Where the dembow comes from
The pattern is Jamaican. It comes from dancehall, and it takes its name from "Dem Bow", Shabba Ranks' 1990 dancehall record. The drum pattern itself is usually traced to "Poco Man Jam", a riddim the Jamaican producers Steely and Clevie built the same year. Producers in Panama and then Puerto Rico took the riddim in the early 1990s, rapped over it in Spanish and built what became known as reggae en espanol and, later, reggaeton. By the mid-2000s the pattern was the backbone of a worldwide pop genre.
The pattern is a shared tradition, so the real work is in the sounds and writing around it. If you want to hear where the groove started, the dancehall genre page has loops from producers working in that tradition.
Percussion layers
The dembow is the skeleton. Everything else is texture on top of it.
- Kick. Short, round and tuned low. It has to hit four times a bar without cluttering the bass, so keep the tail short and let the bass do the sustaining.
- Snare and rim. Reggaeton snares are tight and bright, often with a gated or short reverb. Layer a snare with a clap or a rim for a sharper front edge, and pan the second layer a little if you want width.
- Hi-hats. Closed hats on eighth or sixteenth notes, with plenty of velocity variation, keep the bar moving. Some producers open a hat on the "and" of beat four to push into the next bar.
- Shakers and congas. A shaker on sixteenths and a few conga or bongo hits in the gaps add the Latin and Caribbean flavour. Keep them quiet enough that the dembow still stands out.
- Fills and effects. Reverse cymbals, snare rolls, risers and short vocal chops mark the end of a phrase. Use them at section changes, not in every bar.
Bass
Reggaeton bass is simple and does most of the lifting. Three habits cover most of it.
- Use an 808 or a clean sub. A long sine or 808 with a little saturation carries on small speakers, and the saturation keeps the note audible when the very low end is not.
- Follow the root, with a bounce. The common pattern plays the root note on the downbeat and answers it on an off-beat, often in step with the snare hits. Keep the line to a handful of notes. Many tracks use only the roots of the chords, with an occasional fifth or octave jump.
- Keep the kick and bass apart. The kick is on every beat, so the bass has to work around it. Either shorten the bass notes so they end before the next kick, or side-chain the bass a few milliseconds when the kick hits.
Chords and melodies
Modern reggaeton leans on a small palette, and it is mostly minor.
- Minor keys and short progressions. A four-chord loop that moves from the tonic to the sixth and seventh degrees, such as i, VI, VII, is a very common shape, and a two-chord vamp works just as well. Because the groove is so rigid, the harmony can stay simple. The compatible keys guide shows which keys layer cleanly if you add a second melodic part.
- Sounds. Plucked synths, nylon or acoustic guitar, piano, marimba-style mallets and soft pads are the usual choices. The guitar and mallet sounds nod to the genre's Latin roots, and a bright pluck gives a more pop feel.
- Rhythm. The melody works best when it answers the dembow instead of copying it. Let a pluck land on the beats where the snare is silent, and leave the snare's off-beats open.
- Hooks. A two- or four-bar phrase that repeats, with a small change on the last repeat, is usually enough. Reggaeton is built on repetition, because a vocal hook will do the rest of the work.
Arrangement and vocal space
A typical reggaeton track runs about three minutes and follows a pop shape.
- Intro, 4 to 8 bars: a melody or a vocal tag on its own, with a filtered or stripped-down groove.
- Verse, 16 bars: the full dembow and bass, with the melody pulled back so a voice has room.
- Pre-chorus, 4 to 8 bars: the kick or the snare drops out, a riser builds, and the energy lifts.
- Chorus, 8 to 16 bars: everything comes back, the melody opens up, and a counter-line or a stacked vocal doubles the hook.
- Second verse, chorus and bridge: the same pattern with small changes, then a drop to just the bass and a vocal before the last chorus.
- Outro, 4 to 8 bars: strip it back to the groove and one melodic sound.
Leave space for the voice, because that is what the beat exists for. Keep the midrange between roughly 1 and 4 kHz clear of competing sounds, and carve a small dip in the melody where the vocal sits. A beat that is complete on its own, with no gap for a singer or rapper, is harder to finish.
Finding reggaeton loops and collaborators
Plenty of reggaeton starts as a loop: a few bars of guitar, a pluck or a dark piano, made by a producer who is stronger at melody than drums. Producers who are strong on dembow programming and bass are often looking for exactly that.
On ColabLoop, the reggaeton genre page lists loops other producers have uploaded in the style. Listening is free and needs no account, and you can filter by tempo and key on the loops page. If a loop fits, you can ask its producer to build on it with you. Nothing is sold between producers: if they accept, you get a private room to work in and the full WAV, and the loop's owner goes on the split. The guide to finding a producer to collaborate with covers how that conversation usually goes.
If you make loops yourself, upload one WAV of 10 to 60 seconds, set the tempo to your grid number, and tag the key. Leave the drums out if you want another producer to bring their own dembow.
Questions producers ask
What BPM is reggaeton?
Most reggaeton sits between 88 and 100 BPM, centred around 95. It is not half-time, so the tempo you set is the tempo you feel.
What is the dembow rhythm?
A kick on every beat, with a snare or rim on the last sixteenth of beat one, the "and" of beat two, the last sixteenth of beat three and the "and" of beat four. In a 16-step bar, the kick is on steps 1, 5, 9 and 13 and the snare is on steps 4, 7, 12 and 15.
Where does the dembow come from?
From Jamaican dancehall. The name comes from Shabba Ranks' 1990 record "Dem Bow", and the rhythm from the dancehall riddims of that year, which Panamanian and Puerto Rican producers then reworked into reggaeton.