All styles

Caribbean

Merengue on guitar: chords and rhythm.

Dominican merengue is fast, straight and danceable: two chords, the tonic and its dominant seventh (C and G7). The guitar chops the rhythm in short, even strokes, like the güira, without the syncopated sway of salsa.

I – V7 – V7 – ILevel · Intermediate

The progression

Pick a key: the charts change right below. "Listen" plays the progression with its rhythm; a click on a chord plays it alone, the arrow opens its page.

Key

In C major · 132 BPM
  • C
    C major×321
  • G7
    G 7321

The rhythm

One bar of the strumming hand, beat by beat. While it plays, the stroke being played lights up.

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2
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3
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4
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  • down, cut short
  • up, cut short

From the same world

Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad and the French Antilles: simple chords played on the offbeat, over the clave or the tresillo.