Oye Como Va

Oye Como Va is at 128bpm. The main riff is only two bars long, and repeats many times with some variations. Below are two videos with a click track showing every beat for two bars.

The first video is at the standard tempo, 128 bpm. The second video is at 80bpm for better focus and practice.

What to do with these

Sometimes feeling the “upbeat” is difficult. But for this song, it is a prerequisite. The downbeats are shown in blue. The metronome click is on the downbeat. The downbeats get a beat number, 4 beats per bar. Upbeats are called the “AND of the beat number”. Like, the and of 1, or the and of 2. Or, just “1 and”, or “2 and”

You can count it like this: ONE and 2 and 3 and 4 and TWO and 2 and 3 and 4 and.

This is gonna sound silly… But listen to these click tracks and concentrate on going through them and clapping on the upbeats, while also mentally keeping track of the downbeat.

128 bpm

80bpm

The Bass Line

At face value the bass line is super simple… just three notes:

A – A – A – D ; A – D – C

HOWEVER… its pretty challenging to feel the syncopation of how the beats are arranged. This is why it is essential to really fully “own” the upbeat. Here is a picture of where the beats hit in the bass line:

(*You might notice that I’m adding in an extra note… Sometimes in arranging for different groups or configurations, its needful to change things… In this case, the added note makes up for the absence of the organ. Also, when the rhythm guitar drops out to solo, that space will be super empty. That note is important to the structure, and ever though the bass doesn’t play it “on the record”, is important to play it in this context…)

Bass Line at 80bpm

The Cakewalk grid is similar to the rhythm grid chart above:

Here’s what is sounds like at 80bpm:

And that’s the main riff. There are a couple other parts to look at, but let’s check in later on this part first.

Work this up to 140 with a metronome to get into shape to play it at 128 live. Search google for “metronome” and one just comes up. Or use another of your choice…