Salsa arranging - vocals

Hi all,

This past month or so I've been focussing mainly on the piano/keyboard, as it's a "weak link" in my music. I've learning all kinds of awesome montunos and basslines, and I'm constantly improving, Then I figured out that by first recording a piano part and then another instrument (later to be replaced by vocals) I could create melodies that fit with the patterns and sound great. So I put together a great little song - but it was merengue! And I'm thinking, "why haven't I been able to do this with salsa?" I admittedly like merengue too but every1 here knows I I like salsa!

Now from my experience, it seems to me that (modern) merengue just "flows" a lot better on the piano, and it's root keys are way more consistent than salsa (which uses a lot of 1-4-5's and 1-2-5's and stuff like that). It's easy to compose merengues because the key or root note is pretty obvious, and in salsa not so much. Also it seems to me that because there is no clave there's a lot more room for improvization.

So, any ideas, suggestions, tips, or techniques you use would be most appreciated.

thanks,
"El Conguero"

PS - No, this is not a repeat of my "opinion about merengue" post - I know how most of u feel about that, so pls try 2 stay on topic. Thanks!

What is it that you would actually like to know?

It is very fun to arrange salsa songs. I don't know on which level are you right now (and are you a musician btw?), but if you are a beginner in this sorts of things, a advise you to get Rebeca Mauleón's salsa guidebook first just to understand the concept of every instrument in salsa music and it's role.

Are you talking about arranging specifically vocals or..? Cause I had a lot of brass section arranging done so I can probably help you with this.

Yes and yes =)

Hey! Thanks for answering my post on here. Let me clarify some things.

Yes, I am a musician and I'd say I'm at the "intermediate" level. I'm legally blind so I don't read sheet music, but I do read piano tablature and play by ear. I play the keyboard (which I use for piano, bass & horns) and all the percussion (timbales, bongos, etc but especially congas ). I understand the general concepts of clave and bassline structure, and can play several montuno chord progressions. I've even come up with a few montunos of my own and generally work my way from there to the bass to the brass.

By the way, thank you for bringing up the salsa guidebook - actually you're the second or third person to mention that here. I've been saving some extra $ to get that and I'm really looking forward to reading it! You also mentioned brass section, and that is an area that interests me; but this post was about the vocals.

My problem with vocals is that because of the way montunos tend to "bounce around" on the keyboard (i.e. root key constantly changing) it's hard to figure out which notes fit into the pattern. This was easy to accomplish with my little merengue beat (which is actually almost done lol) but if you listen to a lot of that style you can hear how the whole song is based on 2-3 chords (just with a lot of variations or what I called "imporovizations" earlier).

Anyway, since I had no answers to this thread at first, I posted another question about finding the key to a salsa song, and I think that will help. But any insights you may have about arranging vocals would be nice.

Thanks again,
El Conguero

El Conguero said:

My problem with vocals is that because of the way montunos tend to "bounce around" on the keyboard (i.e. root key constantly changing) it's hard to figure out which notes fit into the pattern.

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I think you are "painting yourself into a corner" here by starting with the montuno in all its detail. How about start with just blocking out the chords and singing the melody in clave. Then come up with any accents in the bass and the rest of the band that support the melody. Then these structural points will inform your montuno development. The montuno will then be forced to support rather than clash with the melody and the accents. In the montuno section, where it becomes coro and pregon or brass monas, then you can simplifiy the chords to, say, a 4-bar cycle, and start to let rip with the montuno as fancy as you like and the vocal and brass lines will be simpler.