A follow-up pack to our beloved classic El Perreo, Vol. 2 features rhythmic percussion loops, Latin melody loops, and infectious drum beats. With this Latin-inspired collection, find everything you need to create your next Latin hit.

Here are three production tips to help you get the most out of El Perreo Vol. 2.

Sound Pack Spotlight: Production Tips and Tricks

For Beginners:

Reggaeton drum patterns.

Reggaeton drum patterns are relatively simple. All you need is a kick and a percussion or rimshot sound to achieve a reggaeton groove. Write a four-on-the-floor quarter note kick groove as shown by the red MIDI. From there, insert two rimshots. One will be a 1/16th note before the second kick, and the next will be a 1/8th note after the second kick, as shown by the green MIDI. This pattern serves as the foundation of the reggaeton genre.

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Next level: Intermediate

MIDI grooves.

MIDI groove tools can be found within many DAWs, including Ableton and Bitwig. Here we have Bitwig’s simple built-in groove tool that can be applied to any MIDI clip. The same principles here apply to all native groove tools, such as Ableton’s Groove Pool tool. These groove tools apply quantization and velocity variations to the MIDI clip, creating a humanized feeling rather than a static, perfect groove that is on grid all the time.

Experiment with different timings and shuffle/accent amounts to get a unique groove for your drums or percussions. For reggaeton style grooves, try applying a 1/16 groove with more than 50% shuffle, and full accented effect at a rate of 1/4.

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For Advanced

Utilizing distortion & saturation on your kicks.

Reggaeton kicks are distinct from kicks in other genres and feature a deep, round, warm low thud, with a piercing high-end that contains white noise. The low-mids within reggaeton kicks are also less prominent.

We can sculpt this kind of sound with any multiband tool that allows us to apply saturation and distortion in different bands. With this instance, we’ll use Saturn 2, a multiband saturation plugin by Fabfilter.

Separate the sound into four different bands, and apply a warm tube distortion to taste on every band except the second band that controls the low-mids. Then, remove gain from the low-mid band, and increase the gain on the fourth high-end band. Use your ears and adjust each parameter to taste, as every kick sample will need different amounts of each effect.

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