What is the reggaeton drum pattern called?

Veena is an AI DAW with a personal music producer built in. Describe the song you want and CoProducer builds it with you — beats, chords, melody, arrangement and mix — as real tracks you can edit, mix and export. Free, in your browser. The reggaeton drum pattern is the dembow: a kick on every beat and a snare answering in a 3+3+2, twice a bar.

How do you write a dembow beat on a 16-step grid?

Kick on steps 1, 5, 9 and 13. Snare on steps 4, 7, 12 and 15, the "a" of 1, the "and" of 2, the "a" of 3 and the "and" of 4. Hats on every 8th. In Veena's Beat Maker that's sixteen clicks, or ask CoProducer for "a dembow at 92 BPM" and pick the best of three takes.

Can I describe a reggaeton beat to CoProducer in Spanish?

Yes. Write "haz un dembow a 92 BPM con bombo en cada tiempo" and CoProducer builds the drum part as editable MIDI, no translation needed. In Veena's own data, about 18–20% of new users write their first request in a language other than English, and Spanish is the most common of them.

Reggaeton Drum Pattern: The Dembow, Step by Step

The reggaeton drum pattern is the dembow: a kick on every beat at 88–100 BPM, with the snare answering on the "a" of 1, the "and" of 2, the "a" of 3 and the "and" of 4. Boom, ch, boom, chick. In Veena, a free AI DAW with a personal music producer built in, CoProducer programs the dembow as editable MIDI and builds the bass and hook around it.

The reggaeton drum pattern (dembow) on 16 steps

Count one bar as 16 steps of 16th notes, as Veena's Beat Maker does. Beats 1 to 4 fall on steps 1, 5, 9 and 13.

Count   1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a
Hat     X . x . X . x . X . x . X . x .
Snare   . . . X . . X . . . . X . . X .
Kick    X . . . X . . . X . . . X . . .

Kick: steps 1, 5, 9 and 13, velocity 115 to 125.
Snare: steps 4, 7, 12 and 15, at an even 100 to 110. Layer a clap on the same steps for bite.
Hats: a short, louder closed hat on every beat (about 95) and softer ones on the "ands" (about 65).
Swing: close to straight. A light 16th swing, 52 to 54% on the MPC scale, gives the hats a sway without bending the snare.

Loop it at 92 BPM. If your head doesn't start moving by the second bar, check the snare: a hit one step early or late breaks the whole spell.

Why it's a 3+3+2

Split the bar in half. In each half, the kick on step 1 and the snares on steps 4 and 7 land 3, then 3, then 2 steps apart: the tresillo, the rhythm under a huge share of Caribbean and Latin music. The second half repeats it on steps 9, 12 and 15. The extra kicks on 5 and 13 turn it into a four-on-the-floor pulse you can dance to.

That's why the snare never lands on 2 or 4. It pushes against the beat instead of marking it, and the dancer's hips go with the push.

Five dembow variations

The extra ghost. Add a soft snare on step 10, the "e" of 3, at about 70. It fills the gap between the kick on beat 3 and the snare on step 12, and the second half of the bar starts to roll.
The half-kick verse. Kick only on steps 1 and 9, dembow snare untouched. The bar opens up under a vocal, and when the kicks on 5 and 13 return in the chorus it feels like a lift.
The pre-chorus drop. Kick out entirely for four bars, snare and hats keeping the dembow alive, a crash on step 1 when the kick comes back.
Sixteenth hats. Hats on all 16 steps in the chorus, two quiet then two loud: 55, 55, 95, 95 across each beat. It's the same groove with twice the motion, and each loud pair lands with a snare.
The four-bar fill. In bar 4, keep the dembow for three beats, then snares on steps 13, 14, 15 and 16 climbing from 70 to 120. For a tom version, run the high tom down to the low tom across the same four steps.

Program the dembow in Veena

Paste the prompt at the bottom of this page into CoProducer. Reggaeton has its own dedicated guidance, keyed to the word dembow, so the pattern arrives as a dembow and not as a house beat. CoProducer offers three takes: hover each card to hear it and press Enter on the one that moves.

New CoProducer drums arrive on the Pop kit. Say "swap the drums to the Electronic kit" for a punchy, synthetic dembow with a real clap, or pick Electronic or TR909 from the preset menu on the left of the Beat Maker.

Then fix anything by hand. Double-click the clip to open the Beat Maker: 16 steps to the bar, with Kick, Snare, Hihat and Hihat Open waiting and Clap, Side Stick and the toms under Add. Click a step to add or remove a hit, and hover any hit to drag its velocity between 1 and 127.

Congas, bongos, timbales and shakers give reggaeton its colour. Ask CoProducer for "a conga loop" or "a shaker loop" and it searches Veena's sample library, shows ten preview cards and places the one you pick across the section. For the low end, "a Reggaeton Bass on every kick" gives you Veena's short, dry sub built to punch against the dembow.

Write it all in Spanish if you prefer: CoProducer understands "dembow a 92 BPM, caja en el patrón clásico" as it stands, no translation needed.

Common dembow mistakes

Snare on 2 and 4. Then it's pop. The dembow snare sits on 4, 7, 12 and 15.
A boomy kick. At 92 BPM a long kick tail swallows the snare on step 4. Keep it short.
Busy hats in the verse. Save the 16ths for the chorus.
No fill for 32 bars. Mark every four or eight bars with a fill or a dropout.

The whole song, bass, hook and arrangement, is in make reggaeton. The same tresillo runs through the afrobeats drum pattern, and Latin trap swaps the dembow for the half-time trap drum pattern. Start from an empty grid in the free online beat maker, or describe any groove to the AI drum generator.

Reggaeton Drum Pattern