How to make reggaeton in your browser

By Tongkit Leong · August 13, 2026 · 8 min read

Reggaeton is built from the dembow riddim — a boom-ch-boom-chick drum pattern — layered with a syncopated bass tumbao and call-and-response vocal hooks around 90 to 100 BPM, and you can program all three from scratch in the Tracks browser studio with no software to install and no account to create.

The anatomy of a reggaeton track

Reggaeton traces its rhythm back to Jamaican dancehall riddims filtered through Puerto Rican and Panamanian production, and nearly every reggaeton record still shares the same load-bearing parts:

• The dembow riddim — a repeating "boom-ch-boom-chick" pattern on kick and snare that defines the genre more than any melody or key does.
• A syncopated bass tumbao — a low bassline that dodges around the dembow's accents instead of holding straight notes, giving the groove its bounce.
• Layered hand percussion — congas, shakers, and güira-style textures fill the space between the kick and snare hits.
• Short, repeating melodic hooks — a synth or piano riff, often just two or three bars long, looped as the track's main melodic identity.
• Call-and-response vocals — a lead vocal answered by chanted ad-libs or a repeated hook line, built for singing along on a dance floor.

Tracks has what you need for this built in — the drum machine for programming the dembow pattern, a subtractive synth for the tumbao and melodic hooks, the mixer's sidechain ducking to keep the low end tight, and a sampler for stacking vocal chants.

Step 1: Set your tempo

Open the Tracks studio and set the BPM in the transport bar. Reggaeton sits in a narrower range than most club genres:

• Classic, perreo-leaning reggaeton: 90–94 BPM. Heavier, more grinding, closer to the genre's dancehall roots.
• Mainstream, radio-ready reggaeton: 94–98 BPM. The most common range in current commercial releases.
• Faster, more upbeat styles: 98–102 BPM. Leans closer to dembow's Dominican cousin or reggaeton-pop crossovers.

96 BPM is a safe, common starting point if you're not sure which corner of the genre you're aiming for — you can always halve-time the feel by writing the dembow pattern across two bars instead of one.

Step 2: Program the dembow riddim

Add a track and open the drum machine. The dembow pattern is the single most recognizable rhythm in the genre — it reads as "boom-ch-boom-chick" over one bar of 4/4: a kick on beat one, a rim or snare on the "and" of beat two, another kick on beat three, and a snare on beat four with a short pickup snare just before it. Program that skeleton first before adding anything else.

Once the kick and snare skeleton is down, layer in a closed hat on every eighth note to keep the pulse steady, then add a shaker or conga pattern in the gaps to fill out the groove. Reggaeton doesn't lean on heavy swing the way UK garage or lo-fi does — keep the dembow tight to the grid so it hits with authority. See Free online drum machine for the full mechanics of programming a pattern from scratch.

Percussion variation

To keep a repeating dembow pattern from feeling static across a full track, vary the percussion layer rather than the core kick-and-snare skeleton. Swap in a different conga fill for the second verse, mute the shaker during a breakdown, or add a single extra rim hit before a drop — small changes that leave the dembow itself untouched.

Step 3: Write a bass tumbao

Add a new instrument track and open the subtractive synth. A reggaeton bass wants a round, saturated low end — start with a sine or triangle wave, or a saw wave rolled off with the filter cutoff if you want more grit under the mix.

Open the piano roll and write a bassline built around the dembow's accents rather than straight quarter notes — a common approach is a note on beat one, a short syncopated note just after the snare hit on beat two, and a note on beat three that carries through into a slide toward beat four. This is the "tumbao" feel: a bassline that talks back to the drum pattern instead of just anchoring it.

Locking the bass to the kick

Because the dembow kick lands twice per bar in a tight pocket, an unmanaged bass can easily clash with it in the low end. A light sidechain duck on the bass triggered by the kick keeps both punchy without turning muddy — see Sidechain compression explained for how to set it up, and How to lock a bassline to the kick for a full walkthrough of writing around a drum pattern.

Step 4: Layer melodic hooks and vocals

Reggaeton melodies are usually short and repetitive by design — a two- or three-bar synth or piano riff that loops through most of the track rather than a long evolving line. Open the piano roll on a new synth track and sketch a simple, hummable phrase; see How to make a melody if you don't know music theory if you want a practical, no-theory way to land on one.

For the vocal side, record a lead line and a short chanted hook or ad-lib through the Tracks mic input, then use the sampler to chop the ad-lib into a repeatable stab you can drop in as a response to the lead vocal's phrases — see How to record and tune vocals in your browser for the recording and tuning workflow, and How to chop and flip a sample for chopping the chant into a playable hit.

Step 5: Arrange with drops

Reggaeton arrangements are built to move a dance floor, which means alternating between filtered build-ups and full-drum drops rather than staying at one energy level. A dependable shape looks like this:

1. Intro (4–8 bars): the melodic hook alone or lightly filtered, with the dembow pattern held back or stripped to just the kick.
2. Verse (8–16 bars): full dembow and bass tumbao under the lead vocal, percussion kept relatively sparse to leave room for the voice.
3. Pre-drop (4–8 bars): filter the drums down, pull out the bass, and build tension with a riser, vocal chant, or percussion roll.
4. Drop / chorus (8–16 bars): the full arrangement lands together — dembow, bass, melodic hook, and call-and-response vocals all at once.
5. Second verse and drop: repeat the shape, often with a new percussion fill or an added vocal ad-lib for variation.
6. Outro (4–8 bars): strip back to the hook or a vocal chant alone, fading or cutting cleanly.

Block these sections out on the Tracks timeline before refining any single part — see How to arrange a song for more on building a structure from scratch.

Step 6: Mix and export

Before you export, spend a few minutes balancing levels in the Tracks mixer:

1. Balance the kick and bass first — the dembow only reads as punchy if those two elements sit together without fighting for the same low-end space.
2. Apply a light sidechain duck on the bass and any pads from the kick so the groove stays defined through the busiest sections.
3. Keep the sub content below roughly 100 Hz mono so the low end translates on phone speakers and club systems alike.
4. Use a de-esser on the lead vocal if the chanted ad-libs get harsh, and reverb sends sparingly to keep the dembow feeling close and forward — see De-esser explained and Reverb and delay explained.

When the balance feels right at a comfortable volume, export to WAV for a clean master file or MP3 to share online — see How to export your song to MP3 or WAV for the full walkthrough. Your project stays in your browser the entire time; Tracks never uploads it anywhere.

Frequently asked questions

What BPM is reggaeton?

Most reggaeton sits between 90 and 100 BPM. Classic, perreo-leaning reggaeton runs 90–94 BPM, mainstream commercial reggaeton sits around 94–98 BPM, and faster crossover styles push toward 98–102 BPM. 96 BPM is a reliable starting point.

What exactly is the dembow riddim?

The dembow riddim is a specific "boom-ch-boom-chick" drum pattern — kick, rim, kick, snare with a pickup — that originated in Jamaican dancehall and became the rhythmic foundation of reggaeton. It's the one element that stays constant across almost every reggaeton track, regardless of tempo or melodic style.

What's the difference between reggaeton and dembow (the Dominican genre)?

Both share the same underlying riddim, but Dominican dembow is typically faster, rawer, and leans harder on the drum pattern with sparser melodic content, while reggaeton tends to sit a bit slower with more developed melodic hooks and a more polished, radio-oriented mix.

Why does my bass sound muddy under the dembow kick?

The dembow kick lands twice in a tight one-bar pocket, so an unmanaged bass will often overlap it in the low end. A light sidechain duck on the bass, or an EQ cut around the kick's dominant frequency, keeps both punchy and audible. See Sidechain compression explained.

Do I need real percussion samples to get an authentic reggaeton sound?

No. Programmed drum machine sounds work fine for the dembow skeleton — congas, shakers, and güira-style hits are mostly there for texture in the gaps, and you can build convincing versions of all three with the built-in 808/909 drum machines and the 16-pad sampler.