1974 - Los Van Van - Llegué llegué - Guararey (Formell - Roberto Baute Sagarra)
xx0x 0xxx 0xx0 xx0x 2-3 son clave
KxxK Sxxx xxxSSK Sxxx kick and snare
0xx0 0000 x00x xx00
0xx0 0000 x0x0 0000 tumbao 1 - MIDI example
bass: Juan Formell drums: Changuito
source: La colección, Vol. III

notes: At a tempo of 59 bpm, the sultry opening section falls into the same range as the ballads we've already discussed, but Changuito's double time figures turn it into more of a slow funk instrumental than a ballad. With the tempo at the low end of the son montuno range, the clave changes from rumba to son.

The first interlude has three related tempos. The 16th notes of Changuito's original hihat part become the quarter notes of a fast jazz waltz, which, to further complicate matters, is based on 7-bar phrase! On the second repetition, the last bar is omitted and Changuito starts playing songo at exactly double the original tempo. In other words, the double time tempo he implied at the beginning has now become the main tempo.

1 x x 0 2 0 0 0 3 0 0 x 4 x 0 nt>0 (red=played, black=rest)
1 x x 0 2 0 0 0 3 0 x 0 4 0 0 0
1 x x 2 x x 3 x x 4 x 0 5 x 0 6 x 0 7 x 0
1 x 0 2 x 0 3 x 0 4 x 0 5 x 0 6 x 0
100020x03000400x (drum fill 0=two strokes in the space of one)
audio - MIDI

Both the MIDI example and the notation depart from our normal style to demonstrate the tempo changes. The hihat stays constant throughout, but changes from 16ths, to 1/4 notes, to 8th notes. Normally, we show the beat with a space which doesn't represent a rest. In other words, this example:

xx0x 0xxx 0xx0 xxx0 2-3 rumba clave

... sounds exactly like this example:

xx0x0xxx0xx0xxx0 2-3 rumba clave

The spaces are merely to separate the main beats visually. But in order to show the tempo relationships in the Llegué llegué interlude, the horizontal placement had to be accurate, so we switched to a numbered system where red indicates a stroke and black indicates a rest.

The second tumbao is standard songo in terms in terms of clave and tempo, but the bombo-ponche bass tumbao, perhaps the most common overall in Latin music, is still fairly rare in songo.