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  • 1 year ago
In this video, I’ll teach you how to play the guiro, a traditional Latin percussion instrument often heard in salsa and cumbia music. Using a wooden guiro with ridges and a scraper, you’ll learn how to hold and angle it properly, then create rhythmic patterns by dragging the scraper across its surface. We’ll explore short and long strokes to find your groove, then try a simple rhythm to get you started. Join me to dive into the basics and start playing the guiro with confidence.

Explore our guiro collection here: https://www.carvedculture.com/collections/guiros

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Transcript
00:00In this video, I'm going to be showing you how to play the guairo.
00:03Before we get started, I just want you to know that there is no wrong or right way to play these instruments.
00:08The first one we're going to look at is the small matsu guairo.
00:11It is a shaker, but we're going to be looking at its guairo characteristics.
00:16So it has these ridges, which is how it produces the sound, and we have a wooden stick beater.
00:21When I was in Thailand, they told me that you're meant to use the thick end of the beater.
00:25So with the thin end, it sounds like this.
00:30And we can tap.
00:32So we can go up, down, tap, tap, up, down, tap, tap.
00:39You can play around with different rhythms, different orders.
00:42We can try with the thick end.
00:43Up, up.
00:50Up, down, up, down.
00:52Up, up, down, up.
00:54Up, up, down, up.
00:56So just play around in a different order.
01:00Up, up, down, down, up.
01:02We're going to look at the crocodile guairo.
01:04It's a hollow instrument.
01:06So inside, the sound kind of echoes in the small chamber.
01:10You can experiment playing slow or fast, fast and hard, fast and soft.
01:22That's the crocodile guairo. Moving on we have the frog guairo.
01:35Typically you would hit the instrument on the nose or on the end because that would create
01:50the most amplification of the sound because of the hollowness.
01:54I mean you could hit it at the side.
01:58Pretty much everyone can pick up one of these instruments and be able to play it straight
02:02away however they like it.
02:03The frog is an interesting one because it actually produces a type of croaking sound.
02:13Another thing that you can play around with is the length.
02:15So you can go full length or you can go a little bit.
02:23And then playing around with rhythm you can go one, two, three, four or one and two and
02:29three and four and...
02:30So you could use that in sound design if you're working on a film production or if you just
02:35want to play around and you know do a bit of a mindfulness session.
02:37Finally we're going to be looking at our largest guairo.
02:41This is the traditional fish guairo.
02:42It's very popular in sort of Mexican music, Latin music, salsa, that type of thing.
02:48It has these two holes for amplification so that when you strike it...
02:51produces a different sound you've got this straight kind of sound and then obviously that's up but
03:01you can go down and then you can experiment with the curves of the ridges.
03:08And then once you're comfortable with it and you've created a different few sounds you can
03:13start experimenting putting them together.
03:14Also implementing a tap if you want to.
03:28With this one as well we can create this kind of guairo sound and we can twist it to adjust
03:33the sound because of the holes we will get a different sound as we go around the instrument.
03:38So let's try this now starting from here.
03:40Anyway that is how to play the guairos.
03:47If you want to check out any of these instruments I will put a link in the description so that
03:51you can do that.
03:52If you like this video give it a thumbs up, subscribe and don't miss the next video.
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