Cumbia Fado
By NickLong on July 22, 2026 8:34 am
This weeks weekly beats is a bit of a strange one.
There was a competition on Elektronauts to make a drum and bass track using the sounds of two countries which were in a group stage together in the world cup. I initially chose Netherlands / Japan, (JPop Techno), but put loads of work in and couldn't get it to work.
With 1 day to go I switched to Portugal Columbia and this just flowed.
It's using influences in terms of melody and chords from Portuguese Fado and rhythms from Columbian Cumbia, but with double tempo drums to give it a drum and bass tempo.
I'm not sure if it's really authentic to either culture's music, but hopefully people will see it as an affectionate tribute to the cultures of these two great countries.
Pianoteq is doing a lot of the heavy lifting with Piano, Wurly, Marimba and Xylo tracks.
Some guitar via Neural Morgan suite (should be nylon but I don't have one)
Percussion is Kick 3 for the DnB + Bitwig built in sample libraries + Skaka for shakers.
Bass Sublab and the gated synth is Proxima
Vocals are Synth V Nathalie - I would rather the vocals were Portuguese, but Synth V only does Spanish. I had to use AI for translation so hopefully they aren't total nonsense, but are supposed to be about coming together in music to wash all your troubles away.
Any Spanish speakers please let me know if it's total crap.
Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works (BY-NC-ND)