The parlor waltz side of the same grammar, and the gentlest cell here: a downstroke on each of the three beats, an upstroke between them, and a single brake on the last eighth to close the bar. Nothing is syncopated, nothing is ambiguous, and that is the whole character — this is the one cell in the set that picks a side.
The bar, slot by slot
Six slots, written out as D-U-D-U-D-F. The "sounds" column is computed from this instrument's real open strings with the library's first D major grip under the hand, in the order a stroke actually reaches them — nothing in this table is typed by hand:
| Slot | Stroke | Sounds | Strings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | down | D D F# D | 4 |
| 2 | up | D F# D D | 4 |
| 3 | down | D D F# D | 4 |
| 4 | up | D F# D D | 4 |
| 5 | down | D D F# D | 4 |
| 6 | frenado | braked | — |
The bar holds 3 down, 2 up, 1 frenado, 0 rest, with the brake on slot 6 of 6; measured against both counts it carries the three reading (three 3/3, six 1/2).
Notice what the sounds column does and does not say. Every struck slot puts the same four notes into the air, because the grip has not moved; what changes is the order the hand reaches them, and on this tuning that order is not the order the pitches climb in. The top note arrives before the hand runs out of strings, which is why a strum here lands as one block rather than a spread.
A bar that commits
Measured against the waltz count, every beat lands on an emphatic stroke — the maximum a six-slot bar can score. Measured against the count of two beats of three, only half of them do, and the bar fails to carry that reading at all. This is the opposite of the joropo cell, and putting the two side by side is the fastest way to hear what the cross-rhythm actually consists of.
It is also why this cell sits under aguinaldos and parlor pieces rather than dance music. A bar that resolves its own metric ambiguity is restful, and restfulness is the effect this repertoire wants.
Getting it to sit
The trap in an evenly accented bar is that the first beat swallows the other two. Play the three downstrokes alone, with no upstrokes and no brake, and listen for whether beats two and three are as loud and as long as beat one. Most hands are honest about this only when the pattern is stripped that far back.
Then add the upstrokes as genuinely lighter strokes rather than as more downstrokes played upward — the difference in weight is what keeps the waltz from turning into a march. The closing brake should feel like putting the bar down, not like an extra note. Against the metronome, set the click on beats only and let the offbeats find themselves.
Where it sits
All three cells run over the same grips, so the four-string chord library is the other half of this page, and the key pages show which changes the repertoire actually leans on. If you have arrived here from the ten-string side of the site, the comparison page is the one that explains why none of this transfers.