The same repertoire, counted in two. A ranchera does not care much which feel it is played in — the words and the harmony survive both — but the sections do, because the counting decides who owns the beat.
In the polka feel the bass owns it outright: the guitarrón puts a root on each of the two beats, and the armonía stays off them. Slots 1 and 5 are braked slaps, marking the beats without pitch; the ringing chords land on the offbeats between. Nothing rings ON the beat anywhere in this bar, and that hole is precisely what makes the feel push forward instead of sitting.
This bar is written in 8 slots so both the beats and the offbeats have a slot of their own to sit in — the same reason the son’s bar is written in twelve. Grid size is a per-form declaration in this engine, never a constant, because a grid too coarse to hold a pattern’s events silently rounds them away.
Set this cell beside the waltz-feel one and the whole difference between the two feels is visible without hearing either: both put a slap where the bass lands, but the waltz answers twice after one bass note and the polka answers once after each of two. That is the entire distinction, and it is legible as slot positions rather than as an adjective.
WHY THE SLAP AND NOT SILENCE. A rest on the beat would leave the same hole, and it would sound wrong. The section is carrying the pulse for an ensemble with no drummer, so it has to put something audible on the beat; a braked slot is percussive, pitchless and short, which means it marks time without competing with the bass note underneath or with the sung line above. That is a lot of work for one slot value, and it is why this engine treats a mute as a first-class kind rather than as an accent mark on a stroke.
THE FORM DECIDES, NOT THE PLAYER. Nobody in an armonía chooses between these two cells. The bandleader names a ranchera and names a feel, and the pattern arrives with the name — along with the meter, the bar grid and the harmony the number will move through. The forms page sets out the rest of what a single call hands out.