Rhythm and groove in 16 rows

In 4/4 with 16 rows per bar, rows 0 and 8 are the strong beats, 4 and 12 medium, everything else weak: 0 > 8 > 4, 12 > the rest. Notes on weak positions — especially just before a strong beat — create syncopation, the engine of all dance music (source: s-037-lab).

• Melody: long notes on strong beats, short runs on weak ones — then break the rule once per phrase.
• Off-beat stabs (chords on rows 2, 6, 10, 14) = instant house/rave energy.
• Rests are notes too: the silence before a downbeat makes it hit twice as hard.
• Shuffle/swing: delay every second 16th slightly with the tracker's groove/speed settings — on the C64 with sid-wizard's FunkTempo (two alternating row tempos) or tempo programs, in lsdj with grooves (8/5 instead of 6/6); see shuffle-funktempo.
• Probability on ghost notes (LSDj B MayBe) keeps long loops alive: randomization-and-probability.
• Sidechain-style pumping on every beat gives motion even without a kick: sidechain-pump.
• Bass drive from octave-bass; interleaving bass and lead on one channel: channel-interleaving.

Metre#

Metre is how you count the rhythm — the time signature: about 90 % of radio music is 4/4 with the first beat strong; marches count in two, waltzes in three; duple metre = 2, 4, 8…, triple = 3, 6, 12. Tempo is speed — frames per row and BPM in tracker terms (Greg Heo, source: s-tw074-intro-to-musical-theory). The Modsquad's minimal chip drum pattern puts the kick on every fourth row (rows 0, 4, 8, 12) with hats and snare filling between (source: s-tw077-chip-off-the-block). hornet's reviewers, answering the 1996 claim that techno needs no theory: rhythm is not outside theory — syncopation and metres like 5/4 come in the first theory class, and techno "is practically governed by" it (source: s-tw044-hornet-ratings). Triple metre in a tracker: blaze-runner, who learned waltzes on the accordion, kept "a techno waltz" as an idea to retain — 3/4 "is harder to implement in a tracker, but it's not impossible" (source: s-tw008-interview-blaze-runner; ST3's Ctrl+B rows-between-bars and LSDj's H00 on step C are the two tools this wiki documents for it, see scream-tracker-3 and arrangement).

Think like a live drummer (Necros, 1995)#

Avoid the same 16-row kick/snare pattern all song; write what a drummer reacting to the band would play — a rising fill before the chorus, a crash on a peak "even if it's in the middle of a bar", soft snares on the "and"s for hip-hop, 7/4 for a Rush feel, ride cymbal and brushes for jazz. And the groove itself: "the secret of a good groove is to make it less chord-oriented, and more riff-oriented" — a catchy phrase inside the chords, locked to the drums — because "Either get a good progression, or get a good groove" (source: s-tw015-advanced-tracking-tips-ii).

Drum patterns and interlocking lines (The Modsquad, 1997)#

The Modsquad's second theory series is satire, but its drum pages are real. Their three "classic drumbeats" are written as 64 sixteenth steps (B kick, S snare, H hihat, R ride) and then split over three channels; the first bar of each, as rows 0–F:

row      0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
beat 1   B H H H S H H H B H H H S H H S    kick 0 8 · snare 4 C F · hats between
beat 2   B H R H B H R H B H R H B H R H    kick 0 4 8 C · ride 2 6 A E · hat on odd rows
beat 3   B H H H S H B S B S B H S H S S    kick 0 6 8 A · snare 4 7 9 C E F

The later bars vary the fills (beat 1 ends its fourth bar …SHBHHHBHSSSS). Their advice: the scene "will never let you get away with these beats", so reverse them, swap kick and snare, replace the hat with a crash, mix in bits of other beats. Interlocking: a kick on every 4th step and a second hit on the same steps sound good alone but clash together — offset the second line by two steps (B---B--- against --R---R-) so they "fit together like teeth in a zipper", then interlock four lines (kick 0, snare 1, hit 2, cymbal 3, each every 4 rows) (source: s-tw087-music-theory-a-modern-approach). For the sampling side of their drum advice — tambourine as the real pulse of most loops, kick-plus-snare combination samples — see instrument-design.

Serial percussion: rotate the drum sounds so that no sound repeats until all the others have sounded in order — a drum row instead of a pitch row (source: s-tw046-serial-composition; see serial-composition).

In LSDj#

Swing and triplets are grooves: 7/5 on one channel against 6/6 on the others, 8/5/7/4 for a looser lead, G08 plus H00 for an eighth-note triplet over two eighths — see shuffle-funktempo (sources: s-intense-tech-06-groove-and-tick-tricks-part-1, s-intense-tech-07-groove-and-tick-tricks-part-2).

Randomised feel: from LSDj 8 a Z after a G picks the groove by chance (straight or swung), on top of B probabilities on notes (source: s-intense-tech-14-lets-appreciate-version-8).

Related#

melody-writing · arrangement · shuffle-funktempo · tracker

Sources#

s-037-lab · s-sid-wizard-manual · s-tw074-intro-to-musical-theory · s-tw077-chip-off-the-block · s-intense-tech-06-groove-and-tick-tricks-part-1 · s-intense-tech-07-groove-and-tick-tricks-part-2 · s-tw087-music-theory-a-modern-approach · s-tw046-serial-composition · s-tw044-hornet-ratings · s-tw015-advanced-tracking-tips-ii · s-intense-tech-14-lets-appreciate-version-8 · s-tw008-interview-blaze-runner · s-lsdj-manual