Thump

The drummers house was copied from. Played by hand, which is why the grid never quite explains it.

• Funk88-112The One, hit hard, with everything else arranged around getting back to it.
• New Orleans Funk84-102Second line parade rhythm dragged into a studio and made to sit still.
• P-Funk96-114Slower, heavier, and built around the space between the hits.
• Afrobeat100-124Tony Allen playing four drummers' parts at once and never landing hard.
• Go-Go92-110Washington DC funk that never stops between songs, carried by percussion.
• Philly Soul106-122Sigma Sound, 1973, and the hi-hat that every house record since has copied.
• Disco110-128Four on the floor, a string section, and a drummer working very hard.
• Salsoul and New York Disco114-126Latin percussion in front, a rhythm break in the middle, cut for the Loft.
• Mutant Disco104-124Downtown New York playing disco badly, on purpose, and inventing something.
• Euro Disco116-132Munich, a sequencer, and a drummer instructed to play like a machine.
• Boogie104-120Post-disco, slowed down and tightened up, with a Linn in the room.
• Italo Disco116-128Rome and Milan, all drum machine, and no attempt to sound like a band.
• Hi-NRG126-140Disco taken up to 132 and pointed straight at the gay clubs that kept it alive.

A kick on every beat and an offbeat that swings the whole thing. Everything from Chicago in 1985 to whatever Ibiza is doing now.

• Chicago House116-128The drum machine that started it, still running on 2 and 4.
• Acid House118-132One broken bass machine, and a rhythm track that gets out of its way.
• Deep House115-124The chords come forward and the drums get quieter about it.
• Garage House116-126New York and New Jersey, with a gospel singer and a live snare.
• Ghetto House138-152Chicago again, faster and ruder, with the kick doing the talking.
• Disco House120-128A disco loop, a real snare, and a tambourine that never stops.
• French House118-130One bar of a disco record, opened and closed with a filter.
• Jackin' House120-128Chopped, swung hard, and built to make people move their shoulders.
• Tribal House122-130The congas take over and the hi-hats get out of the way.
• Tech House122-128House arrangement, techno restraint, and everything on the grid.
• Microhouse118-128House reduced until the silence between the hits is the arrangement.
• Melodic House120-124Four on the floor, and everything else pointed at the feeling.
• Afro House112-124The bell keeps time and the kick just holds the floor down.
• Amapiano106-118Johannesburg, slowed down, with the log drum carrying the bass.
• UK Garage128-138Sped-up house from New York, rebuilt in London around the bass.
• 2-Step128-140The kick leaves the floor and the snare has to hold the bar together.
• UK Funky124-134Congas, a broken kick, and a bar that refuses to sit square.

The same steady kick, pointed somewhere colder. Detroit, Berlin and the many rooms that have got louder since.

• Detroit Techno122-138Machine funk from a city that heard the future and made it swing.
• Acid Techno130-148One broken bass synth, turned up, and a kick that will not stop.
• Bleep Techno118-134Sub bass from a sound system, and almost nothing else in the room.
• Dub Techno116-128A chord, a delay, and forty minutes of the two of them talking.
• Ambient Techno100-125A pulse you could sleep through, with the room mixed louder than the kit.
• Minimal Techno120-132Twelve sounds, arranged so carefully that you never notice there are twelve.
• Melodic Techno118-128Techno tempo, techno drums, and a chord progression that wants to be a film score.
• Hypnotic Techno128-140Nine minutes of almost the same bar, which is exactly the intended effect.
• Peak-Time Techno134-148Built for a big room at one in the morning, and it does not pretend otherwise.
• Hardgroove Techno132-145Congas, a swung sixteenth, and three decks going at once.
• Electro-Techno124-140The kick stops being on every beat, and the 808 takes over.
• Broken Techno120-136Techno with the kick pulled off the grid and the snare left holding it together.
• Industrial Techno128-145Metal, distortion, and a kick with the transient sharpened into a weapon.
• Hard Techno145-165A kick that bounces off the offbeat and a snare roll into every loop point.
• Schranz150-180German, loud, and made of one loop being hit repeatedly with a hammer.

Four to the floor pointed upward instead of outward, with the offbeat carrying the whole arrangement.

• Classic Trance132-145Frankfurt in 1992, with a 909 open hat doing most of the work.
• Dream Trance130-142A piano, a held string chord, and a kick that stays out of the way.
• Acid Trance136-150A 303 pointed upward instead of at the floor, over a 909 with the hats open.
• Goa Trance138-150Anjuna beach, a DAT walkman, and a top end mixed for an outdoor rig.
• Psytrance140-150Kick, then three bass notes, and an open hat on the last sixteenth of every beat.
• Full-On140-152Psytrance with the melody put back and the top end turned all the way up.
• Darkpsy146-165Faster, atonal, and built so that nothing in the bar tells you where you are.
• Hi-Tech Psy175-205Around 190, with more hat events per second than anything else here.
• Progressive Psytrance132-142The morning set: the same rolling bass with almost everything else removed.
• Psybient80-108The chill-out tent, at half the tempo and none of the urgency.
• Uplifting Trance136-142The breakdown is the record and everything else is a runway to it.
• Vocal Trance132-140The same tempo with half the drums, because somebody is singing over it.
• Progressive Trance126-136Long, patient, and built so the change you notice happened four bars ago.
• Tech Trance136-146Trance arrangement, techno drums, and the melody cut back to a riff.
• Hard Trance140-155The hoover, the offbeat open hat, and a snare roll that lasts half a bar.

Built for a main stage and a drop. The commercial end of four to the floor, from electro house onward.

• Electro House124-132Distortion on the bass, a crash on the downbeat, hats on the eighths.
• Fidget House122-130Chopped, lurching, and built from the four bars everyone else threw away.
• Dutch House126-130Toms instead of hi-hats, and a lead that sounds like a kettle boiling.
• Progressive House124-130Sixteen bars of build, two beats of air, and a chord you can see from the back.
• Complextro126-132Every sixteenth belongs to a different sound, and the kick gives up halfway.
• Big Room126-132A kick, a supersaw, and the confidence to leave the rest of the bar out.
• Melbourne Bounce125-132The kick plays the offbeat as well, and that is where the bounce comes from.
• Hardbass145-160Russia at 152, and a bass note pumping on every offbeat eighth.
• Festival Trap135-155Trap drums for a main stage, where the drop is a horn line and not a verse.
• Future Bass140-160Supersaws that bend under your feet, over a snare that only visits beat three.
• Future House122-128Deep house furniture with a bass filtered until it starts talking.
• Slap House118-126One bass note on every offbeat, and very little else in the bar.

Rhythm-first dance music from Johannesburg, Rio, Luanda, Lagos and Newark. Percussion carries these, not the kick.

• Gqom118-132Durban answered house music by throwing the four to the floor away.
• 3-Step106-118Three kicks where the bar expects four, and the gap does the dancing.
• Kwaito96-112House records slowed to a walk in Soweto, and sung over in Isicamtho.
• Shangaan Electro168-192Limpopo wedding music at 180, with no bass drum doing the driving.
• Bacardi118-134Pretoria took kwaito up to house tempo and let the rimshot rolls do the work.
• Baile Funk122-138Rio's beat built from candomble drums and a Miami bass sample.
• Funk Mandelao126-142Sao Paulo funk stripped to a doubled bass drum and a phone speaker.
• Kuduro130-150Luanda's hard bottom, built on semba drums and a 3-3-2 kick.
• Afrobeats98-116Lagos pop, with the backbeat on 3 and a shekere holding it together.
• Zanku98-116Lagos street-pop, built on a fuji percussion bed and a doubled kick on beat 3.
• Azonto122-138An Accra dance craze with a kpanlogo bell holding the whole record up.
• Highlife108-132The Gold Coast dance band sound, and the drum machines that carried it into the eighties.
• Mbalax118-145Dakar sabar drumming put on a stage, with the talking drum answering the kit.
• Singeli180-300Dar es Salaam at two hundred and up, with the hand drums doing the running.
• Bongo Flava88-108Dar es Salaam pop with a hip-hop backbone and coastal drums over the top.
• Coupe-Decale108-128Ivorian club music from the Paris exile scene, run by a bottle and a bell.
• Ndombolo122-142The Kinshasa sebene, driven by the cavacha chugging on every offbeat.
• Gnawa84-116Moroccan lila music, the guembri holding a three three two and iron on every sixteenth.
• Rai106-132Oran cassette pop, a derbouka played live against a drum machine preset.
• Shaabi92-116Cairo's cassette music, a tabla playing baladi and a voice with a grievance.
• Mahraganat105-130Cairo weddings on a cracked laptop, maqsoum on a machine and autotune on everything.
• Jersey Club130-148Newark's five kick pattern, a bed squeak, and a vocal chopped to bits.
• Baltimore Club124-136Four to the floor with the Think break laid across it, and very little else.

Cumbia, guaracha, soca and the rest. Rhythms with centuries behind them, running through a drum machine.

• Rumba156-212Three drums and a pair of sticks arguing across one clave, in Matanzas.
• Songo168-220Changuito put a rumba ensemble on one drum kit and Havana danced to it for twenty years.
• Timba176-224Havana in the nineties, playing songo at funk volume with the brakes off.
• Salsa162-210Cuban son rebuilt in a New York basement, and the word a record label invented for it.
• Bomba88-122Puerto Rico's oldest drum music, where the high drum follows the dancer's feet.
• Merengue116-162A two-headed drum, a metal scraper, and the fastest dance floor in the Caribbean.
• Bachata104-150Guitar music from the Dominican countryside, with a bongo running underneath it.
• Soca128-172Trinidad Carnival at running speed, with a brake drum keeping everybody honest.
• Bouyon126-154Dominica, not the Dominican Republic, and a kick that goes nowhere near a dembow.
• Zouk102-134Kassav put gwo ka drums into a drum machine and sold two million records with it.
• Kompa84-118Haiti's national dance since 1955, built on a stick pattern and a very patient bass.
• Cumbia82-112A small drum on every offbeat, and the most widely copied rhythm in the Americas.
• Digital Cumbia78-104Buenos Aires slowed the coastal rhythm down and put a subwoofer under it.
• Guaracha122-138Aleteo, zapateo and a four to the floor kick, out of Medellin and Cali.
• Tribal Guarachero120-140Monterrey teenagers, pointed boots, a pre-Hispanic flute sample and a tresillo kick.
• Changa Tuki136-172Caracas barrio party music at raptor speed, made on stolen software and shouted over.

Where the backbeat comes back and the grid stops being straight. Swing, ghost notes and a snare that means it.

• Old School96-112Breakbeats, an 808 and a cowbell, from before anyone decided what the rules were.
• Boom Bap85-95A hard kick, a harder snare, and a hundred ghost notes holding the gaps open.
• Jazz Rap86-100A ride cymbal, an upright bass, and a crate of records nobody else had opened.
• Trip-Hop78-96Half-time, drenched in reverb, and in no hurry to get anywhere at all.
• G-Funk88-100A tambourine, a whining Moog, and a beat that leans back the entire way.
• Memphis Rap68-88A driving 808, a snare on three, and tape hiss doing half of the work.
• New Orleans Bounce92-106One break, played forever, with the snare stuttering across every bar.
• Crunk130-150Half-time, hollered, and built almost entirely out of an 808 and a cowbell.
• Snap72-86Almost nothing, arranged carefully, with fingers where the snare should be.
• Hyphy96-112A rubber-band bassline and a clap that turns up one sixteenth early.
• Trap130-155A sliding 808, a snare on three, and hats moving faster than any grid can show.
• Drill130-150Chicago's answer to trap: slower to move, colder, and stripped to the bone.
• UK Drill138-150The backbeat pushed off three, and an 808 that slides between every note.
• Lo-Fi Hip-Hop70-90A rimshot, a detuned piano loop, and swing heavy enough to trip over.
• Cloud Rap60-78Space where the drums should be, and reverb filling every bit of it.
• Phonk125-160Memphis tapes, a cowbell riff, and a kick that refuses to sit still.

Jamaica, and the rhythms the rest of the world borrowed from it. The one drop, the dembow, and what happened next.

• Ska138-168Jamaica's first music of its own, played fast and landing on the upbeat.
• Rocksteady70-90Ska cut in half, with the bass promoted to lead instrument.
• One Drop64-84The beat with nothing on the downbeat, and the rest of reggae built on that hole.
• Rockers68-88The one drop with the bass drum put back on all four beats.
• Steppers72-92Four to the floor at reggae tempo, and the hardest thing in the family.
• Dub60-82A rhythm track with holes cut in it, and the mixing desk playing the solo.
• Lovers Rock74-92Reggae written about romance instead of politics, and made in south London.
• Rub-a-Dub64-82The Roots Radics slowed the riddim down and left the deejay all the room.
• Sleng Teng66-84A Casio preset, a slowed tempo, and the day reggae stopped needing a band.
• Ragga82-104Digital riddims built for a deejay, hard and dry and faster than roots.
• Dancehall86-106Nineties Kingston, where the kick syncopates and the snare takes the backbeat.
• Reggaeton86-104The Dem Bow riddim, rebuilt in Panama and Puerto Rico into the biggest beat alive.
• Moombahton102-114Dutch house pulled down to 108 by accident, and it stayed there.
• Dembow108-130Santo Domingo took the riddim back, sped it up and built a genre on the con con.

Half-time snares and sound system weight. What the UK did after garage went underground.

• Dungeon Sound134-142Croydon record shop garage, dubbed out and pointed at the floor.
• Grime138-142Counted at 140 and felt at 140, with a square wave doing the singing.
• Dubstep138-142Counted at 140, felt at 70, and built around a snare on beat three.
• Deep Dubstep136-142Half-time at 140 with the drums pulled back so the sub can breathe.
• Brostep138-146The mid-range weaponised, over a half-time snare and a crash on one.
• Riddim138-144Three notes, a triplet gallop, and drums that get out of the way.
• Bassline132-145Sheffield kept the four four kick and put an organ hook underneath it.
• Future Garage124-136Garage timing and half-time weight, soaked in tape hiss and rain.
• UK Bass126-136A catch-all that turned into a sound: 130, broken kick, cowbell on top.
• Wonky128-145Everything nudged off the grid until the bar walks with a limp.
• Weightless128-142Grime with most of the drums removed and the space left in.
• Glitch Hop100-115A funk break at 110, cut apart and reassembled one sixteenth wrong.
• Drumstep165-180One bar at half speed, one bar at full, and the join is the hook.
• Halftime165-178Drum and bass tempo, dubstep gravity, and a ride holding the middle.

What happens when the kick stops being a drum and becomes the instrument. Rotterdam onward, and faster every year.

• Hardcore Techno150-175Frankfurt in 1990, where the kick first stopped behaving like a drum.
• Gabber170-200Rotterdam, a distorted 909, and nothing else in the track at all.
• Mainstream Hardcore145-170The Dutch millennium sound: a long screaming kick and a roll into every drop.
• Happy Hardcore160-180The same hard kick with a piano riff and a sped-up diva on top of it.
• UK Hardcore165-185What happy hardcore became once the breakbeat was replaced by a hat roll.
• Jumpstyle140-155A Belgian dance with a bassline built to be jumped on rather than danced to.
• Hardstyle140-155Kick, then a bass note where the kick is not. That gap is the genre.
• Rawstyle148-165Hardstyle with the reverse bass deleted and the kick made to scream.
• Industrial Hardcore170-200The one grid in this family where the kick refuses to sit on the beat.
• Doomcore70-110Eighty-eight beats a minute, and every one of them lands like a door closing.
• Frenchcore190-220A kick on every eighth, rolling, with the loud and quiet hits alternating.
• Uptempo Hardcore180-220Two hundred beats a minute, where the kick roll became the melody.
• Terrorcore220-280Two hundred and fifty, with a limp in the kick that makes it worse.
• Speedcore250-300Three hundred beats a minute, and the kick is on every sixteenth.

Sequenced, mechanical and deliberately unpleasant. The body music that came out of Belgium and never quite left.

• Early Industrial90-130Scrap metal, a tape loop and a rhythm box, from before anyone called it a genre.
• Minimal Wave108-132Two synths, a preset rhythm and a four-track, pressed in an edition of three hundred.
• Coldwave120-146Post-punk on a drum machine, with the snare landing where the beat is not.
• EBM124-140A sequenced bassline, a shouted count-in, and a kick that marches rather than dances.
• New Beat98-118Belgian EBM played at the wrong speed on purpose, and it took over the country.
• Electro-Industrial100-124Vancouver rewired EBM into something sampled, broken and far less danceable.
• Dark Electro92-112Frankfurt in 1991, where the samples got longer and the tempo fell through the floor.
• Rhythmic Noise125-175The kick becomes the entire track, and the backbeat is thrown out altogether.
• Aggrotech130-152Hellektro: a clipped kick, a screamed vocal and a hi-hat running at double time.
• Futurepop132-148EBM vocals over a trance kit, and the drums stop pretending to be industrial.
• Martial Industrial72-100A field drum, a choir sample and no hi-hats at all, at half the speed of the rest.
• Neue Deutsche Haerte84-112German industrial metal built on a programmed stomp rather than a drummer's fill.

The UK's other lineage: a sped-up break, a stab and a siren, and everything that came out of it.

• Britcore108-126British hip-hop at rave tempo, all sirens and stacked breaks, three years before hardcore.
• Jungle Techno144-160The year the four to the floor kick started losing its argument with the break.
• Darkcore150-168Hardcore with the lights off: half-speed sub, a stretched scream and a lot of gaps.
• Funky Breaks128-142A b-boy break with a sound system behind it and a scratch on every fourth bar.
• Acid Breaks132-148A 303 carrying the tune while the break deliberately stays out of its way.
• Progressive Breaks126-138Breaks slowed to a walk, mixed for a big room and given eight minutes to arrive.
• Psybreaks138-155A psytrance bassline with the kick taken away and a breakbeat put in its place.
• Broken Beat118-136West London musicians programming jungle at half speed and refusing to quantise it.
• Florida Breaks122-136Orlando in 1996: a hard kick, a stripped break and a sub bass with the room to itself.
• Ghettotech145-168Detroit's answer to Miami bass, at 156, with the claps rolled by hand.
• Juke150-168Chicago's ghetto house sped up until the dancers took it away from the DJs.

Patterns that treat the grid as a thing to argue with. Programmed rather than played, and audibly so.

• Electro118-138The 808 programmed as a rhythm machine rather than a metronome.
• Miami Bass125-150Electro with the kick decay turned up until the car doors rattle.
• Breakbeat Hardcore130-152A house kick underneath a chopped funk break, and rave on top.
• Jungle160-180Six seconds of a 1969 drum solo, cut apart and reassembled.
• Drum and Bass168-180The jungle break tidied into two steps and given a studio budget.
• Techstep165-180Drum and bass stripped down to metal, reverb and empty space.
• Neurofunk170-178Techstep put through a lab: clinical, tight and sanded smooth.
• Liquid Drum and Bass168-178Rolling drums, real chords, and the ghost notes turned back up.
• Jump-Up170-180Drum and bass built for the front of the room and nothing else.
• Breakcore170-210Every break at once, edited past the point of usefulness.
• Drill'n'Bass150-180Jungle edits at machine-gun speed, with the bass playing jazz.
• Braindance110-165Drum machines programmed by someone arguing with the sequencer.
• Glitch95-130Digital failure treated as a drum kit, at very low volume.
• Big Beat118-142A breakbeat played through a wall of amplifiers and fuzz pedals.
• Nu Skool Breaks125-140Big beat sobered up: tight, syncopated and mixed for the sub.
• Footwork150-172160bpm of 808 triplets built to be danced against, not to.

Club music taken apart and reassembled wrong on purpose. The grid is a thing to fight.

• Deconstructed Club118-145Club music with its load-bearing parts pulled out and metal put in the holes.
• Hard Drum124-140Percussion doing all of the work, with the melody and the four-four thrown out.
• Ballroom120-136The Ha crash on beat 4, and a floor that knows exactly when to dip.
• Hyperpop140-175A pop chorus and a drum bus, both driven into the clipper until they distort.
• Glitchcore155-185The stutter edit promoted from an effect into the whole arrangement.
• Digicore140-170SoundCloud rap sped up, clipped, and arranged by teenagers in a Discord call.
• Sigilkore130-155Plugg beats with the samples reversed, so every bar swells into its own downbeat.
• Rage140-165The synth and the 808 do everything, and the drums are kept deliberately thin.
• Wave138-152Halftime drums at the bottom of a very large reverb, with most of them missing.
• Hardwave140-160Wave with the reverb pulled back and a distorted saw driven through the snare.

Drums from a sound chip or a machine that is pretending to be 1984. Programmed, and proud of it.

• Chiptune130-175Drums from a sound chip that can only make one noise at a time.
• LSDJ Chip120-165Four channels, a grey Game Boy, and a groove measured in ticks per row.
• Bitpop112-145Chip melodies over drums that came from anywhere except the chip.
• Nintendocore160-210Metalcore with a Game Boy in the pedalboard and a drummer who means it.
• Amiga Mod110-150Four DMA channels, eight-bit samples, and a demo party deadline.
• Synthwave100-125A LinnDrum pattern with a gate on the snare and a Ferrari on the sleeve.
• Outrun112-138Four to the floor, a cowbell on every a, and a coastline going past at speed.
• Darksynth118-150Straight eighth kicks, a distorted snare, and a horror score that wants a pit.
• Dreamwave96-118The same LinnDrum, slowed down, with a shaker running under all of it.
• Chillwave88-112A cheap sampler, a warped cassette, and a drum loop mixed underwater.
• Vaporwave55-75Somebody else's drum machine, slowed to three quarter speed and left there.
• Future Funk112-138City pop chopped into sixteenths with a four to the floor kick nailed on top.
• Sovietwave88-116A march tempo, a rolled snare and a future that was supposed to arrive in 1984.

The ones that fit nowhere else. A short list on purpose, because a category called Other should stay small.

• Acid Jazz86-116A live drummer, a Hammond and a rare groove record, played by people who could read.
• New Jack Swing98-124Teddy Riley turned the swing knob up and gospel harmony landed on a drum machine.
• Electroclash118-134An 808, a Juno and a deadpan voice, arriving exactly when guitars were unfashionable.
• Digital Hardcore170-220A punk drummer sampled at 192 and run through everything Berlin had to hand.
• Sambass165-180Drum and bass with a ganza on top, exported from Sao Paulo at the end of the nineties.
• Witch House58-80Trap slowed to a crawl and drowned, from a joke about a genre that then existed.