Amapiano
Johannesburg, slowed down, with the log drum carrying the bass.
The pattern
2 bars, sixteenth notes. Loops until you stop it.
The tempo is 112, slower than anything else here, and the swing at 0.58 is heavier. No clap: a rimshot sits on the and of 2 and the and of 4 at 78 and 72, with a ghost on the a of 3 in bar two. Closed hats only ever land on the a of each beat, which leaves the shaker to fill the rest of the sixteenths between 34 and 56. One open hat on the and of 3. The move to listen for is in the kick: bar one is four on the floor, and bar two drops the kick on beat 4 and puts it on the and of 4 instead, which is the displacement the log drum plays against.
What it is
Amapiano came out of Johannesburg and Pretoria in the middle 2010s, from a mix of deep house, kwaito and South African jazz, and by 2020 it was the biggest dance music on the continent. The tempo sits between 106 and 118, well below anything else in this family, and the bass is played by a log drum: a pitched percussive hit with a sharp attack and a falling pitch envelope, doing the work of a bassline and a tom at the same time. There is usually no clap on 2 and 4. What holds the backbeat instead is a shaker pattern and a rimshot placed off it, and the space that leaves is where the genre gets its enormous sense of room.
What it sounds like
Wide and slow, with a lot of air in it. Constant shakers in sixteenths, a soft kick, a rimshot ticking in the middle distance, and the log drum sliding downward underneath everything. Above that: Rhodes chords with heavy chorus, a piano riff, and vocals that come and go without ever taking over. Percussion is often sent to a long reverb which is then gated, so the tail is audible but does not smear. Almost nothing in the mix is loud.
Key elements
- The log drumA pitched percussive bass with a fast downward pitch drop. It plays a melodic line, so it is the bass, a tom and the hook all at once.
- No clapThe backbeat is carried by a rimshot on the and of 2 and the and of 4, rather than by anything landing on the beat itself.
- Constant shakersSixteenths that never stop, between velocity 34 and 56, with an accent pattern doing the job a hi-hat would do in any other house genre.
- Sparse closed hatsOne closed hat on the a of each beat and nothing else. It marks the swing without filling any of the space.
- A kick that movesFour on the floor for a bar, then the fourth kick pushed to the and of 4. That displacement is a signature of the genre.
How to get them
- Log drumTake a sine or a soft square, put a pitch envelope on it falling a fifth in about 80 milliseconds, and add a click layer on top. Then play a melody with it rather than a root note.
- Swing0.58. Amapiano swings noticeably harder than house does, and the shakers are where you actually hear it happening.
- ShakersTwo shaker samples alternating on the sixteenths between 34 and 56, skipping the a of each beat so the closed hat has that step to itself.
- RimshotDry, around velocity 78, on the and of 2 and the and of 4. Send it to a long plate and gate the return so the tail stops after about 300 milliseconds.
- ChordsRhodes with a wide chorus and a slow tremolo, playing sevenths and ninths. Keep them well behind the percussion in the mix.
- KickSoft, tuned low, no click at all. It is holding the floor rather than driving anything, so nothing about it should be aggressive.
Reference points
Kabza De Small, DJ Maphorisa, MFR Souls, Focalistic, Musa Keys, and the Piano Hub and Blaqboy catalogues. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements.
The pattern is a starting point rather than a rule. If you want the theory underneath why any of it works, Battuto measures it.