Baile Funk

What it is

The bailes in Rio's favelas ran on Miami bass records for most of the eighties, and the local version stayed close to them until the late nineties, when DJ Luciano Oliveira cut a set of atabaque samples into what everybody now calls the tamborzao. That single beat replaced the imported break almost overnight. It is a candomble rhythm sequenced rather than played, and it is the reason funk carioca stopped sounding like anything from Florida. The surdo lands in an uneven five hit figure, a rim slap answers every gap, and a second higher drum cuts across both. It has been in more or less continuous use since 1999, which for a single drum pattern is remarkable.

What it sounds like

Loud, dry and almost entirely percussion. A low surdo with no sub extension underneath it, hand drums recorded close and clipped, and a rim slap that carries more high end than anything else in the mix. There are usually no hi-hats worth the name, just a tick on the e of each beat. Above that: a vocal, often two or three people trading lines, and a sample held for the whole record rather than played. Everything is compressed until the transients flatten, because these records were made to be heard on a wall of speakers outdoors rather than on a system with any headroom.

Key elements

• The tamborzao surdoBeat 1, the a of 1, the and of 2, the and of 3, beat 4. Five hits at uneven distances, and every producer in Rio can play it on a table.
• The rim answerA high slap on beat 2, the a of 2, the a of 3 and the and of 4, filling exactly the places the surdo left open.
• The atabaqueA hand drum on the beats and between them, hitting hardest on beat 3 at velocity 96, which is where bar one has no surdo.
• A timbale crossing bothA higher, tighter drum on the e of 1, the e of 3, the a of 3 and the and of 4, playing against the other two rather than reinforcing either.
• Barely any hatsOne quiet tick on the e of each beat, and a single open hat a bar. The three drum lanes own the rest of the spectrum between them.

How to get them

• Get the surdo spacing rightProgram the five hits by ear before you look at the grid. The gap between the and of 2 and the and of 3 is four sixteenths and every other gap is shorter, and that asymmetry is the beat.
• Three drums, three pitchesLow surdo, mid atabaque, high timbale, tuned at least a fourth apart. If two of them read as the same drum the interlock disappears and it sounds like a fill.
• Clip rather than compressDrive the drum bus into a hard clipper by two or three decibels instead of reaching for a compressor. Tamborzao records square off the transients, and a smooth limiter does not sound like that.
• No subHigh-pass the surdo around 55Hz and put nothing beneath it. The weight in these records is at 80 to 120Hz, which is where an outdoor rig actually reproduces.
• One sample, heldPick a single loop or vocal phrase and repeat it for the whole track without variation. Arrangement in funk carioca happens in the vocal, not in the beat.
• Straight gridSwing 0.5. The tamborzao is already uneven by placement, and swinging the sixteenths on top of it blurs the surdo into the rim answer.

Reference points

DJ Luciano Oliveira, DJ Marlboro, Furacao 2000, MC Marcinho, Tati Quebra Barraco, Bonde do Tigrao and Deize Tigrona. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements or as anyone to imitate.