Bassline
Sheffield kept the four four kick and put an organ hook underneath it.
The pattern
2 bars, sixteenth notes. Loops until you stop it.
This is the one grid on the page that marches. Kick on every beat at 122, 114, 118, 114, with a pickup on the last sixteenth of bar two. Clap on 2 and 4. The hats are the giveaway: an open hat on every offbeat eighth at 84, house's inheritance arriving through speed garage, with closed hats filling the e at 44 and the a at 62 underneath. At 0.57 swing both of those land late, and that is where the bounce comes from against a stiff kick. The tambourine ticks the a of every beat, except at the end of bar two where it moves to the and of 4. Bar two also adds a ghost clap on the and of 3 at 50, a second clap on the and of 4 at 68, lifts the last two closed hats to 48 and 66, and pushes the final open hat to 90 so the loop turns over audibly.
What it is
Niche, on Sidney Street in Sheffield, ran a room where the garage being played had gone a specific local way: four to the floor, no 2-step, and a bassline built from a detuned organ patch that jumped around like a vocal hook. The police closed the club in 2005 and the sound outlived it, which tells you how portable it was. T2, DJ Q, Jamie Duggan and the Nichesound crowd took it national, and in 2007 Heartbroken did what no bassline record had done before and went top five. Speed garage is the London ancestor of this. Bassline is the northern one: faster, more melodic, much less interested in dub, and built to be sung along to at volume in a room with a low ceiling.
What it sounds like
Bright and physically bouncy. The bass is the hook, usually a Reason NN19 organ patch or something close to it, detuned, played staccato in the mid-range with a sub sine doubling the root underneath. The kick is short and dry. Claps and open hats do the top end, and the open hat on every offbeat is inherited straight from house. Vocals are either a full R and B topline or a pitched-up chopped sample. Almost everything is in a minor key with a lot of sevenths in the bass riff, and the mix is loud, flat and cheerful in a way none of the London styles on this page are.
Key elements
- The organ bassA detuned organ or reed patch playing a syncopated riff in the mid-range. It is the melody, the hook and the bass part in one instrument.
- Four to the floorA kick on every beat, which is what separates this from 2-step and from everything else on this page. The syncopation is entirely in the bass.
- Open hat on every offbeatStraight from house and speed garage. Four open hats a bar, ringing until the next kick clips them, driving the whole track forward.
- A hard clap on 2 and 4Dry, bright and slightly clipped. It does not swing with the hats, and that contrast between a stiff backbeat and shuffled sixteenths is the bounce.
- Sung vocalsA full topline, or a chopped R and B sample pitched up two or three semitones. Bassline is a pop music and it never stopped behaving like one.
How to get them
- BassAn organ or reed sample, two voices detuned 20 cents apart, short amp envelope with a 60 millisecond release, plus a mono sine on the root an octave down. Play the riff in, do not draw it.
- KickShort, punchy, high-passed at 40Hz and tuned to the fifth of the key. It has to leave the bass riff room in the low mids, so cut it at 200Hz by 3dB.
- Open hatsOne 909 open hat on every offbeat eighth at 84, decay set so it is still ringing when the next kick lands. Choke it with the following closed hat if your sampler allows.
- Clap2 and 4, dry, clipped, dead centre, no reverb. Add a ghost on the and of 3 and a second clap on the and of 4 in the turnaround bar and nothing else.
- TambourineOn the a of every beat, under the closed hats at around 58, panned 20 percent left. It is what keeps the shuffle audible when the mix gets loud.
- Swing0.57. Every e and every a lands late, which gives a four to the floor pattern a lope that house does not have at this tempo.
Reference points
T2, DJ Q, Jamie Duggan, TS7, Burgaboy and Shaun Banger Scott, and the Nichesound and 4x4 club circuit around Sheffield and Bradford. 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.