Disco
Four on the floor, a string section, and a drummer working very hard.
The pattern
2 bars, sixteenth notes. Loops until you stop it.
One hand plays a continuous sixteenth line across two lanes: closed hats on the beat, the e and the a, and an open hat wherever the and falls. Bar one has four opens, bar two has three because the last one is cleared for the fill. Kick on all four with a pickup on the and of 4 in bar two. Snare on 2 and 4 at 108 to 112 with a ghost at 38 on the a of 2 in bar one, a second at 30 on the and of 3 in bar two, and a fill across beat 4 of bar two at 64, 78 and 96. The congas play off the strong beats, five hits in bar one and four in bar two, and the tambourine sits on the offbeat eighths with the open hat. Both percussion parts clear out for the fill. Two limits worth naming: real disco fills are often five or six strokes inside one beat, faster than a sixteenth grid can hold, and the drummer pushes the snare a few milliseconds early into that turnaround. Swing at 0.54 is gentler than the funk entries because the sixteenth hats are already carrying the motion.
What it is
By 1976 the Philadelphia pattern had left Philadelphia and become an industry. Sessions in New York, Los Angeles, Montreal and Munich were cutting twelve-inch singles to a formula: four on the floor, a chorus of strings, a bassline that walked in octaves, and a break in the middle where everything except the rhythm section dropped out for thirty-two bars. That break exists because DJs asked for it, which makes disco the first popular music arranged around the needs of the person mixing the record rather than the person buying it. What separates this from the Philly template it grew out of is density. The tempo climbs, the hi-hat fills in sixteenths, the drummer starts putting ghost notes around the backbeat, and the percussion section arrives.
What it sounds like
Bright, wide, and busy in the top two octaves. Real drums recorded properly, with a snare that has a plate on it long enough to hear between hits. Sixteenth hi-hats with an open hat sizzling on every offbeat, congas working the gaps between them, and a tambourine riding the offbeat alongside the cymbal. The bass is electric, played with a pick or slapped, running octaves. Strings and horns are a real ensemble, doubled and panned wide. There is usually a Fender Rhodes, a guitar playing chopped sixteenth chords through a wah pedal left half open, and a lead vocal with three or four singers stacked behind it.
Key elements
- Sixteenth hi-hats around the openThe hand plays all sixteen until the fill, but the offbeat eighths open and the e and the a stay shut. That is one continuous sixteenth line rather than two separate parts.
- Ghost notes on the snareA quiet hit on the a after beat 2, and another somewhere in the second bar. Small, but it is the audible difference between a drummer and a loop of one.
- The octave basslineRoot on the beat and the octave above on the offbeat, played on an electric bass with a pick. It fills the same rhythmic space the open hat occupies at the other end of the spectrum.
- The breakThirty-two bars in the middle where the strings, horns and vocal stop and the rhythm section plays alone. Every DJ edit of the era exists to make that section longer.
- The turnaround fillThree or four snare hits climbing across the last beat of the second bar. Placed as separate strokes with rising velocities, never as a drawn roll.
- Two percussionistsCongas playing a figure across the offbeats and a tambourine doubling the open hat, on separate lanes. A shaker running flat sixteenths is the lazy substitute and it tells you nothing about the record.
How to get them
- Hi-hatsProgram sixteenths first, then convert every offbeat eighth to an open hat and delete the closed hit underneath it. Closed hits sit at 50 to 70, opens at 94 to 100.
- SnareSample a real snare hit near the rim. Plate reverb at 1.3 seconds, return high-passed at 350Hz, and set the tail so it has died by the time the next kick lands.
- KickRound, felt beater, weight at 55Hz, and mixed six decibels below where a house kick would sit. The record is carried by the hat and the bass, not by the bottom end.
- BassOctaves in eighths, played with a pick close to the bridge and lightly compressed at 4 to 1. Keep one finger muting the strings between notes so nothing rings across the beat.
- StringsTwo takes of the same line, panned hard left and hard right, with the right side pitched a few cents sharp. Real disco string sections were doubled to tape and that is where the width came from.
- GuitarSixteenth chops through a wah left parked half open, heavily muted, at the far right of the stereo field. It should read as percussion more than as harmony.
- PercussionCongas left of centre on the a of 1, the and of 2, the a of 3 and across the end of the bar, tambourine right of centre on the offbeat eighths. Both stop for the turnaround fill, because the players are watching the drummer.
Reference points
Chic, Sister Sledge, Donna Summer, Cerrone, Van McCoy, the Trammps, and the Casablanca, Atlantic and TK 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.