Drumstep

What it is

175 beats per minute with a snare on beat 3. That combination is the whole idea, and it exists because producers working at drum and bass tempo wanted the weight of a dubstep drop without slowing the record down to get it. Around 2010 and 2011 Flux Pavilion, Nero, Delta Heavy and most of the UK festival circuit were writing tracks that flip between the two feels every bar or every four. The bass writing comes from dubstep, the drum programming from drum and bass, and the switch between them is the arrangement trick the entire style is built to deliver. Purists in both camps disliked it, which mattered very little, because it filled rooms for about three years.

What it sounds like

Drum and bass fidelity with dubstep intent. The drums are tight, bright and compressed like a jungle record: a snare with a real crack, a short kick, hats programmed at speed. The bass is a dubstep growl, wide and distorted, but written in shorter notes so it can keep up with the tempo. Risers and reversed cymbals mark every switch. The harmony is minor and simple, usually two chords on a supersaw, and the arrangement is built entirely around the moment the feel changes. Everything is mixed loud with the sub tight and short, because at 175 there is no room for a long tail.

Key elements

• The switchA half-time bar next to a full-speed bar. Whether it flips every bar or every four, that alternation is the reason the genre has a name.
• Drum and bass drumsProgrammed to jungle standards, tight and forward, with real ghost notes and a snare that has been layered three deep and tuned.
• Dubstep bass writingLFO growls and mid-range screams, but in shorter notes than at 140, because the same modulation rate reads as twice as fast up here.
• Reversed cymbals on the joinA reverse crash running into every switch so the change of feel is announced a beat before it happens. Without it the flip reads as a mistake.
• Short subA tight sine with a fast decay. At 175 anything with a long tail turns the low end into mud within two bars.

How to get them

• Write both bars togetherProgram the half-time bar and the full-speed bar as one two bar loop from the start. Writing them separately and joining them afterwards never quite lands.
• SnareThree layers, a body around 180Hz, a crack at 1.8kHz and a noise tail, tuned to the key and gated at 0.25 seconds so it does not smear at this tempo.
• BassA saw with an LFO on the cutoff at a sixteenth rather than an eighth, so it reads at 175 the way an eighth reads at 140. Keep the notes under a beat long.
• HatsOffbeat eighths in the half-time bar, full sixteenths in the fast bar. That density change carries the switch as much as the snare placement does.
• Reverse crashA crash reversed and stretched over one beat, ending exactly on the downbeat of the fast bar, high-passed at 500Hz so it does not eat the sub.
• Swing50 percent. At 175 a swung sixteenth is about 20 milliseconds late, which reads as a timing error rather than as a groove.

Reference points

Flux Pavilion, Nero, Delta Heavy, Modestep, Culture Shock and Zeds Dead, on Circus, MTA and Viper. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements.