Euro Disco

What it is

Musicland Studios sat in the basement of a shopping centre in Munich, and in 1977 Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte cut I Feel Love there by running a Moog Modular sequencer through the whole record and asking Keith Forsey to play a kit against it. Keeping a hand-clocked analogue sequencer in time with a drummer for six minutes was genuinely difficult and the take is audibly a negotiation. What came out changed the shape of European dance records: the sixteenth-note motion moved from the hi-hat to a synthesiser, the drummer's job narrowed to holding a pulse without deviating, and swing disappeared. Cerrone in Paris, Alec Costandinos, Space, Rockets and the whole space disco strand ran on the same principle, usually with more strings on top.

What it sounds like

Cold at the bottom and shimmering above it. The sequencer is the loudest melodic element, a filtered sawtooth playing sixteenths through a delay set to a dotted value so it appears to be playing two lines. Drums are real but recorded tightly and played with no dynamics on purpose. The hi-hat sits at one velocity all the way through. Strings, where there are any, are a Solina or an ARP rather than a section, and the vocal is often a single phrase repeated with reverb long enough to smear across two bars. Very little of it is warm and none of it is meant to be.

Key elements

• The sequencer carries the sixteenthsSixteenth-note motion lives in a monophonic synth line rather than in the hi-hat. That reallocation is the whole innovation and everything else follows from it.
• No swing whatsoeverDead straight at 0.5. A sequencer running at a fixed clock cannot shuffle, and shuffling the drums against it fights the record rather than loosening it.
• Flat hi-hat velocitiesSixteenths at 60 with the downbeats only four steps above at 64. Almost no dynamic range, which is exactly what the players were asked for.
• Two open hats per barThe and of 1 and the and of 3. Fewer than a Philadelphia record because the sequencer has already filled the offbeats.
• The dotted delayA delay at three sixteenths on the sequencer, feeding back four or five times. It turns one line into a cross-rhythm and is most of what people remember about the sound.

How to get them

• SequencerSixteen steps on a monophonic synth, a sawtooth through a 24dB low-pass with the resonance at about a third, and the cutoff automated by hand across sixteen bars. No two takes should match.
• DelayThree sixteenths, feedback around 45 percent, ping-ponged wide and rolled off above 5kHz. Print it rather than leaving it live so the mix stays predictable.
• Hi-hatProgram sixteenths and set every velocity to 60, then raise the four downbeats to 64 and stop. Any further variation pulls this back towards American disco.
• KickTight, damped, weight at 50Hz with a short click. Gate it so the tail is under 200 milliseconds, since it has to stay out of the way of a sub-heavy sequencer.
• Skip the percussionThere is no shaker, tambourine or conga on this page and there should not be one in your arrangement either. The sequencer took that job and the top end has no room left.
• VocalOne phrase, doubled an octave up, into a plate at three seconds with the pre-delay at zero. Let it wash across the barline rather than gating it to the grid.

Reference points

Giorgio Moroder, Pete Bellotte, Donna Summer, Keith Forsey, Cerrone, Alec Costandinos, Space, and the Casablanca and Malligator catalogues. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements.