Festival Trap

What it is

Baauer's Harlem Shake was a novelty and then it was number one for five weeks, and by the middle of 2013 every festival on earth had a trap section in the middle of the set. What Flosstradamus, RL Grime, Yellow Claw, Carnage and DJ Snake were making went under two names, festival trap and EDM trap, and the difference from the Atlanta records it borrowed from is real and worth stating exactly. The tempo and the halftime snare are the same. What changes is the function. There is no rapper, so the drop has to carry the record on its own, which means a horn line where a verse would be, a build with a snare ramp in it, a crash on the downbeat, and hats that get out of the way on beat one so the drop lands on air. The 808 is still the bass, but now it plays under a melody rather than under a voice.

What it sounds like

Loud, wide and short. The snare on beat three is layered three deep with a plate behind it and it is the largest single event in the bar. Hi-hats run in sixteenths with occasional rolls, but they leave the first beat of each bar completely alone, and that omission is the tell. The 808 is a long tuned sine, distorted at the top, playing three or four notes a bar and gliding between them. Above it: brass stabs, a detuned lead, a pitched vocal chop or a siren. A crash sits on the downbeat and a second one lands under the snare in bar two. Everything is compressed into a narrow dynamic range and the top end is bright to the point of being harsh.

Key elements

• Beat one has no hi-hatThe hat pattern starts on beat two of each bar. It is a small edit and it is most of the reason a drop of this kind feels like it arrives rather than continues.
• The snare is the eventOne snare on beat three of each bar, layered with a clap and a noise burst and sent to a gated plate. There is no backbeat on beat 2 anywhere in the loop.
• Rolls rather than fillsFour consecutive sixteenths on beat two of bar two and a three hit snare ramp on the last three steps. Both are inherited straight from Atlanta rather than from any four to the floor tradition.
• 808 as melodyA tuned sine with glides between notes, distorted above 200Hz so it survives on a system that cannot reproduce the fundamental. It plays a line rather than a root.
• Crash and cowbellA crash on the downbeat of the loop and a second under the snare in bar two, with three cowbell hits on syncopations. The cowbell is the one piece of furniture the style took from Memphis and never gave back.

How to get them

• SnareA clap, a tight snare and a filtered noise burst, bussed and compressed at 8 to 1 with a 5ms attack. Send it to a 1.5 second plate gated at 400ms and duck the plate with the snare itself.
• 808One sine with a 700ms decay and about 80ms of glide between notes, then a waveshaper on a parallel channel high-passed at 200Hz. Blend the distorted copy under the clean one rather than distorting everything.
• HatsSixteenths from beat two onward, 78 on the beats and 54 to 62 between them. Build the roll on beat two of the second bar from four even sixteenths rather than a triplet.
• The buildEight bars of snare ramp doubling in speed every two, a riser, then cut everything for the last two beats. Bring the drop back in with the crash and the snare landing together.
• Leave beat one aloneNo hat, no percussion, nothing but the kick and the 808 on the first beat of each bar. This single edit is what separates a festival drop from a hip-hop beat at the same tempo.
• LeadBrass or a detuned saw, one line, mono, in the octave above middle C. It has to be simple enough to be shouted back by people who have heard it twice.

Reference points

Baauer, Flosstradamus, RL Grime, Yellow Claw, Carnage, DJ Snake, and the Mad Decent and Fool's Gold catalogues. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements.