Frenchcore

What it is

Free parties in France and the sound systems that ran them, from the early nineties onward. Where Rotterdam put one kick on each beat, the French tribe and teknival scene doubled it: a kick on every eighth, tuned, with the velocity alternating so the pair reads as a roll rather than as two hits. That single decision changes the music completely. The low end becomes continuous, the tempo reads as faster than it is, and the whole track acquires a forward lurch. Micropoint, Radium and later Dr Peacock and the Hardtek scene around Paris built two decades of records on it, played almost entirely outdoors.

What it sounds like

A rolling low end that never stops, made of one tuned kick sample repeating twice a beat with a few decibels of difference between the two. Because it is tuned, the roll is also the bassline, and shifting its pitch across a phrase is how these tracks modulate. Over it: a screaming acid line, a filtered vocal, or a sample from something absurd. Very little in the mid range and almost no hi-hats. The mastering is loud and completely flat, because these were made for a rig in a field rather than for a club.

Key elements

• The rolling kickEight kicks a bar on the eighths in the plain state, the on-beat ones around 120 and the offbeat ones around 90. That thirty point gap is what turns a doubled kick into a roll.
• Tuned, so it is the bassThe kick carries the pitch, so the roll doubles as the bassline. Changing its note every four bars is most of the harmonic movement frenchcore has.
• No hi-hatsThe grid has no hat lanes. With sixteen low-end events every two bars there is no room for a top end, and the records that add one sound cluttered.
• The sixteenth flurryOnce a phrase the roll breaks into sixteenths for a beat, then resolves. There is no other fill in the vocabulary, and it lands at the end of the second bar.
• The absurd sampleA cartoon, a news reader, an accordion, a film line in French. The tradition is deliberately unserious and sits over music that is not.

How to get them

• Build one kick, use it twiceThe offbeat kick should be the same sample as the on-beat one, six to nine decibels down and shortened by about a third. Using two different samples breaks the illusion that it is one sound rolling.
• Length is everythingAt 205 an eighth is 146ms, so the kick has to decay inside that. Cut it to about 130ms with a fade. Any overlap between consecutive kicks and the roll turns into a drone.
• Tune and then transposeTune the kick to the root, then automate its pitch up a fourth or a fifth for four bars at a time. That is the modulation, and it is why frenchcore does not need a separate bass part.
• Acid over the topA 303 emulation with high resonance and a lot of accent, distorted, playing sixteenths. Sidechain it lightly to the on-beat kick so the roll stays legible underneath.
• Master flat and loudClip the master rather than limiting it and aim for no dynamic movement at all. Outdoor rigs and lots of open air flatten dynamics anyway, and these records are mixed for that.
• Break the roll onceSixteenths across the last beat of an eight bar phrase, then straight back to eighths. Doing it more often removes the effect entirely.

Reference points

Micropoint, Radium, Dr Peacock, Sefa, Hungry Beats, Al Core, and the Audiogenic, Peacock and Hardtek free party catalogues. Given as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements.