Ghettotech
Detroit's answer to Miami bass, at 156, with the claps rolled by hand.
The pattern
2 bars, sixteenth notes. Loops until you stop it.
Two bars at 156, true tempo. The kick is on all four beats and the hat runs fifteen hits a bar, near enough every sixteenth, alternating between 44 and the 66 to 80 band. Bar two adds two kicks on the last two sixteenths so the loop shoves into the next bar. The important lane is the handclap: it strikes twice in bar one, on the and of 2 and the and of 4, then rises across the last four sixteenths of bar two at 70, 78, 86 and 94. That rise is the thing to get right, and a sixteenth grid is too coarse for it. In a real record it is six to eight claps at thirty-second notes or faster, played onto a pad. Halve the grid twice and play the burst in by hand.
What it is
Detroit radio in the mid nineties ran fast. Mixes on WJLB and WGPR were cut at 150 and above, blending Miami bass, Chicago ghetto house, electro and the city's own techno into something that had no name until DJ Assault and Mr De' started pressing it. Ghettotech takes the 808 programming of bass music, speeds it to the tempo of a Detroit mix show, and puts an explicit chant over the top. The kick is on all four beats, which makes this the odd entry in a family built on breakbeats, but the DNA is electro and Miami bass rather than house: listen to where the snare and the claps fall and it is a bass record played at techno speed. It travelled badly and mattered enormously, and juke came out of the same set of records a couple of years later.
What it sounds like
Fast, dry and rude. A short 808 or 909 kick on the beat, an electric snare cracking on 2 and 4, and handclaps rolled in bursts that are too quick to count. Hi-hats run continuous sixteenths at a volume that would be considered a mistake anywhere else. The bass is a short 808 tone or a sampled electro line. Vocals are shouted commands, chopped and stuttered on the sampler. Almost no reverb, everything close and loud, and the whole thing mixed to survive being cut against another record every thirty seconds.
Key elements
- The clap rollThree to six handclaps fired in a rising burst into the barline. In a real record these are thirty-second notes or faster, played by hand on a pad rather than programmed.
- Four to the floor at 156The only kick pattern in this family that sits on every beat. It comes from Detroit mix show tempo rather than from house, and everything above it is programmed like an electro record.
- Continuous sixteenth hatsEvery sixteenth, alternating loud and quiet, with no gaps except where an open hat sits. At 156 that is a hat every 96ms, and it functions as a texture more than a rhythm.
- The chopped commandA shouted vocal phrase cut to a single word and stuttered on the last beat of a phrase. It is the arrangement's only structural marker, and it is doing the job of a drop.
- 808 bass tonesA tuned 808 kick doing bass duty, short, with the decay set so it dies before the next beat. No sub-bass sustain, because a sustained note at this tempo turns to mush.
How to get them
- Play the clap rolls inRecord the claps live onto a pad rather than drawing them, then quantise to thirty-second notes at most. Program them and you get a machine gun; play them and you get the swing that makes the record work.
- Keep the kick tail shortA 909 or 808 kick with the decay at about 150ms. At 156 a long kick will run into the next one and the four to the floor turns into a drone, which is the commonest mistake here.
- Snare high and dryAn electric snare or a 909 snare tuned up, with no reverb and a high-pass at 250Hz. It has to cut through the hats without occupying any of the space the kick needs.
- Chop the vocal on the samplerTake one shouted phrase, slice it at sixteenths, and trigger three or four slices repeatedly. Pitch two of them up a few semitones. The vocal is a percussion part in this music, not a lyric.
- Mix flat and loudBus compression at 4:1, everything close, no send reverb anywhere. These were made to be mixed hard and fast against other records, so anything with a tail gets in the way of the next one.
- Arrange in eights and get outEight bar sections, no breakdown longer than eight, and a total length of under four minutes. A DJ playing this is changing record every ninety seconds, so a long build is wasted.
Reference points
DJ Assault, Mr De', DJ Godfather, Disco D, and the Assault Rifle, Databass and Twilight 76 labels. Named as reference points for the sound rather than 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.