Grime

What it is

Wiley made Eskimo in 2002 on a PlayStation running Music 2000, and the record has no chords, no bass guitar and almost no reverb: a few square waves, a kick, a snare and a lot of cold air. Grime came out of the same East London pirate stations that had been playing garage, and it kept the tempo while throwing out the swing and the soul vocal. The MC is the melody, so the instrumental exists to leave room for eight bars of words and then hit hard in the gap. The thing people get wrong about the rhythm is the feel: this is not half-time. The snare is on 2 and 4 at 140, which is fast, and that speed is why the vocals sound like they are being chased.

What it sounds like

Thin on purpose, and loud. Square and saw leads with no filter movement, minor keys full of flattened seconds, doubled an octave down when they need weight. The drums come from stock software kits and stay dry: a snare that sounds like a Fruity Loops preset because it usually was one, a kick with more click than body, hats that barely register. Sirens, gunshots, orchestral stabs and telephone tones do the work pads would do elsewhere. The low end is a sine or a detuned square playing short phrases rather than holding, and there is almost no reverb tail anywhere in the mix.

Key elements

• A full-time backbeat at 140Snare on 2 and 4 at a tempo where that is genuinely quick. Half-time it and you have written dubstep, which is the fork in the road this whole page hangs on.
• Square wave leadA raw square or a detuned pair playing an eight bar riff, no filter envelope, often the only melodic content in the track. Volume automation does the phrasing.
• Kick clustersThree kicks bunched into the first two beats rather than spread evenly across the bar, so the weight arrives early and the MC gets the rest of it.
• Stabs instead of chordsOrchestral hits, brass samples and sirens punched in on single sixteenths. They carry the harmony without ever sustaining long enough to be a pad.
• No reverbEverything dry and forward, mixed for an FM transmitter in a tower block and a car stereo. Space would soften a music that is meant to sound close and hard.

How to get them

• LeadOne square wave, unison off, filter wide open, an octave doubling underneath at half the volume. Write eight bars, not two, and let the phrase turn over rather than loop.
• SnareA bright electric snare, high-passed at 250Hz, no reverb, no room. Layer a short clap 10dB underneath if it feels thin and clip the pair rather than compressing them.
• SubSine below 80Hz playing the root of the riff in short stabs, gated hard so it stops between notes. Grime basslines punctuate rather than sustain.
• KickShort, clicky, tuned two or three semitones above where you would tune a dubstep kick, so it reads through a phone speaker and a rig alike.
• ArrangementBuild in eight bar blocks and drop the lead out for the vocal every other block. The instrumental is a bed for an MC even when nobody is on it.
• SwingLeave it at 50 percent. Grime is where the shuffle stopped, and putting garage swing back on it turns the record into something else entirely.

Reference points

Wiley, Dizzee Rascal, Ruff Sqwad, Terror Danjah, Jammer, Youngstar and Danny Weed, and the Rinse, Deja Vu and Rhythm Division ecosystem around them. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements.