Hardstyle
Kick, then a bass note where the kick is not. That gap is the genre.
The pattern
2 bars, sixteenth notes. Loops until you stop it.
Sixteenths at the true tempo, 150, two bars, and the lane marked Reverse Bass is a bass synth rather than percussion. It is in the grid because leaving it out would describe a different genre, and it exports as a General MIDI conga because a drum map has nowhere to put a bass note. Reassign it on import. Read the kick and that lane together and you get the shape everything else here is arranged around: kick, gap, bass, gap, four times a bar, with the bass a little quieter than the kick every time. Bar one has four bass notes, bar two has three, because the last offbeat is given to a doubled kick at 104 running into the loop. The clap sits alone on beat 3 in both bars, with a second at 76 on the last sixteenth of bar two. No hi-hat lanes at all.
What it is
Somewhere around 2001 a group of Dutch producers who had been making hard trance and hardcore in the same week started making records that could not decide which they were, and the indecision turned into a form. The kick was borrowed from hardcore and shortened. The melody was borrowed from trance and kept. Between the two went the reverse bass: a bass note on every offbeat, ducked so hard by the kick that it appears to swing backwards out of it. Q-dance built festivals on it, Headhunterz and Wildstylez turned it into stadium music, and it is now the largest hard dance form in the world by a distance.
What it sounds like
Two sounds locked into one pulse. The kick is a distorted body about 300ms long, tuned, with a hard click on the front. The bass is the same note as the kick, sitting on the offbeat, gated and reverse-enveloped so it swells rather than attacks. Together they make a continuous low end with a hole punched in it four times a bar. Above that a supersaw plays an anthem, a screech marks the phrase, and the breakdown is pure trance with no distortion in it whatsoever.
Key elements
- Reverse bassA bass note on each offbeat eighth, sidechained to the kick with a slow release so it fades in rather than hitting. Take it out and the track becomes hard trance immediately.
- The clap on beat 3One clap a bar, halfway through, not on 2 and 4. It gives the bar a two beat pulse against the four beat kick and is the most reliable tell in the genre.
- The tuned kickDistorted, pitched, and agreeing with the bass note that follows it. Because the pair are the same pitch, kick and bass read as one instrument being interrupted.
- No hi-hats in the dropThe grid has no hat lanes. Most hardstyle drops carry a hat only in the last bar of a phrase, and in the main loop the kick and bass fill the whole rhythmic space.
- The euphoric breakdownTwo minutes of trance with a piano or a vocal and no drums, followed by a drop that reuses the same chords. The contrast is the entire dramatic structure.
How to get them
- KickLayer a click, a punch and a distorted tail, tune the tail to the root, and cut it at about 300ms. Longer and it eats the offbeat the bass needs; shorter and the low end gaps audibly.
- Reverse bassOne saw an octave below the lead, notes on every offbeat eighth, then a compressor keyed off the kick with a 3ms attack, full ratio and a release of about 250ms. The release length is the swell, so tune it by ear against the tempo.
- Tune the pair togetherKick and bass on the same note. Play them alone and they should sound like a single held tone being chopped, not like two instruments taking turns.
- ClapA layered clap and snare on beat 3 only, with a 300ms plate. Adding a second on beat 1 turns it into hard house and adding 2 and 4 turns it into jumpstyle.
- ScreechDistort a supersaw through a bitcrusher and a resonant band-pass around 2kHz, then automate the cutoff up over one bar. It is the arrangement marker and it should appear no more than four times in a track.
- Mix around the holeEverything under 150Hz belongs to the kick and the bass and to no other part. High-pass the lead at 300Hz and the pad at 200Hz, or the reverse bass swell has nothing to swell into.
Reference points
Headhunterz, Wildstylez, Showtek, Brennan Heart, Noisecontrollers, Technoboy, and the Scantraxx, Q-dance and Dirty Workz catalogues. Given 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.