Hardwave

What it is

Sidewalks and Skeletons was making this before it had a name, and by about 2017 the harder half of the wave scene had separated out enough to need one. KAREN, Deadcrow, Juche and the producers around Liquid Ritual and the various Wave Reactor compilations kept the halftime feel and the melodic writing, then replaced the reverb with distortion. It found a much larger audience through anime edits and gaming videos than through clubs, which is unusual for something on this list and worth being straight about. The drums fill in what wave leaves out: kick doubles on consecutive sixteenths, a snare layered with clipped noise, and hats that thicken through the bar until there is no hole left anywhere.

What it sounds like

Distorted and dense. The lead is a supersaw or a hard pluck run through a guitar amplifier simulation and a bitcrusher, playing a melody that would be at home on a wave record if it were not screaming. Snares are layered with white noise and clipped flat, so the transient reads as an impact. The kick has an audible click and a short body, because doubles need to be separable. Sub is a saw filtered down rather than a sine, which keeps some harmonic content in the low mids. Reverb is present but short and dark, at maybe 15 percent, and reverse risers are used at phrase boundaries instead of as texture.

Key elements

• Kick doublesTwo kicks on consecutive sixteenths, on beat 1 and the e of 1, in both bars. It gives the halftime feel a stutter at the front without adding a second backbeat.
• The clipped snareAn acoustic snare layered with a burst of white noise, then hard-clipped so the peak flattens. It should sound bigger than it measures, which is what clipping buys you.
• Hats that thickenOne hit in the whole first half of bar one, then six spread right across bar two. The density curve over the two bars is the arrangement in miniature.
• A lead through an ampThe melodic part is treated like a guitar: amp simulation, cabinet, and enough drive that the note attack becomes a transient in its own right.
• No holes leftWhere wave leaves five sixteenths of nothing, this leaves at most one. Both approaches are halftime and the difference between them is entirely density.

How to get them

• LeadA seven voice supersaw with the detune at about 30 percent, into a high gain amp simulator, into a cabinet impulse, then a bitcrusher at 12 bits. High-pass the result at 200Hz so the 808 keeps the bottom.
• SnareLayer an acoustic snare, a clap and 120 milliseconds of white noise with a fast decay, then clip the stack 5dB. Tune the acoustic layer up two semitones so it cuts through the distorted lead.
• KickShort, with a deliberate click at the top, decay around 200 milliseconds. Doubles on consecutive sixteenths at 150 are 100 milliseconds apart, so anything longer smears into a single event.
• Keep the reverb shortA dark plate under one second at 15 percent, high-passed at 400Hz. The long halls that define wave will swallow the distortion and take the aggression with them.
• Build the density across two barsWrite bar one sparse and bar two full, then loop the pair. The ear reads a rising two bar shape as momentum, and it is a cheaper way to get energy than adding another layer.
• Reverse riser at the barlineReverse a crash and place it so it ends on the downbeat of every fourth bar, not every bar. Used every bar it stops functioning as a signal.

Reference points

Sidewalks and Skeletons, KAREN, Deadcrow, Juche and Kareful, on Liquid Ritual and the Wave Reactor compilations. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements or as anyone to imitate.