Italo Disco

What it is

Italian studios in the early eighties were producing dance records for a European market on budgets that did not stretch to session musicians, and the answer was a Roland or a LinnDrum, a Juno, a Prophet and one singer. Nobody involved was trying to disguise the machine. The drums are flat, the arpeggios are obviously sequenced, the vocal is in second-language English with a chorus you can hear coming from two bars away, and the whole thing runs on a hook rather than a groove. Bernard Mikulski's ZYX label in Germany distributed most of it, which is why the genre has a German name for an Italian sound. Everything Chicago did with a TR-707 three years later starts from records like these. The cosmic disco that Daniele Baldelli was playing at the Cosmic club in the same years has no page here because it was a DJ style rather than a production one, assembled from pitched-down records of every genre, so there is no grid to hand you.

What it sounds like

Electronic and unashamed. Kick, electronic snare and handclaps straight from the machine, with no room and no velocity programming. A Simmons-style snare with a downward pitch sweep on it. Above that, a Juno bassline in eighths with the chorus switched on, an arpeggiator running a triad, a brass patch on a DX7 or a Prophet, and enormous gated reverb on anything that will hold it. Melodies are diatonic and repetitive by design. The whole record is bright, thin in the low mids, and mixed to be heard on a car radio.

Key elements

• Nothing is playedEvery drum on the record comes off a machine with an accent switch rather than a velocity control. Two levels, not sixteen, and no attempt at a human feel.
• Electronic snareA Simmons or LinnDrum electronic snare with a pitch envelope falling by about a fifth. It is the single most recognisable sound of the style.
• Handclaps doubling the backbeatA machine clap on 2 and 4 sitting directly on top of the snare at a higher velocity. Two sounds on the same step, always together, never apart.
• Open hat on all four offbeatsEvery and, at the same velocity, with the closed hat only on the downbeats. Mechanical in a way a drummer with a pedal never quite is.
• The hook arrives earlyA chorus melody in the first thirty seconds and again every ninety. These are pop records with dance drums, not club tools.

How to get them

• Drum soundsTR-707, LinnDrum or a Simmons kit. Avoid the 909, which arrived later and points the record at Chicago instead of Milan.
• Do not humaniseSet the kick to two velocities, 118 on beats 1 and 3 and 112 on 2 and 4, and leave everything else at a single value. The accent switch is the only dynamic control these machines had.
• SnareAn electronic snare with a pitch envelope dropping a fifth over 120 milliseconds, into a gated reverb at 0.8 seconds with the gate closing hard. Stack a machine clap on the same step.
• BasslineA Juno playing eighths with the chorus on setting two and the filter about half open. Octave jumps every second bar, and no velocity variation at all.
• ArpeggiatorA sixteenth-note arpeggio on a triad, running through a stereo delay at an eighth note. Let it play the entire record without stopping.
• Write the chorus firstGet the hook down before the arrangement exists. In this style the groove is a delivery system and the melody is the record.

Reference points

Klein and MBO, Gazebo, Ryan Paris, Alexander Robotnick, Valerie Dore, Mike Mareen, and the ZYX and Discomagic catalogues. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements.