Jumpstyle

What it is

Belgium had a stomping dance before it had a genre for it, and around 2005 the two met. Clips of teenagers doing the step in car parks went round early YouTube, the records followed, and for about three years jumpstyle was a mainstream pop phenomenon in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. Musically it is the hard dance kick slowed to 145 with the emphasis moved entirely onto the offbeat bass, which is a real melodic line rather than a texture. The drums are deliberately plain because the dance is counted off the bass notes, and a busy kit makes the step impossible to find.

What it sounds like

A short, dry, hard kick with almost no tail, and then a gap. Into that gap goes a bass note: distorted, mid-heavy, a semitone or two of pitch movement in it, and often the same length as the gap so the two interlock exactly. A clap on 2 and 4, a simple melody in a minor key, and nothing else. The mix is narrow, loud and quite bright, and the whole track usually runs under four minutes because it was written for a video rather than a set.

Key elements

• The offbeat bass lineSix notes a bar rather than four: the offbeat of every beat plus the last sixteenth of beats 2 and 4. Those two extra notes are the jump, and everything else is scaffolding.
• A kick with no tailCut short at 120 to 180ms so the bass has clear space to sound in. This is the opposite decision to mainstream hardcore and it defines the feel.
• No hi-hatsThe grid has no hat lanes. The bass is already running eighths and sixteenths, and a hat over it blurs the count the dance depends on.
• Clap on 2 and 4A plain backbeat, which is what marks jumpstyle out from hardstyle, where the clap sits alone on beat 3. Small difference, completely different feel.
• Short arrangementsIntro, drop, eight bar break, drop, out. Three and a half minutes. These were made as singles for a mainstream audience, not as DJ tools.

How to get them

• KickA hardstyle kick sample with the tail cut off at about 150ms and a short fade rather than a hard gate, then a transient shaper to put the click back. Tune it a fifth below the bass root.
• BassOne saw and one square an octave apart, low-pass at 900Hz with a fast decay envelope on the cutoff, then overdrive. Notes about a sixteenth long so each one stops before the next kick.
• Interlock, do not overlapSet the bass note length so it ends five milliseconds before the kick starts. Any overlap and the low end turns to mud at exactly the point the dancer needs to hear the beat.
• Write the bass firstProgram six notes a bar with real pitch movement across four bars, then put drums under it. Starting from the kick produces hard dance with a bass on it, which is not the same music.
• Keep the mix narrowBass and kick mono, clap and melody slightly wide, nothing below 45Hz. These records were heard on phone speakers and laptop speakers first and were mixed for that.

Reference points

Patrick Jumpen, Da Boy Tommy, DJ Zany, Headhunterz in his early singles, Jeckyll and Hyde, and the Jump Records and Bitshifter catalogues. Named as reference points for the sound, not endorsements.