Ragga

What it is

By 1988 the drummer was optional and the tempo had gone up. Ragga, short for raggamuffin, is what the Sleng Teng revolution turned into once producers stopped using one preset and started programming their own patterns on drum machines and early samplers. King Jammy, Steely and Clevie, Bobby Digital and Gussie Clarke were building riddims from an Oberheim DMX, a Yamaha RX and whatever else came through the port, and the riddims were built for deejays rather than singers. The vocal style is chatted rather than sung and it sits right on top of the drums. This is Jamaican music at its most machine-made and its most local at the same time, and the reason the word ragga is worth keeping separate from what UK producers later did with these vocals over breakbeats.

What it sounds like

Dry, bright and aggressive. Sampled snares with the tails cut off, a kick with a click on it, and hi-hats programmed in sixteenths with no dynamics. Claps doubling the snare. The bass is a synth patch rather than a played instrument, usually a saw through a low-pass with a fast envelope, playing a short figure with a lot of rests. Almost no reverb: these mixes are close and flat because they were cut to be loud on a sound system rather than to sound like a room. The deejay is louder than anything, and the riddim is arranged as a bed with a hole in the middle of it.

Key elements

• Programmed, not playedDrum machine and sampler patterns with no swing and no velocity curve. Any humanising in the kit is a mistake in this style rather than a refinement.
• The syncopated kickKick on beat 1, the and of 2 and beat 3 rather than on the downbeats alone. The machine made this easy and drummers had mostly not been doing it.
• Snare still on 3Despite everything else changing, the backbeat stayed on beat 3 where reggae put it in 1966. Ragga is digital in every respect except that one.
• Clap doublingA machine handclap layered on the snare and answering it on the and of 4, which is what gives these riddims their metallic snap.
• Riddim versionsOne rhythm, a dozen deejays, released across a year on the same label. Punaany, Duck, Sleng Teng and Answer each carry entire discographies.

How to get them

• KickShort, clicky, fundamental near 65Hz with a transient around 3kHz. Program it on 1, the and of 2 and 3, and resist adding a fourth hit; the gap on beat 4 is the groove.
• SnareA sampled acoustic snare truncated to about 180 milliseconds with a hard fade. Put it on beat 3 at 112 and add a flam on the a of 3 at 48.
• ClapA DMX or Linn handclap layered directly on the snare and again on the and of 4. Pitch it up a couple of semitones and keep it dry.
• HatsSixteenths, two velocities only, 74 on the even steps and 46 on the odd ones. That flat two-level pattern is the machine signature; a velocity ramp reads as a different decade.
• BassOne saw oscillator, low-pass with a 60 millisecond decay envelope, no glide. Write four or five notes a bar and leave the rest silent so the deejay has the midrange.
• SwingZero. Straight sixteenths. Everything before Sleng Teng in this family swings and nothing after it does, and this is the entry where that becomes permanent.

Reference points

Shabba Ranks, Ninjaman, Buju Banton, Steely and Clevie, Bobby Digital, King Jammy, Gussie Clarke at Music Works. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements or as anyone to imitate.