Rockers

What it is

Sly Dunbar was a teenager listening to Philadelphia soul records and wondering why Jamaican drummers were leaving out the downbeat. Around 1974 he stopped leaving it out. The bass drum went back onto all four beats while the cross-stick stayed on beat 3, and the result was a rhythm that keeps the reggae accent but pushes forward the way a disco record does. Channel One in Kingston became the home of it, with the Hookim brothers cutting the Mighty Diamonds and the Revolutionaries over and over on the same drums, and for about four years rockers was simply what a new Jamaican record sounded like. The name comes from the Rockers sound system and from the film, and both came after the beat.

What it sounds like

Harder and more forward than roots. The kit is bigger and closer, with a snare that actually cracks when it is used and toms tuned high for the fills Sly liked to drop across the turnaround. Percussion is constant: Sticky Thompson on cabasa and scraper somewhere in every bar. The bassline is busier than a one drop line and often doubles the guitar rather than sitting under it. Horn arrangements are tighter and better rehearsed, and the mix is louder in the midrange because these records were cut to compete on a sound system with everything else in the box.

Key elements

• Kick on all fourThe one structural difference from the one drop, and the whole genre. Beat 1 is occupied, and the rhythm stops floating and starts driving.
• Cross-stick still on 3The backbeat does not move to 2 and 4. Keeping the reggae accent over a four-beat kick is what stops rockers from turning into soul.
• Sticky's cabasaSixteenth-note scrape running through the whole track at low volume, alternating hard and soft. It is the layer that makes these records sound busy without being loud.
• The Channel One soundRecorded at Maxfield Avenue with the drums close-miked and heavily gated, then cut loud. Compare a Studio One record from ten years earlier and the drums have moved forward by a mile.
• Tom fills across the barlineHigh-tuned toms rolling into the top of the next section rather than resolving inside the bar. Sly's signature, and copied everywhere by 1977.

How to get them

• KickSame low tuning as a one drop kick but shorter, around 150 milliseconds, so four of them per bar do not blur into each other. Drop beats 2 and 4 about ten velocity below 1 and 3.
• HatsEighths with the hat opened on the and of 2 and the and of 4. Set the closed and open samples to the same choke group so the open one is cut by the next closed hit.
• CabasaSixteenths alternating between 44 and 52, panned about 25 percent right, with a high-pass at 800Hz. Two slightly different samples alternating will stop it sounding like a loop within four bars.
• Snare tuningThe cross-stick carries beat 3, but tune the full snare high and bright for the pickups on the a of 4, so the fill sounds like a different drum arriving.
• BassBusier than roots: eighth notes with rests, following the guitar line rather than the root. Keep the low-pass but open it to about 900Hz so the movement is audible.
• Swing54 percent. Slightly straighter than the one drop, because a four-beat kick under a heavy shuffle starts to feel like it is dragging.

Reference points

Sly Dunbar, the Revolutionaries, Channel One and the Hookim brothers, The Mighty Diamonds, Uzziah Sticky Thompson on percussion, Augustus Pablo. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements or as anyone to imitate.