Steppers
Four to the floor at reggae tempo, and the hardest thing in the family.
The pattern
2 bars, sixteenth notes. Loops until you stop it.
Four kicks a bar at 118 and 112, which is a much narrower spread than the rockers grid uses, and that flatness is the march. The snare is on beat 3 only and it is a full snare, not a cross-stick, at 110 with a pickup on the a of 4 in bar two. Hats run even eighths at 78 and 68 with no humanising, and the ride doubles the quarters underneath at 86 and 72, with one extra on the and of 3 in bar two. No velocity in this grid drops below 66, so there are no ghost notes anywhere in it, and the end of bar two gets a snare pickup, one kick on the and of 4 and an open hat instead of a fill. That emptiness is deliberate: on a sound system the events came from the mixing desk, not from the drummer. A shaker or a second hand drum can go on the offbeat sixteenths, but keep it under the hats.
What it is
Militant is the word Jamaican musicians actually used for this, and it is the right one. A steppers rhythm is a rockers pattern with the velocity of the four kicks levelled out and everything else stripped back until the record marches. It arrived alongside the most politically direct roots records of the mid seventies, and the flatness is the point: no lift, no turnaround, no relief, just the same weight on every beat for six minutes. It travelled better than any other rhythm on this page. UK sound systems built their culture on steppers dubplates, and when digital dub and later dubstep looked for a rhythm with no swing and no give in it, this is the one they found.
What it sounds like
Heavy and narrow. A long kick with more sub than attack, hitting hard four times a bar and eating most of the low end, and a real snare rather than a cross-stick, hit properly and drenched in spring reverb. The bassline is often a single repeated figure on one chord. Hi-hats are even and relentless, and a ride cymbal marks the quarters underneath. Horns, when they appear, are stabs rather than lines. Everything else is delay: melodica, guitar chops and vocal fragments thrown into a tape echo and pulled back out, because these records were built to be mixed live on a sound system.
Key elements
- Four even kicksNot accented on 1 and 3 like rockers. Levelling the four kicks is what turns a driving rhythm into a marching one.
- A real snareAn open snare on beat 3 rather than a cross-stick, hit hard and sent to a spring reverb with the tank ringing for most of a beat.
- One chordMany steppers rhythms never change chord. The bassline and the drums do all the work and the harmony is a drone with a figure over it.
- Ride on the quartersA ride cymbal or a second hat marking beats under the hi-hats, adding weight to the march without adding subdivision.
- No turnaroundNo fill at the end of the phrase, nothing signalling the next eight bars. The rhythm is deliberately featureless so the mix can supply the events.
How to get them
- KickTune to the root, 50 to 55Hz, decay around 250 milliseconds, and sidechain the bass to it rather than the other way round. Keep all four within ten velocity of each other.
- Spring reverbA real spring or a good emulation on the snare send, decay long, and crash it deliberately at the end of a phrase. A plate is the wrong sound and will make the record sound like rock.
- BassSine with a second saturated layer above 200Hz. One bar, repeating, no variation, and mono below 120Hz so a sound system stack reproduces it.
- Tape delaySet a tape echo to a dotted eighth with the feedback just short of self-oscillation, put it on an aux, and send guitar chops and vocal phrases into it by hand rather than automating it.
- HatsEighths, even, at 68 to 78. Do not humanise them. The contrast between mechanical hats and hand-played percussion is most of the tension in these records.
- Swing52 percent. Almost straight. Steppers is where Jamaican drumming starts moving towards the machine, and a shuffle undoes the march immediately.
Reference points
Sly Dunbar, Prince Far I, Burning Spear, Keith Hudson, Jah Shaka and the UK sound system tradition, Mad Professor at Ariwa. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements or as anyone to imitate.
The pattern is a starting point rather than a rule. If you want the theory underneath why any of it works, Battuto measures it.