Trip-Hop

Half-time, drenched in reverb, and in no hurry to get anywhere at all.

78-96 bpm4/4Minor, and often barely there2 bars

The pattern

2 bars, sixteenth notes. Loops until you stop it.

Kick

Snare

Closed hat

Open hat

12341234

Tempo88 bpm

Length2 barsHits46Swing57%Loop lasts5.45sMappingGM, channel 10, snare 38

One backbeat per bar, on beat 3, and that alone separates this grid from boom bap at nearly the same tempo. The kick answers from underneath on 1, the and of 2 and the last sixteenth of beat 3. Two ghost snares a bar, at 30 and 36, are the only things filling four beats of space, so they carry more weight than ghosts usually do. Hats run sixteenths at 70, 34, 58, 36, and the open hat lands on the and of 4 in bar one then moves to the and of 2 in bar two so the phrase turns over. Bar two also adds a kick on the and of 4 and a snare pickup on the final sixteenth. Swing 57 percent, because the breaks these were built from were played by people.

What it is

Bristol in the early nineties took American breakbeats, slowed them, buried them in reverb and dub delay, and put singing on top instead of rapping. Massive Attack, Portishead and Tricky are the three names the label was coined to cover, and all three of them disliked it. The construction is hip-hop: sampled breaks, a chopped loop, an MPC. The intent is not, because the drums are there to drag rather than to make you nod. This entry sits on the border with the IDM and breaks family and it honestly belongs on both sides of it.

What it sounds like

Heavy and slow, with a great deal of space around every hit. A deep kick, a snare that arrives once a bar and rings for half a second afterwards, and a hi-hat pattern with audible tape wobble on it. Underneath: a detuned Rhodes, a spy-film guitar line, a bass moving in whole notes, and a low crackle running the length of the track. The mix is dark on purpose. Almost nothing lives above 8kHz, and the reverb on the snare usually lasts longer than the gap before the next kick.

Key elements

The half-time snareOne backbeat per bar, on beat 3, instead of two. At 88 bpm that single choice is what makes the beat drag rather than nod, and it is the structural break from boom bap.
Snare reverb as an instrumentA plate or spring tail of a second or more, often longer than the space before the next kick, so the bar never fully clears. The tail is arranged rather than applied.
Dub delayQuarter-note feedback delay with each repeat filtered darker than the last, borrowed wholesale from Jamaican mixing desks by way of Bristol's sound systems.
Vinyl noiseCrackle, hiss and wow running continuously underneath. It glues sampled and played elements together by giving them one shared noise floor.
Sung rather than rappedA vocal that sits low and holds long notes, which is why the drums can afford to be this sparse. Nothing rhythmic is filling the gaps for them.

How to get them

KickLong and soft, weight around 55Hz, almost no click. Let it ring a full eighth note. Compress it gently with a slow attack so it swells rather than punches.
SnareA room snare into a plate at 1.6 to 2.2 seconds, the return high-passed at 250Hz and low-passed at 6kHz. Duck the return under the dry hit by 3dB so the tail blooms after the transient instead of masking it.
HatsRun the hat lane through a tape emulation or a slow chorus so the pitch drifts. Keep the sixteenths between 30 and 70 and let the e and the a sit at half the level of the beat.
DelayOne quarter-note delay bus, 40 percent feedback, a low-pass at 4kHz inside the loop, fed only by the snare and the vocal. Automate the send rather than the return.
Noise floorA crackle loop under everything at about minus 30dB, plus a gentle low-pass on the master at 14kHz. The aim is one believable era for elements recorded decades apart.
BassOne note per bar, sine or filtered sample, arriving slightly ahead of the kick rather than with it. That small lead is what gives the beat its lean.

Reference points

Massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky, DJ Shadow, Sneaker Pimps, Morcheeba and the Mo Wax catalogue. 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.