Wonky

What it is

The word turned up in print in 2008, in Martin Clark's column, before the music it described had finished arriving. What it pointed at was a set of producers, mostly around Glasgow and the LuckyMe crowd, who had taken the mid-range synth writing of grime and dubstep and detuned it, swung it and generally refused to let it sit still. Rustie and Hudson Mohawke wrote lines that bend in pitch across their own length. Zomby did the same thing colder. Joker in Bristol did it brighter, with funk chords, and called it purple. Aquacrunk was the Glasgow name for the slowest end. What holds all of it together is a timing decision rather than a tempo: nothing lands where you expect it, and the swing is heavy enough to feel like a stumble rather than a groove.

What it sounds like

Detuned and gleaming. Synths are supersaws and FM bells with pitch envelopes long enough to hear, so notes arrive slightly flat and correct themselves, or do not. The bass is mid-range and rubbery, closer to a synth lead than to a sub, often glissing between notes with the portamento set far too long. Drums come from an 808 or an MPC, heavily swung and frequently out of tune with each other. Chords are seventh and ninth voicings borrowed from R and B and video game soundtracks, and the mixes are bright, cluttered and slightly seasick by design.

Key elements

• Heavy swing0.66, close to full triplet. Every offbeat sixteenth lands a long way behind the grid, and that lag is the first thing anyone recognises about this music.
• Pitch that will not settleLong pitch envelopes and slow portamento, so notes bend into tune or away from it. It is the melodic version of what the swing does to the rhythm.
• Mid-range rubber bassA filtered saw or an FM patch playing bass parts up in lead range, with glide long enough that the note edges blur together.
• R and B harmonySevenths, ninths and suspensions lifted from nineties R and B and from game soundtracks, played on bells and detuned saws rather than on keys.
• Deliberate loosenessHits nudged off the grid by hand, a few milliseconds either way. The imprecision is composed, and quantising the record afterwards destroys it.

How to get them

• Set the swing first0.66 before you program anything. At that setting the offbeat sixteenths land nearly on triplets, and every part has to be written against the lag rather than corrected into it.
• BassA saw through a low-pass at 900Hz with 200 milliseconds of portamento and the pitch bend range set to a fifth. Play it in and keep the take where your fingers were late.
• LeadA supersaw with two voices tuned 30 cents flat and a pitch envelope of about 400 milliseconds rising a semitone into each note, so the attack is audibly out of tune.
• Drums808 or MPC samples, each pitched slightly differently, with the snare tuned so it clashes with the key by a semitone. That clash is not a mistake to fix.
• Nudge by handAfter importing the pattern, drag five or six individual hits ten to thirty milliseconds off the grid and leave them. Different amounts on different hits.
• ChordsMinor ninths and suspended fourths on an FM bell, arpeggiated across the bar, with a short bright reverb and no low end below 300Hz.

Reference points

Rustie, Hudson Mohawke, Zomby, Joker, Ikonika and Mike Slott, on LuckyMe, Hyperdub, Numbers and Warp. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements.