FIELD GUIDE 03 / THE DRUM STUDIO
Small hits.
Big movement.
Find the pocket. Build the kit. Make it yours.
A playable atlas of drum patterns, from dusty house to broken rhythms — with the sounds to search for next.
48STYLE STUDIES
192PATTERN TAKES
12DRUM LANES
∞POSSIBILITIES
01 / THE PLAYGROUND
Your next groove starts here.
Pick a pattern. Move a few hits.
Hear what makes it move.
STUDY 01 / 48
HouseClassic house
Foundation · The full style study. Start here, then make it yours.
HITACCENTGHOSTClick to cycle · drag to paintM mute / S solo / ~ swing
More tools Euclidean rhythm · lane rotation · mix
2 bars · 4/4 · sixteenth-note grid · synthesized previews. MIDI includes swing, velocities and the audible mix. Human timing is preview-only.
02 / THE PATTERN ATLAS
Different scenes. Shared DNA.
48 starting points, not rules.
Four takes on every groove.
No grooves in this pocket.
Try a broader search or reset your filters.
03 / CROSS-POLLINATION
Somewhere between two grooves.
Change the skeleton first.
Then bring in the detail.
What happens when house learns to skip?
Choose two foundations and move through their differences. Kick, snare, clap and open-hat changes come first. Send your hybrid to the playground to hear it.
04 / KEEP LEARNINGThe decisions behind the drums.+
Roles, rhythmic vocabulary and a tempo reference. Expand a concept, then try it in the playground.
Field notes · 01
What each drum is for
Twelve lanes, complementary roles. Start with a rhythmic anchor, then give every added part a reason to be there.
The floor: kick
- Four on the floor gives a steady quarter-note pulse. Kick length, accent and the parts around it determine whether that pulse feels heavy, buoyant or restrained.
- A syncopated kick can suggest garage, breaks or electro. House also uses pickups and displaced kicks: listen to the whole phrase, not just one lane.
- Try a sixteenth-note pickup just before the next downbeat: step 16 in bar 2 (step 32 across both bars). Lower its velocity to keep beat 1 strong.
The answer: snare & clap
- On beats 2 and 4, they create a familiar backbeat. One hit on beat 3 instead suggests a half-time feel.
- A clap often has several closely spaced transients; a snare can add a pitched body. Both appear across house, techno and garage.
- Try a clap layer 10–20 ms behind a snare in your DAW. Compare against simultaneous hits; a loose flam is not always the right choice.
- Ghost snares are quiet articulations between the main hits. Try MIDI velocity 30–50 as a starting point, then adjust for your samples.
The engine: hats
- Hats carry the subdivision — they tell you whether the track is in 8ths, 16ths or shuffled 16ths, and that single choice does more genre work than anything except tempo.
- The open hat on offbeat eighth notes is a familiar house device, also common in techno. Length, tone and the surrounding parts change its effect.
- Swing lives here. Swing the hats, leave the kick straight, and the tension between them is the groove.
- Vary hat velocity in a pattern, not randomly. Strong, weak, medium, weak.
The colour: percussion
- Rim / clave is for syncopation. One rim on an unexpected 16th does more than eight bars of hats.
- Shaker can add a softer rhythmic layer between the hats. Its attacks still contribute to the groove: keep it quiet enough to support the main pulse.
- Congas and toms have resonant bodies. Think about their pitch and articulation as well as their rhythm, especially alongside a bassline.
- Cowbell and tambourine add strong tonal or noisy accents. Both appear in many styles; sound choice and placement determine their character here.
- Percussion should be the first thing you mute when a loop feels cluttered, and it usually turns out you don't need most of it.
Field notes · 02
Hat & clap vocabulary
Useful starting shapes, not genre requirements. Positions are sixteenth-note steps within one bar, counted from 1.
| Shape | Steps | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Offbeat 8ths (open hat) | 3, 7, 11, 15 | House, disco, acid. The definitive house sound. |
| Straight 8ths (closed) | 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15 | Techno, Detroit. Driving and neutral. |
| Straight 16ths | all 16 | Hypnotic techno, disco house, French house. Relentless. |
| Shuffled 16ths | all 16, swung 58–64% | Garage, jackin house, shuffle house. The stagger. |
| Skipping 16ths | 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8 … | 2-step. Gaps are the whole point. |
| Backbeat clap | 5 and 13 | Common in house, disco and techno. |
| Clap on beat 4 only | 13 | A sparse phrase marker. Try it in minimal or dub arrangements. |
| Displaced snare | 5 and 12 or 14 | 2-step, breaks. Pulls the bar off balance. |
| Ghost snare fill | 4, 8, 16 at velocity 30–50 | Breaks, jungle, funk-leaning house. |
Structure vs texture
- Use the morph lab to compare these examples. Structural edits change the kick and backbeat; texture edits change the supporting detail.
- Classic house → peak-time techno: compare the stronger hat pulse and tom turnaround, then audition the tempo and kit together.
- Classic house → hypnotic techno: removing the clap is one possible route to a less pronounced backbeat. Many hypnotic tracks still use claps.
- Tech house → 2-step: listen to the syncopated kick against the snare, then add the skipping hats and shuffle.
- Check the kick and backbeat first, then the subdivision, swing and sound palette. Each can change how a groove reads.
Density discipline
- Compare hit density at the same tempo and kit. Density changes the energy, but sustain and velocity matter just as much as the number of notes.
- Overlapping hits can create useful layers. If the transient gets blurry, try a different sample, lower velocity or a small timing offset in your DAW.
- The best test for a busy loop: mute everything except kick and one other part. If that doesn't groove, adding parts won't fix it.
- Silence on the downbeat of a bar is one of the strongest arrangement tools there is, and it costs nothing.
Field notes · 03
Numbers
Settings for these particular studies, not fixed genre ranges. Backbeat positions refer to the first bar; ghost hits are included. A and B on the sequencer ruler label the two bars.
| Genre | BPM | Kick | Backbeat | Hats | Swing |
|---|
| Swing | Feel |
|---|---|
| 50% | Dead straight. Techno, most French house. |
| 52–55% | Barely there. You feel it, you don't hear it. Most house. |
| 56–60% | Audible shuffle. Deep house, jackin house, Afro. |
| 61–66% | Heavy stagger. Garage, shuffle house. 66.7% is exact triplet. |
| >67% | Beyond triplet spacing. A deliberately exaggerated shuffle. |
| Euclid | Pattern | Use |
|---|---|---|
| E(3,8) | x..x..x. | Tresillo. Shaker, conga, latin house. |
| E(5,8) | x.xx.xx. | Cinquillo. Busy percussion. |
| E(5,16) | x..x..x..x..x... | Clave-ish. Rim, clave, tom. |
| E(7,16) | x.x.x.x..x.x.x.. | Even but irregular. Hats, shaker. |
| E(9,16) | x.x.x.x.xx.x.x.x | Dense. Tribal percussion beds. |
| E(11,16) | xx.xx.xxx.xx.xx. | Nearly full. Ghost-level shaker only. |