Driving Techno drum pattern
A one-bar driving techno groove at 130 BPM: a hard kick on every beat, a clap on 2 and 4, open hats on the offbeats and straight closed 16th hats at one level. Press Play to hear it with a sampled drum kit at 130 BPM, change the tempo or swing, and follow every hit on the grid.
How to count the Driving Techno
Count it as: 1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a. The pattern is one bar of 4/4 (one-bar straight 16th-note grid).
The Driving Techno pattern, hit by hit
Each character is one step of the grid and each group is one beat. X is an accented hit, x a normal hit, o a quiet or ghost note and - a rest.
| Voice | Pattern |
|---|---|
| Kick | X--- X--- X--- X--- |
| Snare | ---- X--- ---- X--- |
| Closed hat | xx-x xx-x xx-x xx-x |
| Open hat | --x- --x- --x- --x- |
Tempo and feel
Relentless and straight. Nothing swings and nothing drifts; the open hat on each and gives the drive. The default tempo is 130 BPM. Slow it down until every hit is controlled, then raise the tempo a few BPM at a time.
How to practise the Driving Techno
Play the kick on all four beats with no change in level. Add the open hat on every and and the clap on 2 and 4. Fill in the closed 16ths evenly, closing each open hat with the next closed hat.
Variations to try next
Leave the clap out for a barer, harder loop. Drop the closed hats and keep only the offbeat open hats. Mute the kick for four bars and bring it back on 1.
Where to hear this feel
Records in this family include Four-to-the-floor techno from late-1980s Detroit onward. A practice study of four-to-the-floor techno drum programming: a hard kick on all four beats, a clap on 2 and 4, an open hi-hat on every offbeat and straight closed 16th hats at one level around it. Nothing shuffles and every hit sits on the grid at a fixed level. The kit approximates the drum machine: the snare stands in for the 909-style clap and the sampled acoustic hats for the machine hats, and the bass, synths and sidechain are left out. The clap on 2 and 4 is an informed choice; many techno tracks leave it out or keep only a rimshot. It is authored for practice, not transcribed.