Old-School Drum Machine drum pattern
A stark two-bar mid-80s drum-machine beat: a booming quantised kick, a slamming backbeat and plain eighth hats with nothing in between. Press Play to hear it with a sampled drum kit at 98 BPM, change the tempo or swing, and follow every hit on the grid.
How to count the Old-School Drum Machine
Count it as: 1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a · two bars. The pattern is a 2-bar phrase in 4/4 (two-bar quantised 16th-note grid).
The Old-School Drum Machine 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 | Bar 1 | Bar 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Kick | X--- ---X X--- ---- | X-X- ---X X-X- ---- |
| Snare | ---- X--- ---- X--- | ---- X--- ---- X--- |
| Closed hat | x-o- x-o- x-o- x-o- | x-o- x-o- x-o- x-o- |
Tempo and feel
Bare and loud. The beat sounds huge because it is empty; every hit is on the grid and at full commitment. The default tempo is 98 BPM. Slow it down until every hit is controlled, then raise the tempo a few BPM at a time.
How to practise the Old-School Drum Machine
Play the eighth hats and 2-and-4 with a metronome and no swing. Add the kick on the a of 2 and beat 3. Add the bar-two kicks and keep every hit on the grid.
Variations to try next
Drop the hats entirely, as many records of the era did. Add a snare on the and of 4 at the end of bar two. Take the tempo down to 90 BPM.
Where to hear this feel
Records in this family include Run-DMC - It's Like That and Run-DMC - Sucker M.C.'s. A played-kit translation of mid-80s drum-machine hip-hop: stark, quantised kick and snare, plain eighth hats and almost nothing else, so the rapper and the scratches have the space. It is a style study, not a transcription.