Rhythm, groove and the 16-step grid

Dub, minimal techno and cumbia are dance music first. Their identities live more in rhythm than in harmony. Here's the vocabulary, then a lab of the core patterns.

Pulse, tempo and meter

• Beat: the pulse you nod your head to. Tempo is beats per minute (BPM).
• Bar (measure): a group of beats. Almost all electronic music is in 4/4: four quarter-note beats per bar. Cumbia is traditionally written in 2/4 or cut time, felt in two; producers usually program it in 4/4 anyway.
• Subdivisions: each beat splits into two 8th notes or four 16th notes. A drum machine bar has 16 steps, counted 1 e & a, 2 e & a, 3 e & a, 4 e & a. Steps 1, 5, 9 and 13 are the beats; the “&”s halfway between are the offbeats.
• Triplets split a beat into three. A strong triplet feel is called a shuffle.
• Phrases: music is organized in 4, 8, 16 and 32-bar blocks. Changes land at the start of these blocks; DJs count on it.

Syncopation and the offbeat

Syncopation is putting the emphasis off the main beats. The single most important syncopation in this course is the offbeat, the “&”. It's the open hi-hat in techno, the guitar skank in reggae (on the offbeats of a fast count, or on beats 2 and 4 of a slow one) and the llamador drum and chord chops in cumbia. Kick says down, offbeat says up: that tug is groove.

Swing and microtiming

Swing delays every second 16th note slightly, turning a rigid grid into a lilt. Reggae drummers swing hard, close to triplets. Minimal and microhouse use subtle swing (drum machines call it 52–62%). Beyond swing, nudging single hits a few milliseconds early or late (microtiming) is how Ricardo Villalobos's percussion breathes.

Ghost notes and velocity

Not every hit is equal. Quiet in-between hits, called ghost notes, fill the groove without cluttering it. In the labs below, a loud step is a bright square and a soft one a dim square.

Polyrhythm and polymeter

Play a pattern that repeats every 3 steps against a 4/4 bar of 16 steps, and the pattern lands somewhere new every bar, realigning only every three bars. Minimal techno producers use these 3/16 loops to make a few sounds feel endlessly varied; the minimal techno lesson builds a whole loop from them.

Latin rhythmic DNA

• Tresillo (3+3+2): three hits dividing a bar into dotted quarter, dotted quarter, quarter. The root of Latin and Caribbean bass and drum patterns, from habanera to reggaeton. Program it in the drum machine.
• Clave: a two-bar key pattern, 3 hits then 2 (3–2) or the reverse. Salsa and son are organized around it. Cumbia isn't clave-based, but you'll meet clave in Latin fusion. Open the son clave in the drum machine.
• The cumbia scraper: long-short-short on every beat (chhh-ka-ka) from the guacharaca or güiro. If you only program one thing to make a beat sound like cumbia, program this. The cumbia lesson puts it in a full groove.