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Ever since those Portishead folks in Bristol found the magic that happens when you pitch a drum sample down and bath it in gloomy reverb, Trip Hop has been one of the most popular genres for people learning to make beats. When we got requests to cover Trip Hop in this tutorial series, we wondered what people were really asking for. Trip Hop is a sample-loop based genre that doesn’t require too much production wizardry, if you don’t’ want it to… In this tutorial, however, we’ll cover those basics but we’ll also delve further into the sound design theory that lies behind those loops so that you can create your own custom Trip Hop sounds and beats.

Trip Hop Drums Cheat Sheet

Tempo

60–90 BPM (this tutorial uses 74 BPM)

Method 1: Loop & Chop

  • Start with a full drum loop (e.g. from the Factory Sound Bank)
  • Pull the loop out for part of the second measure
  • Place two razor cuts on the last measure — one on the last beat, one just before beat 1
  • Shorten and duplicate the clip to “juggle” the loop

Method 2: Custom Kit in Kong

  • Kick: one REX slice from an Abstract Hip-Hop loop, layered with a second slice via Kong’s Nano-sampler “Add Layer”
  • Snare: a trashy loop-based sample, layered with a woody sample, volume-blended for balance
  • Ride: a simple ReDrum ride sample on the upbeats
  • Shaker: a rhythmic top-end loop for fill
  • Extra texture: a whole REX loop on one pad, triggered as a fill

Lo-Fi Effects Chain

  • Room Reverb (Kong bus effect): largest room size, long decay, wet/dry maxed on the send; roll off Width for a mono, “trip-tastic” snare reverb
  • Pulveriser: default preset with squash, dirt, and low-pass backed off, peak minimized
  • High-pass filter (Kong master effects): low resonance, low cutoff frequency, to thin out the low end like a vinyl sample
  • Audiomatic Retro Transformer: for crackle and pop, wet/dry dialed to taste

Second Snare (for variation)

  • Shorten the decay on a crisp sample for a tighter, side-stick feel
  • Layer with a second sample, pitched up for a “piccolo snare” edge
  • Overdrive (light) + Compressor to add saturation without killing the attack
  • Send a touch to the bus reverb to gel with the rest of the kit

Programming the Beat

  • Ride on the upbeats, shaker loop on beat 1
  • Alternate snares: epic snare on beat 2, crisp/side-stick snare on beat 4
  • Kick on beats 1 and 3, plus extra 16th-note kicks leading into beats 2, 3, and 4

The Feel

Route the sequencer lane to the Groove Mixer and load a heavy MPC-style shuffle (~65%) — this is what actually makes the beat sound like trip-hop, more than any single sound choice.

Transcript

Intro: the quick loop method

I must admit, when people overwhelmingly suggested I cover trip-hop drums in this tutorial series, I was confused — because honestly, a trip-hop tutorial should be short and simple. Here, let me give you the tutorial I expected to make.

Making trip-hop drums from a loop

Trip-hop drums came about when entire beats were lifted off vinyl and simply looped under songs. So let’s do the same thing using the Factory Sound Bank loops — like this one from The Bomb Squad. Now I’ll do two classic trip-hop techniques: I’ll pull the loop out for part of the second measure, and I’ll place two razor marks on the last measure — one on the last beat, and one just before the first beat. Then I’ll juggle the loop by shortening the clip and duplicating it twice. Let’s take a listen with this track that I have.

Why using loops is 100% okay

That’s all there is to it. But when people were requesting a trip-hop tutorial, I don’t think they were requesting this — so I want to make this next point very clear: loops are 100% okay to use, and don’t let people tell you otherwise. Despite their stigma, loops are the sound of trip-hop drums. I would take it as the ultimate compliment if everyone stopped watching this tutorial right now and just went and made trip-hop using this method.

Building a custom kit from scratch

Alright, I get it — you want to understand the lo-fi, gritty sound of trip-hop and make your own loops. Okay, we’ll do that, but just don’t ever feel like that first method is cheating or unprofessional, because it’s not.

Setting the tempo and building the kick drum

Trip-hop happens in the slow tempo ranges between 60 to 90 BPM — today we’ll work at 74 BPM. Let’s make a custom kit by creating a Kong Drum Designer and clearing it out for the kick drum. I want a trashy kick with a deep boom to it. Let’s actually revisit a technique from our deep house tutorial by using one slice from a REX loop found in the “Abstract Hip-Hop” folder. I’ll expand the loop and drag the first slice onto pad number 1 of Kong — that covers the trash, but let’s enhance the boom.

Layering drum sounds with Kong’s Nano-sampler

In previous tutorials, I’ve shown you how to layer drum sounds in many different ways — let’s cover yet another method today by expanding Kong’s drum and effects section and clicking Add Layer on our Nano-sampler module. You can see our row is now twice as high, with an extra space waiting for our next sample. It’s the sampler equivalent of an “in-and-out double double,” so let’s double-click the second layer and browse other REX slices, this time from the “Down South” folder.

Building the snare drum

Let’s do the same process for the snare drum, in the “Hip-Hop Loops” folder — there’s a beat called “Black Talon” which has a nice trashy sound. And just like our kick drum, let’s also make this one a double double by adding a layer and bringing in a little woody sound to this snare. I’ll go for the snare sound in “Peach Hat,” found among the Abstract Hip-Hop loops. I can adjust the volume blend, turning our Peach Hat layer up by adjusting its individual level control.

Adding ride and shaker sounds

Let’s put a ride cymbal up in the corner of our pads — nothing fancy needed here, just a ride from the ReDrum samples folder. I also want a shaker sound to fill in some rhythmic top end. So far we’ve been using REX slices, but let’s place a whole REX loop onto pad number 15 — like these Kishishi loops. Now every time I press the pad, we get our whole loop in perfect time.

The sound of trip-hop: room and reverb

At this point, it’s worth talking about the sound of trip-hop drums. These samples are cool, but trip-hop drums have a quality of being under a blanket, that’s in a very large, echoing room. It’s a weird texture that gives trip-hop a lot of its vibe. In fact, the effects processing of trip-hop samples is arguably more important than the sample sounds themselves.

Dialing in Room Reverb on Kong’s bus effects

To create that very large, echoing room part of the sound, let’s choose the Room Reverb on Kong’s bus effects. I want the biggest size room we can get, with a pretty long reverb decay, and because we’re on the bus effects, I’ll max out the wet/dry balance. Any one of our pads can now be sent to this effect by selecting the drum and dialing up its bus effects send knob — send just a little signal and the effect is more subtle, send a lot and the effect is more noticeable. The reverb on our snare should be noticeable.

One last key adjustment: if I dial the width knob all the way back, our reverb will go from a “too realistic, stereo room emulation” to a more trip-tastic mono style for our mono snare. That’s the reverb — now let’s do the rest of the lo-fi sound, to dirty up our drums.

Dirtying up the drums: Pulveriser, filter, and Audiomatic

Let’s add a Pulveriser effect to our signal chain by dragging it into our rack underneath Kong. I’ll modify the default preset, dialing back a bit of the squash, turning down the dirt, backing off the low-pass filter just a bit, and minimizing the peak. And let’s also make our loop sound like a vinyl sample by thinning out the drums, using a filter on Kong’s master effects section — we’ll set it to high-pass, turn down the resonance, and set it to a low frequency, so it’s just cutting off the big, “whoopee” frequencies in our sound.

Last but not least, let’s add an Audiomatic Retro Transformer to our signal, for some crackles and pops. We’ll dial the wet/dry balance to a tasteful, but audible, amount there. You’ve got a lo-fi, trashy, big sound — there’s only one issue: the snare drum is big, dark, and epic, but I can tell that it will get tiresome to have that thing blasting off twice every bar.

Building a second, crisper snare

A classic trip-hop workaround to this very issue is to have two snare drums: one epic, one crisp. For this next snare, let’s start with this “Absolute” sample in the Kong folder. To make that even crisper, let’s shorten the decay on the sample. I really like the side-stick, clicky quality to this drum — in fact, let’s enhance that even more with another layer. I’ll search the Factory Sound Bank, because I know The Bomb Squad has a side-stick sample that will probably help there.

In addition to adjusting the volume of each sample layer, we can also adjust the pitch of each layer too. Let’s make a piccolo snare sound by pushing the “Absolute” sample up in pitch, and pushing its volume up in the mix, to give our “crisp snare” a little more grit. Let’s add one of Kong’s effects on “Effects 1” — the Overdrive will saturate our snare nicely, but too much and our snare loses its attack, so let’s pull down the size and dial back the drive. To help enhance our crisp attack even more, let’s add a Compressor on “Effects 2.” Let’s also send a little bit of this snare to our bus effects reverb — without these effects, our snare is too sterile; with them on, it’s just enough to gel with the rest of our kit.

Programming the beat

Now we’re ready to program our beat. Trip-hop’s soul often comes from fairly steady elements mixed with a busy kick drum, so let’s draw in the steady elements: ride cymbals on the upbeats, a note to trigger our shaker loop at the top of the bar, and snare drums on 2 and 4 — but instead of the same snare drum each time, let’s use our epic snare drum on beat 2, and our side stick on beat 4.

And now the kick drum — in trip-hop, that’s where most of the magic happens in the groove. A totally basic kick drum pattern will play on beats 1 and 3, but as you can hear, there is nothing trippy nor hoppy about this beat. It’s the sixteenth notes surrounding these beats where our kick really shines, so let’s add a few more kicks on the sixteenth notes leading into beats two, three, and four, and on beat three, let’s also toss in an extra kick after the beat.

Getting the shuffle feel right

Okay, well, we’ve programmed our pattern and we’ve designed an epic drum kit sound. So why does our beat still suck? The answer lies in what is probably the most important part of trip-hop: the feel. Trip-hop has a very pronounced shuffle feel. So let’s rescue our beat by routing our sequencer lane to the Groove Mixer’s A1 channel, and opening up the Groove Mixer to load a good shuffle feel — the MPC grooves are classics, so let’s load a fairly heavy 65% shuffle. Way better.

Bringing back the stutter and loop tricks

Let’s duplicate this loop and bring in our other instruments. Remember those tricks we did back at the very beginning, by dropping out the loop and stuttering the beat? Well, we can do the same things here, first by muting our mixer channel, and I can program any pattern variations I want to my beat, to give it that stuttered feel.

Two paths to trip-hop drums

So you can see there are two ways we can make trip-hop drums: using loops, for a quick and traditional method, or customizing our own kit and using plenty of sound design tricks, to arrive ultimately at the same destination. Sure, this second method gives you way more control, and it might be the right method for your music — but just because something is complex doesn’t always mean it’s better. I can think of plenty of cases where the loop method is the better choice. But the beauty is, that’s up to you to decide. So good luck, and I’ll see you here for another tutorial.