· 7 min read
Drum patterns by genre, written out step by step
Kick, snare and hat positions for boom bap, trap, house, drum and bass, lo-fi and synthwave — as numbered steps you can type straight into a grid.
Every pattern below is written as step numbers in one bar of 4/4 divided into sixteenths — sixteen steps, numbered 1 to 16. Step 1 is the downbeat, 5 is beat two, 9 is beat three, 13 is beat four. Type the numbers into a grid and the genre appears, which is either encouraging or depressing depending on your mood.
These are starting points and not laws. Every one of them has famous records that break it.
The patterns
| Genre | Kick | Snare or clap | Hats |
|---|---|---|---|
| Boom bap | 1, 7, 11 | 5, 13 | Every odd step: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15 |
| Trap | 1, 8, 11 | 9 only | All sixteen, with rolls doubled or tripled |
| House | 1, 5, 9, 13 | 5, 13 | Open hat on the offbeats: 3, 7, 11, 15 |
| Drum and bass | 1, 7, 11 | 5, 13, 15 | All sixteen |
| Lo-fi | 1, 11 | 5, 13 | 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16 |
| Synthwave | 1, 5, 9, 13 | 5, 13 | Open hat on 3, 7, 11, 15 |
The three decisions inside that table
Where the kick sits relative to the snare. A kick on 1 and 11 pulls against a snare on 5 and 13 and gives you swing; a kick on 1, 5, 9 and 13 lines up with everything and gives you drive. That single choice separates hip hop from house more reliably than tempo does.
Whether the snare lands twice or once. Two snares a bar, on 5 and 13, is the default almost everywhere. Trap moves to one, on 9, and everything else in the genre follows from the space that opens up.
How dense the hats are. Eighths feel relaxed, sixteenths feel busy, offbeat-only feels mechanical. Nothing else in the kit changes the energy of a bar as cheaply.
Tempo goes with it
A boom bap pattern at 128 is a house record with the wrong drums; a house pattern at 88 is not slow house, it is a mistake. The two decisions are the same decision, and the ranges are in the BPM by genre cheat sheet.
What to change first
- Move one kick by one step. The 7 in a boom bap pattern is the most productive single note in this entire article — pull it to 6 or push it to 8 and the whole bar leans differently.
- Drop a hat rather than adding one. Density is the thing beginners overshoot and the thing that makes a bar sound cluttered.
- Add one ghost note before the snare, quieter than everything else. On 4 or on 12.
- Leave a step empty on purpose. A bar with a hole in it is more memorable than a bar without one.
Hear them
Every pattern in the table is playing in something in the loop library — the boom bap row is Basement Boom Bap, the house row is Four On The Floor, and the lo-fi row is Slow Burn. Reading a pattern is a poor substitute for hearing it and then changing one step.
Four minutes is shorter than it sounds.
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