Boom Bap Drum Machine: Program Dusty 90s Hip Hop Beats in Your Browser
Boom bap is built on a hard backbeat over a swung 16th-note grid: kick on the downbeat, a cracking snare dead on 2 and 4, and hats riding straight eighths underneath. It usually sits between 88 and 94 BPM, slow enough that the space between hits does as much work as the hits themselves. What makes it move is the quiet stuff — whispered ghost snares on the 16ths just before the backbeat, a second kick landing on the "&" of 3 instead of squarely on beat 3, and hats that drop in volume on every off-beat so the loop breathes like a sampled drum break instead of a grid.
How to program boom bap drums
- Play the snare at full velocity on beats 2 and 4 and never move it — then add ghost snares at 0.25-0.35 velocity on the 16ths in between, especially the 'a' of 1 and the 'a' of 3 (the note right before the backbeat). The volume contrast between the loud snare and the whispered ghosts is the whole feel; if every snare is the same velocity, the groove dies.
- Set swing to roughly 18-25%. That pushes only the off-beat 16ths late, so the kick on 1 and the snares on 2 and 4 stay locked while the hats and ghost notes drag behind them. Past 30% you leave boom bap and land in Dilla territory — great, but a different genre.
- Keep the kick short and mid-forward: start around 130 Hz, sweep down to ~50 Hz in about 30 ms, add saturation, and cut the tail near 0.3 s. That gives you the thump of a chopped break rather than a modern sub. If you want real low end, put it on a separate sub pad tuned to the root of your loop (F1 = 43.65 Hz in this kit) instead of making the kick longer.
Other styles
- Trap drum machine130-150 BPM (half-time feel)
- Lo-Fi Hip Hop drum machine70-85 BPM
- House drum machine120-126 BPM
- Techno drum machine130-140 BPM
- Drum and Bass drum machine172-176 BPM
- Afro House drum machine120-124 BPM
- UK Garage drum machine130-135 BPM
- Funk drum machine100-110 BPM
- 808 drum machine100-130 BPM
Rhythm breakdowns
- The Jungle Break: Syncopated Snares at 172172 BPM
- Boom Bap at 90 BPM: the dusty backbeat90 BPM
- Dilla-style drunk swing87 BPM
- Four on the Floor124 BPM
- The hip hop skeleton: kick on 1, snare on 2 and 4, ghosts in the gaps90 BPM
- The Full House Groove: Four on the Floor, Offbeat Hats and a Rolling Shaker124 BPM
- The Dembow Riddim96 BPM
- Trap Hi-Hats: 8ths, 32nd Bursts and a Triplet Turnaround140 BPM
DRUMMY is inspired by classic 16-pad sampler and drum-machine workflows. It is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Akai Professional, Roland, or any other manufacturer.