Learn Dilla swing finger drumming, one part at a time
The drunk beat is the one groove where the hard part is not where the hits go but how far behind the grid they sit. This page scores you against the real offsets - not the nearest step - so it teaches feel, one part at a time, with the swung positions marked out for your hands.
How this page teaches
The whole groove is already in the machine - open EDIT and it is there on the grid, 2 bars of it. The LEARN panel takes it a part at a time, in 7 steps. Press LISTEN and the part you are learning plays, with the pads lighting as it goes and everything you have already learned running underneath it. Press YOUR TURN and that part goes silent: the loop keeps going, you play the part yourself, and every pass of the loop is scored - hits landed, hits missed, extra hits, and how far off the grid you were. Two clean passes in a row and the step is yours; NEXT adds the next part on top of what you can already play.
The tempo buttons (70, 80, 87, 95) are the most important control here. Learn each part slow, bring it up one notch at a time, and only play the last step at full speed once the one before it is clean at full speed. Your place is remembered, so come back tomorrow and the step you were on is waiting.
Hands
The pads are the same shape as the keyboard: Z X C V along the bottom, A S D F above, Q W E R above that, 1 2 3 4 on top. Each step names its pads and keys, and the pads it wants are ringed on the grid. Play quietly by default - every pad reads velocity, and the quiet parts are supposed to be quiet. If a hit lights the pad bright white, that was a loud one.
The steps
1. The drunk kick
The one, then a kick on the "a" of 2 and another on the "&" of 3 - the first of those is late on purpose. Z.
Dilla's kicks stumble: the "a" of 2 is a swung 16th, so it lands well behind where a machine would put it, and the "&" of 3 follows almost on top of it. Play what you hear, not what the grid says.
2. The snare
Beats 2 and 4 - except the last one, which drags a full 16th late. V.
Three backbeats on the grid and one that is not: the final snare in bar two lands on the "e" of 4, behind the beat, and the swing pushes it later still. That lurch is the feel. Listen to it three times before you try.
3. Kick and snare together
Both hands, only the click.
The kick is late in places and the snare is late in one place, and they are late by different amounts. Play it slow enough that you can place each hit rather than approximate it.
4. The hats
Straight 8ths on A, offbeats softer.
The 8ths are the one straight thing in the loop, and the reason the swung parts read as swung at all. Keep them even and let everything else lean against them.
5. The tips
A soft hat tip on the "e" of every beat, on S - the swung 16th.
Every tip lands on a swung position, so at swing 40 it is nearly a triplet behind the hat before it. This is the step that puts the swing in your hand rather than in a setting.
6. The ghosts
Three quiet rim clicks on swung 16ths before the backbeats. C, softly.
Sparse and quiet, and each one is late by the same amount as the tips. When they sit right, the loop feels like it is leaning forward off the snare.
7. Everything
Five pads. Nothing underneath.
A Dilla loop by hand. If it sounds stiff, the swung hits are landing on the grid; if it sounds sloppy, they are landing in different places each pass. The score tells you which.
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BAP Studio 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.
Made by Max Berggren.