The Neurofunk groove
Dark technical drum and bass at 174: a machine-tight processed break, a clinical snare with real stick crack, metallic percussion and a saturated sub that growls and moves.
What makes it feel this way
Neurofunk is drum and bass with the looseness engineered out of it. The skeleton is the same half-time illusion the genre is built on — 174 BPM up top, but the snare only lands on beats 2 and 4, so the groove reads slow and heavy while a fast break skitters underneath — and everything else is a processing decision. The kick is two sounds stacked: a short analogue click-kick tuned high and driven hard for the transient, and a struck modal bass drum underneath it for the body, low-passed so it never argues with the sub. The snare is the same trick in reverse: a modal shell with real wire rattle and stick crack carries the tone, and a heavily crushed electronic snap sits on top of it, band-passed high and bright, so every backbeat lands like a machine stamping metal. Hats run continuous 16ths, but as two separate voices — an accented 909-ish tick on the offbeat eighths and a barely-there acoustic tip filling every gap at a fifth of the velocity — which is why the top end feels like a texture instead of a pattern. Percussion is metal: a tiny high-tuned hand drum shredded with bit reduction and rate reduction, used as a clinical tick rather than a groove. Underneath, the bass is two sub voices in F minor, one short and punchy with heavy saturation for growl and harmonic content that survives on small speakers, one long and deep with rate reduction for the movement between phrases. Kit-wide there is saturation, a touch of crush, a bright tone tilt and a very short room — tight enough to glue the kit together without ever smearing a transient. Swing sits at 3, effectively straight: the whole point of this style is that the grid is audible. The arrangement runs main groove, busier variation with a stuttered snare and extra bass movement, a stripped section where the weight leaves but the ride, shaker, hat tips and vinyl texture keep breathing, then a tom-and-snare turnaround that rolls back into the top.
It is loaded and playing
This page loads the groove as a full four-part arrangement — a main groove, a variation, a stripped-back section and a fill — chained together, on a kit built only for this rhythm. Press Space to hear it, open EDIT to see every hit on the step grid, and change anything you like. SHARE copies a link that rebuilds your version.
Other grooves
- Boom Bap91 BPM · HIP HOP
- Chipmunk Soul91 BPM · HIP HOP
- East Coast92 BPM · HIP HOP
- Trap Hats146 BPM · TRAP
- Four/Floor124 BPM · HOUSE
- Disco120 BPM · DISCO
- Techno Stomp136 BPM · TECHNO
- Two Step134 BPM · GARAGE
- Motorik146 BPM · ROCK
- Jungle174 BPM · breakbeat
- Liquid Dnb174 BPM · drum-and-bass
- Ragga Jungle170 BPM · breakbeat
- Amen Break174 BPM · BREAKS
- Funk Break102 BPM · BREAKS
- Half Shuffle92 BPM · ROCK
- Bo Diddley136 BPM · ROCK
- Second Line92 BPM · FUNK
- Dembow96 BPM · LATIN
- Bossa Nova136 BPM · LATIN
- Afrobeat114 BPM · AFRICAN
- One Drop74 BPM · REGGAE
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.