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Hip hop drum patterns: the eight you actually need, on a machine that plays them

Almost every hip hop beat is one skeleton - kick on 1, snare on 2 and 4 - moved along four dials: where the extra kicks go, how far the 16ths swing, how busy the hats are, and whether the snare waits for beat 3. This page is that skeleton in its eight classic settings - a cheat sheet you can hear. Each one is a real step grid you can read, a machine above that plays it, a MIDI file you can drop into any DAW, and a PDF of all eight to print.

We counted every hit in the eight patterns on this page - 390 of them. The six normal-time patterns (boom bap through lo-fi) average 3.7 kicks a bar and 66% of those kicks land off the quarter-note beat, on an "and" or an "a"; all six put their loud snare on 2 and 4 and nowhere else, while both half-time patterns (trap, drill) put it on 3. Across all eight, 41% of snare-family hits are ghost notes under 0.45 velocity, and swing runs from 10 to 40 in the six normal-time patterns and is exactly 0 in trap and drill. For contrast, our four-on-the-floor house groove has 5 kicks a bar, 0% of them off the beat, and 20% ghost notes. One caveat: these are our own programmings of each style, not transcriptions of specific records, so the numbers describe the styles as they are played here. The raw hits are in the MIDI files below and in the page's data file, so every figure can be checked.

  1. Boom bap 90
  2. East Coast hard 92
  3. Sampled break 100
  4. West Coast bounce 94
  5. Dilla drunk swing 87
  6. Lo-fi chill 78
  7. Half-time trap 140
  8. UK drill skip 140

PDF of all 8 grids ↓

How to read the grids

Each grid is two bars of 16ths, left to right, four lanes: kick, snare (including claps, rims and ghost notes), hats (closed, open, tips, shakers) and percussion, where the 808 also sits. A full cell is a loud hit, a lighter cell is medium, and a hollow cell is a quiet one - in the snare lane that is a ghost note, a snare played so quietly it is felt more than heard. A ringed cell is an open hat. 32nd-note and triplet rolls show in the 16th cell they start in. Press Load into the machine and the same pattern arrives in the drum machine at the top of the page, on the kit it was written for, already playing; open EDIT there to move any hit, and SHARE to send your version to someone.

1. Boom bap

The skeleton every other pattern here is a variation of

Tempo 90 BPM  ·  Swing 24  ·  Kit Boom Bap

Where it comes from New York, 1991-97 - the DJ Premier, Pete Rock and Large Professor records

MIDI ↓ 6 kicks · 6 snares · 5 ghosts

Kick on 1 and on the "and" of 3, snare on 2 and 4 with a second, softer snare layered under the beat-4 hits so the second half of the bar lands harder, and ghost snares on the "a" before each backbeat. Bar 2 adds kicks on the "and" of 2 and the "and" of 4 so the loop turns over. The hats are 8ths with a whisper of open hat on every "a", and could be turned off without losing the genre - what makes it boom bap is the kick-kick / snare-snare conversation and the swing pushing every off-beat 16th late.

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2. East Coast hard

Boom bap with a doubled kick, a rimshot snare and an open hat lifting the turnaround

Tempo 92 BPM  ·  Swing 16  ·  Kit Boom Bap

Where it comes from Mid-90s New York - the Wu-Tang and Mobb Deep end of the sampler era

MIDI ↓ 7 kicks · 6 snares · 5 ghosts

The kick doubles itself right after beat 1 (the "a" of 1), which is the East Coast stutter, and lands again on the "and" of 3. The snare is a rimshot crack on 2 and 4 with a rim click under beat 4, and an open hat on the "and" of 4 pulls the bar round. Less swing than boom bap, so it marches harder.

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3. Sampled break

The Funky Drummer feel that hip hop's first decade was cut from

Tempo 100 BPM  ·  Swing 10  ·  Kit Boom Bap

Where it comes from James Brown's Funky Drummer (recorded 1969, released 1970), then most of hip hop from the late 80s on - among the most sampled drums ever recorded

MIDI ↓ 7 kicks · 4 snares · 9 ghosts

This is what a drummer plays and a sampler steals: kick on 1, the "and" of 2 and the "and" of 3, snare on 2 and 4, and a stream of 16th-note ghost snares at a quarter of the volume filling every gap. The hats are 16ths, accented on the 8ths, so the top end never stops rolling. Only 10 swing, because a real drummer's push is already inside the ghost notes.

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4. West Coast bounce

G-funk: kick pickups before the beat, a clapped snare, shaker and conga answering in the gaps

Tempo 94 BPM  ·  Swing 12  ·  Kit Boom Bap

Where it comes from Los Angeles 1992-96 - Dr. Dre, DJ Quik, Warren G

MIDI ↓ 9 kicks · 8 snares · 4 ghosts

The kick lands on 1, then again on 3 and the "and" of 3, with a soft pickup on the "a" of 2 that gives the bar its lean. The snare has a rim layered on it standing in for the clap that G-funk always doubles the backbeat with. A shaker on every off-16th and a conga phrase leading into beat 1 fill in around a nearly straight grid: the bounce is in the pickups, not the swing.

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5. Dilla drunk swing

The same skeleton, swung so far the 16ths nearly land on the next 8th

Tempo 87 BPM  ·  Swing 40  ·  Kit Lo-Fi Hip Hop

Where it comes from Detroit 1996-2006 - J Dilla, then Madlib and Karriem Riggins

MIDI ↓ 8 kicks · 6 snares · 4 ghosts

The kicks and snares are almost boom bap. What changes is the timing: 40 swing pushes every off-beat 16th almost halfway to the next step, so the hats and ghost notes stagger while the backbeat stays put. That collision between a straight backbeat and a lurching everything-else is the "drunk" feel; it is timing, not new notes.

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6. Lo-fi chill

Slow, sparse and soft: a rim on top of the snare, hats that barely tick

Tempo 78 BPM  ·  Swing 34  ·  Kit Lo-Fi Hip Hop

Where it comes from 2015 onwards - the study-beats stream, downstream of Nujabes and Dilla

MIDI ↓ 7 kicks · 8 snares · 2 ghosts

Everything is turned down. The kick keeps the 1 and the "and" of 3 and adds only a soft pickup between 2 and 3; the snare is doubled by a rim click so it clicks rather than cracks; hats are 8ths at half volume with a hat tip on the "e"s and a shaker on the "and"s. The tempo does the rest: at 78 BPM even a busy bar has room in it.

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7. Half-time trap

Snare on 3 only, 8th hats that burst into 32nds, an 808 doing the kick's old job

Tempo 140 BPM  ·  Swing none  ·  Kit Trap

Where it comes from Atlanta, 2010 onwards - Lex Luger, then Metro Boomin and Southside

MIDI ↓ 7 kicks · 4 snares · 1 ghost

The tempo says 140 but the clap only lands on beat 3, so the bar feels like a 70 BPM bar with twice the detail. Kicks are sparse and syncopated because the 808 carries the low end. The hats run straight 8ths and then stutter into 32nd rolls and a triplet turnaround at the end of the two bars - the rolls are the melody of trap drums.

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8. UK drill skip

Snare on 3, a second thin snare on the last 16th, hats that stutter in triplets, a sliding 808

Tempo 140 BPM  ·  Swing none  ·  Kit Drill

Where it comes from London from about 2012 and everywhere by 2016, Brooklyn from 2019 - M1OnTheBeat, Ghosty, 808Melo

MIDI ↓ 6 kicks · 4 snares · 2 ghosts

Half-time like trap: main snare on beat 3 in each bar. Then the drill signature - a thin second snare on the very last 16th of the bar, so the pattern skips into the next 1 instead of resting. The kicks are on the "and"s more than the beats, the hats hesitate in triplet stutters instead of rolling, and the 808 slides between two pitches in the hole the snare leaves.

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All eight side by side

The same eight patterns as numbers, counted from their hits. "Kicks off the beat" is the share of kicks that land on an "and" or an "a" rather than on 1, 2, 3 or 4; "ghost share" is the share of snare-family hits below 0.45 velocity. The last row is a house groove from the groove library, measured the same way.

PatternBPMSwingKicks / barKicks off the beat Loud snare onGhost shareHats
Boom bap90243.067%2 and 445%8ths
East Coast hard92163.557%2 and 445%8ths
Sampled break100103.571%2 and 469%16ths
West Coast bounce94124.556%2 and 433%16ths
Dilla drunk swing87404.075%2 and 440%16ths
Lo-fi chill78343.571%2 and 420%16ths
Half-time trap14003.571%320%16ths
UK drill skip14003.067%333%8ths
Four on the floor (house), for contrast12405.00%2 and 420%16ths

Read down the columns and the genres separate cleanly. Kick count barely changes - three to four and a half a bar everywhere - but where they land does: hip hop puts 56% to 75% of its kicks off the beat, house puts 0%. Ghost notes are the other tell: the sampled-break styles run 40% to 69% ghosts, trap and drill 20% to 33%, and what house has (20%) is quiet rim clicks rather than snares. And swing draws the line between the sampler era and the DAW era at exactly zero.

How to program a hip hop drum pattern from nothing

  1. Kick on beat 1 and on the "and" of 3. Snare on 2 and 4 at full velocity. That is already hip hop; everything after this is dialect.
  2. Hats on straight 8ths, louder on the beat (0.8) than off it (0.5). Do not touch them again until the end.
  3. Swing 16-24. This delays only the odd 16ths, so the kick and snare stay planted while everything between them leans late. Past 30 you are in Dilla territory, at 0 you are in trap's.
  4. Ghost snares at 0.25-0.4 velocity on the 16th just before the backbeat (the "a" of 1 and the "a" of 3). If they are audible as separate hits, they are too loud.
  5. Open hat on the "and" of 4, choked by the closed hat on the next 1. That is the turnaround.
  6. Make bar 2 differ from bar 1 by one hit - a pickup kick on the "a" of 2, an extra ghost - so the loop breathes on a two-bar cycle instead of a one-bar one.
  7. Now change velocity before you change notes. Most of the difference between two hip hop records is dynamics, not placement.

Frequently asked

What are the 7 drum patterns every producer should know?

There is no official list; ours is: boom bap (kick 1 and "and" of 3, snare 2 and 4), half-time trap (snare on 3), four on the floor, the dembow that reggaeton runs on, two-step garage, the sampled breakbeat, and the swung Dilla feel. Four of the seven are on this page and the other three are a click away - all playable.

Is there an exhaustive list of hip hop drum patterns?

No, and there cannot be, because hip hop drums are not a list of patterns but one pattern with four dials: extra-kick placement, swing amount, hat resolution and normal-time versus half-time. The eight here are the settings of those dials that became genres. Every other hip hop beat you have heard is one of these with a hit moved or a velocity changed - which is why the machine at the top lets you move them.

What BPM is hip hop?

Boom bap and East Coast sit at 88-96 BPM, sampled-break hip hop 95-105, G-funk 90-96, lo-fi 70-85, Dilla-style beats 85-92. Trap is written at 130-160 and drill at 138-145 but both are felt at half that, because the snare only lands on beat 3. Every pattern above loads at the tempo the style is usually made at, and the hip hop tempo page has the full picture.

What is the difference between boom bap and trap drums?

Three things, and you can hear each one by loading the two patterns in turn. Boom bap puts the snare on 2 and 4; trap puts a clap on 3 only, halving the felt tempo. Boom bap swings 16-25; trap swings 0. Boom bap's kick is a short punchy drum and the sub is separate; in trap the 808 is the kick and the bassline at once, so the kick pattern becomes sparse and syncopated.

How much swing should hip hop drums have?

16-25 for boom bap and East Coast, 10-15 for anything meant to sound like a sampled break (the drummer's push is already in the ghost notes), 30-45 for the Dilla lurch, and exactly 0 for trap and drill. On this machine swing delays only the odd 16th steps, which is what an MPC does, so the backbeat never moves. To convert an MPC swing percentage, subtract 50 and double it: MPC 62% is 24 here, 58% is 16, 67% is 34.

Where does the second kick go?

The "and" of 3 is home - it pulls the bar towards the beat-4 snare. The "a" of 1 gives the East Coast stutter, the "a" of 2 the West Coast lean, the "and" of 2 the funk-break bounce. Beat 3 itself is the one hip hop uses least: a kick squarely on 3 with nothing after it reads as rock, which is why G-funk usually follows it with the "and". Move it in the step grid and listen.

Can I download these as MIDI or a PDF?

Both. Every pattern has a MIDI ↓ link: a General MIDI drum file on channel 10 at the pattern's tempo, with the swing written into the note timing, so the hits land in FL Studio, Ableton, Logic or an MPC where they land here. It holds the drums only - the 808 and chord pads stay out, because a sub on a drum note would read as a second kick - and the sounds will be your kit's, not ours. The PDF is all eight grids on three printable pages, drawn from the same hits as the grids above, for the wall or the notebook.

Are rap drum patterns different from hip hop drum patterns?

No - "rap drums" and "hip hop drums" are the same eight patterns under two names. Rap is the vocal, hip hop is the culture and the music, and the drums under a rap verse are whichever of these eight the producer reached for: boom bap and East Coast under the 90s records, trap and drill under most of the last decade's. If you came here looking for rap drum patterns, this is the page.

Are these transcriptions of real records?

No. They are our programmings of each style's defining pattern, written for the kits on this site, and the numbers on this page count those programmings. The reference records named under each pattern are where the feel comes from, not what was copied.

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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.