Percussion is the detail in a groove. A shaker playing 16ths, a tambourine on the backbeat, a conga pattern under a house track - none of them carry the song, and all of them make it feel more alive. Take the percussion out of a great dance record and it can feel oddly static, even though nothing obvious has gone.
The instruments
- Shakers - continuous subdivision, usually 8ths or 16ths, with the accent on the beat or off-beat depending on how they are played.
- Tambourine - on 2 and 4 to reinforce the backbeat, or 16ths for drive. The sound of Motown, gospel and disco.
- Hand drums - congas, bongos, djembe. Melodic in their own way: open tones, slaps, muted tones and bass tones.
- Accents - claves, woodblocks, cowbells, triangles, guiro, cabasa. Short, distinctive sounds that mark particular points in a pattern.
- Timbales - bright metal-shelled drums, with cowbells and cymbals, central to salsa.
Styles
- Latin and Afro-Cuban. Built around clave - a rhythmic key pattern that everything else in the groove relates to. Son clave is five hits across two bars: three in one bar, two in the other. Which bar comes first (3-2 or 2-3) depends on the song, and the rest of the percussion follows it. Congas play a pattern called tumbao; the bell often plays a pattern called cascara on the side of the timbale.
- Brazilian. Samba layers the low surdo drum, the high tamborim, the agogô bell and the ganzá shaker, each with its own pattern. Bossa nova is far gentler - a soft, syncopated feel often carried by guitar and brushes.
- Funk. Percussion locks to the 16th-note grid: tambourine, shaker and congas tightly interlocking with the drums.
- Disco. Tambourine 16ths or backbeats, congas, and the famous open hi-hat on every off-beat.
- House. Shakers and congas over the four-on-the-floor kick, often lifted straight from disco and Latin records. Percussion is often what distinguishes one house track from another.
What clave teaches
Clave means "key" in Spanish, and it is a useful idea well beyond Latin music: a short, asymmetric pattern of accents that the whole groove is organised around. The tresillo - three hits spread unevenly across a bar of eight 8th notes, on 1, the and-of-2, and 4 - is the first half of son clave, and it turns up everywhere: in the Bo Diddley beat, in reggaeton, in countless pop basslines and synth riffs.
Once you hear it, you start finding it - in the guitar on George Michael's "Faith", in the piano on Coldplay's "Clocks", in "I Want Candy". Identifying the key pattern in a groove tells you where everything else should sit.
Incorporating percussion
- Start with the gaps. Listen to where the drums are not playing. A shaker in those gaps adds movement without crowding anything.
- Give each part a register and a job. A high shaker for subdivision, a mid conga for syncopation, a low surdo or tom for weight. Three percussion parts in the same register become noise.
- Enter and leave. Bringing in a tambourine for the chorus is one of the cheapest ways to lift a section.
- Play it in. Percussion is often best performed rather than drawn - even on a keyboard, two fingers alternating on a shaker sample gives you a natural, uneven pattern.
Layering and blending
- Pan percussion. Spread shakers, congas and tambourines across the stereo field so they frame the drums rather than stacking in the centre.
- Use space. A little room reverb on percussion places it further back than the drums, which keeps the kit upfront.
- High-pass everything that does not need low end. Shakers and tambourines have nothing useful below a few hundred hertz.
- Match the feel. A swung shaker over straight drums can sound wrong - or it can be the whole point. Decide.
Groove and swing
Swing delays every second note of a subdivision, so pairs of notes become long-short instead of even.
- On a drum machine or DAW, swing is usually a percentage. 50% is straight. Around 54-58% is a light shuffle that just loosens things up; around 62-66% is a strong swing, close to a triplet feel.
- Swing on 16ths is the sound of a great deal of hip-hop, R&B and house. Swing on 8ths is the shuffle of blues, swing jazz and some rock.
- Groove templates take the timing and velocity of one part - a sampled break, or a real drummer's performance - and apply them to another. Extracting the groove from a classic break and applying it to your own percussion makes everything sit together.
- Swing different parts by different amounts. A shaker swung more than the hi-hats can create a lovely tension.
Do this now
- Program son clave in 3-2 over a simple four-on-the-floor beat at 122 BPM, using a clave sample.
- Add a shaker on 16ths with accents on the off-beats, a conga pattern in the gaps of the kick, and a tambourine on 2 and 4 in the second half only.
- Pan the percussion apart and high-pass each part.
- Try swing at 50%, 56% and 64% on the shaker and congas, and pick the one that moves best.