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Forgive my ignorance, but what does halfstep mean exactly? Also, is there a term for the beat on Digital Mystiks - Awake? It is almost housey except that it drops that last beat. love it.

I have only recently discovered this kind of music, but it has been blowing my mind since day one.

I reckon it means anything with just one snare in the bar, or the tempo is halved... (Which I suppose isn't that meaningful when people play entire sets of halfstep - then you're just at a 70bpm rave)

yeah it's the one snare per bar ish, usually on the third beat.
tho techically it's not half of 138 is it? because that would be a snare on the fourth. does that mean 'halfstep' is about 100 bpm ish? (ie between 70 and 138).

digi diana wrote:Forgive my ignorance, but what does halfstep mean exactly? Also, is there a term for the beat on Digital Mystiks - Awake? It is almost housey except that it drops that last beat. love it.

I have only recently discovered this kind of music, but it has been blowing my mind since day one.

you're not alone. there's loads of confusion about "halftime". i think the best way to describe halftime dnb or dubstep is that the snares don't fall in the standard 4/4 pattern.

so in that context something like this in drum and bass would be called halftime dnb...
http://mp3.juno.co.uk/MP3/SF168583-01-02-01.mp3

Blackdown wrote:tho techically it's not half of 138 is it? because that would be a snare on the fourth. does that mean 'halfstep' is about 100 bpm ish? (ie between 70 and 138).

Nope. The time signature is still 4/4 so it would def be 69bpm instead of 138. This won't change simply by moving the position of the snare.

Blackdown wrote:yeah it's the one snare per bar ish, usually on the third beat.
tho techically it's not half of 138 is it? because that would be a snare on the fourth. does that mean 'halfstep' is about 100 bpm ish? (ie between 70 and 138).

I don't think it matters where the snare comes in the bar; that just depends on the rhythm you had before you halved the tempo (if that's how you think of it).

Ok, with a little googling, I found this on a blog page:

As a producer I’m fascinated and excited by the ‘halfstep’ rhythm pattern emerging in dubstep, which inverts the characteristic jungle technique of running a dub bassline at between 75 and 95 bpm while the percussion operates at 150-190 bpm. ‘Halfstep’ settles a half-tempo drum pattern against a bassline running at the main tempo of the track - more sedate than jungle, perhaps topping out around 150 bpm. This is not a characteristic of all dubstep - while there have been producers working in the genre for longer than grime has existed (the early dubstep scene began in perhaps 2000/2001) the rules and conventions of the sound are not as hard and fast as they are in its more widespread cousin. In any case, ‘halfstep’ drumlines mark out dubstep as a significantly different sound from its predecessors, in a way that only a few truly radical shifts in techno music have done. The change from techno to ‘ardkore, and from ‘ardkore to jungle, for example, are two moments that saw a radical stylistic shift in musicological terms.

The existence of halfstep convinces me that dubstep is more than just 'dark minimal breakbeat' because you don't even need breaks for it do be dubstep. that is nuts!

Blackdown wrote:yeah it's the one snare per bar ish, usually on the third beat.
tho techically it's not half of 138 is it? because that would be a snare on the fourth. does that mean 'halfstep' is about 100 bpm ish? (ie between 70 and 138).

yes it is half - instead of kik - hat - snare - hat hat kik - snare - hat (2-step), you have kik - hat hat hat - snare - hat hat hat - or similar.

you get these kind of rhythms a lot in dub / reggae and roots music.

another good example of halftime in dubstep is kode9 -ping-.

Doesn't have anything to do with where the snare falls, it's just half the tempo. That's why it's easily mixable with 140bpm stuff. Gives the beats a more spacious feel, dubbier sounding...

Technically, I doubt anybody is making halfstep at 69 BPM. I assume they're still at 138 or whatever, but the rhythm is different, so it just sounds half-speed. Tempo and feel are two different things - DnB could be said to be, in some ways, doubletime hip-hop.

But what do I know?

i'm gonna make some halfstep with the snare on the 2 and 4 then!

I agree that the snare is the main thing that makes it halfstep. Very common in dub to have an uptempo 4x4 kick drum but half tempo snare.

So at 140 bpm if the kick was on every beat the snare falls on 3 like:

– –X–
OOOO

Instead of the standard:
–X –X
OOOO

It used to be pretty common in jungle too having a half tempo drum break at the beginning before dropping into jungle tempo. Like the intro to Super Sharp Shooter. Because the tempo is exactly half it can be beatmatched seamlessly with either full or half tempo.

digi diana wrote:Ok, with a little googling, I found this on a blog page:

As a producer I’m fascinated and excited by the ‘halfstep’ rhythm pattern emerging in dubstep, which inverts the characteristic jungle technique of running a dub bassline at between 75 and 95 bpm while the percussion operates at 150-190 bpm. ‘Halfstep’ settles a half-tempo drum pattern against a bassline running at the main tempo of the track - more sedate than jungle, perhaps topping out around 150 bpm. This is not a characteristic of all dubstep - while there have been producers working in the genre for longer than grime has existed (the early dubstep scene began in perhaps 2000/2001) the rules and conventions of the sound are not as hard and fast as they are in its more widespread cousin. In any case, ‘halfstep’ drumlines mark out dubstep as a significantly different sound from its predecessors, in a way that only a few truly radical shifts in techno music have done. The change from techno to ‘ardkore, and from ‘ardkore to jungle, for example, are two moments that saw a radical stylistic shift in musicological terms.

The existence of halfstep convinces me that dubstep is more than just 'dark minimal breakbeat' because you don't even need breaks for it do be dubstep. that is nuts!

you seem slightly confused diana. dubstep isn't 'dark minimal breakbeat'. dark 2step maybe. if you trace dubstep back to 2step it's never had a dependency on breaks, and therefore isnt nuts at all.

and it's not 150bpm it's 138-140 bpm. 2step shifted upwards from house music's 128 bpm anchor to about 134bpm. dubstep shifted that upwards further to 138-140bpm (as did grime).

i've always heard amit's drum and bass described as half step and that mixes perfectly well with other dnb. makes perfect sense if you hear his stuff.

so maybe it's just half a break regardless of the tempo (could be dnb, dubstep or breaks or whatever).

UFO over easy wrote:Doesn't have anything to do with where the snare falls, it's just half the tempo. That's why it's easily mixable with 140bpm stuff. Gives the beats a more spacious feel, dubbier sounding...

it has everything to do with the snare. most dubstep producers have left their sequencers at 138 bpm and simply halved their snares-per-bar ratio. if there was some 'halving' process that triac seems to think there is, the hi hats would also have been more spaced out, which they're often not (cf skream tracks).

This is what Skream was talking about when he said: "I try and do halfstep with energy" in the interview i did with him in August. If you halved the hats you really start to lose all energy.

Blackdown wrote:you seem slightly confused diana. dubstep isn't 'dark minimal breakbeat'. dark 2step maybe. if you trace dubstep back to 2step it's never had a dependency on breaks, and therefore isnt nuts at all.

and it's not 150bpm it's 138-140 bpm. 2step shifted upwards from house music's 128 bpm anchor to about 134bpm. dubstep shifted that upwards further to 138-140bpm (as did grime).

I would say 'dark minimal breakbeat' is a pretty good way of describing dubstep to someone who has no clue what it is. Far more than dark 2step? 2step is garage. The music today has nothing to do with garage. Maybe it did 4 years ago, but it certainly doesn't now. That's like saying DnB is like Joey Beltram-era hardcore. More people/producers came to dubstep from DnB and breaks, certainly in the last 3-4 years.

And to really split hairs, dubstep is more 140 - 145 nowadays. And the upward shift from garage tempo was more from Zinc's 2000 - 2002 stuff than early dubstep (early Tempa stuff, which is more like 134) and those tunes can only be described as... breakbeat!

I have no time for breakbeat these days, but I don't think you can airbrush it out of the history of dubstep Blackdown, as hard as you try...

Blackdown wrote:it has everything to do with the snare. most dubstep producers have left their sequencers at 138 bpm and simply halved their snares-per-bar ratio. if there was some 'halving' process that triac seems to think there is, the hi hats would also have been more spaced out, which they're often not (cf skream tracks).

What difference does the settings you have on the sequencer make?! This is music, not mechanics.

Paulie wrote:I would say 'dark minimal breakbeat' is a pretty good way of describing dubstep to someone who has no clue what it is. Far more than dark 2step? 2step is garage. The music today has nothing to do with garage. Maybe it did 4 years ago, but it certainly doesn't now. That's like saying DnB is like Joey Beltram-era hardcore. More people/producers came to dubstep from DnB and breaks, certainly in the last 3-4 years.

i disagree. dubstep now might have nothing to do with the existing garage scene, but it has a direct linage back to it. so saying it had absolutely nothing to do with it is wrong. there is a heritage in beat programming from r&b-influenced 2step garage, a legacy of using single hit sounds, not looped breakbeats (or busy, break beat-like programming). hence why it's called dubstep.

Paulie wrote:I have no time for breakbeat these days, but I don't think you can airbrush it out of the history of dubstep Blackdown, as hard as you try...

I'm not airbrushing anything it's a question of definitions. there's a long, clear dubstep lineage back from the current scene through Horsepower to El-B back to Groove Chronicles and UK garage.

There's a parallel lineage of breaky stuff going from the current breakstep scene through Texture records, Oris and back into Zinc's influence with '138 Trek' which triggered the breakbeat garage era.

'dark minimal breakbeat' is a pretty good way of describing the evolution of breakbeat garage into breakstep. it's not an accurate way of describing dubstep.

these lose genre definitions might seem very specific, but they're not imposed top-down, they come bottom-up from the producers' tracks and sets themselves.

Paulie wrote:I would say 'dark minimal breakbeat' is a pretty good way of describing dubstep to someone who has no clue what it is. Far more than dark 2step? 2step is garage. The music today has nothing to do with garage. Maybe it did 4 years ago, but it certainly doesn't now. That's like saying DnB is like Joey Beltram-era hardcore. More people/producers came to dubstep from DnB and breaks, certainly in the last 3-4 years.

thank you for backing me up on that. I am aware that dubstep is originally derived from garage/2step, but I was more describing what it sounds like to me when i hear it. I thought breakbeat was a general enough term to use. Can't most beat-driven electronic music be divided into 2 groups: 4x4 and breakbeat?

Blackdown wrote:

UFO over easy wrote:Doesn't have anything to do with where the snare falls, it's just half the tempo. That's why it's easily mixable with 140bpm stuff. Gives the beats a more spacious feel, dubbier sounding...

it has everything to do with the snare. most dubstep producers have left their sequencers at 138 bpm and simply halved their snares-per-bar ratio. if there was some 'halving' process that triac seems to think there is, the hi hats would also have been more spaced out, which they're often not (cf skream tracks).

I don't really think of it like that, which is why I put 'if you think of it like that' - I completely agree halfstep is not just halving the tempo of the whole tune. Although I'd say it's not always just the snare that gets halved, sometimes the kick does too...