Grime

Grime drum frame: knock, gunshot, skip

Grime drums are few and loud. A kick with a knock in the 100–200 Hz zone, a snare or clap that peaks in the 2–4 kHz zone with a short gated room, and hats that play a skipping 8th/16th figure with gaps. The classic pattern mixes half-time (snare on 3) with extra kicks that suggest 4x4.

1. Kick: Drum Sampler, a short sample with a visible knock (a 909-ish or a sampled drum-machine kick pitched up). Decay 200–280 ms, Pitch to taste (fundamental 55–70 Hz), Punch 50%. Add Drum Buss Boom at 120 Hz, 15%, for the knock rather than sub.
2. Snare: layer a tight snare with a clap and, for the gunshot, a short white noise burst with a 50 ms decay and a 3 kHz bell boost. Hybrid Reverb Convolution room 0.5 s at 25% followed by Gate (hold 70 ms) for the clipped tail.
3. Hats: a 909 closed hat at low velocity with the skip pattern; an open hat only on the "&" of 2. Velocity 60–90, never full.
4. Woodblock or rim on a 3-step figure for the grime "tick".
5. Drum group: Saturator Analog Clip 3 dB, Glue Compressor 4:1, 3 ms attack, 100 ms release, 2 dB reduction. No reverb on the kick, ever.

Eski square sub (Operator square, PWM-like via two squares)

The hollow, cold grime sub: a square wave low-passed, sometimes with a second square slightly detuned to add a slow phase beat. Short notes, riffs that double the kick, sudden octave jumps.

1. Operator, parallel algorithm. Osc A Square 0 dB. Osc B Square with Fine +3 cents at −9 dB: the slow beating between the two squares is the eski "wobble" without any LFO.
2. Operator filter LP 24 at 200–250 Hz, resonance 0. Amp envelope A 1, D 200, S 0.5, R 30 ms. Retrigger, no glide, except for one slide per 8 bars with Glide 50 ms and Legato on for that note.
3. Riff: root on the kicks, a fifth or an octave on the "a" of 2 and 4, rests on beat 3 (the snare), the last beat of bar 8 silent or an octave down.
4. Saturator Soft Sine at 2 dB; the square already has harmonics, this is only for glue.
5. Notch 2 dB at the 3rd harmonic of your root (165 Hz for A0, 185 for A#0) if it collides with the kick knock at 140–200 Hz.

Variations: for the FM version used in a lot of 2010s grime, Osc B as a modulator at ratio 2 with level automated 0 → −20 dB over a bar gives a sub that "opens" like a filter; a TD-3 square through External Instrument with cutoff low and envelope mod off gives a hardware eski sub.

Eski square stab (Analog pulse + Erosion)

The sound of the genre: a bright square or pulse stab in parallel fifths, short, cold, slightly digital, playing an 8-bar riff that sits above the vocal range.

1. Analog: Osc 1 Square with pulse width around 30% (set by the Shape control), Osc 2 Square a fifth up (+7 st) at −4 dB. Filter 1 LP 12 dB at 3 kHz, filter envelope 30%, decay 90 ms.
2. Amp envelope A 1, D 120, S 0, R 60 ms. Every note is a stab; sustain is zero.
3. Riff: 2–3 notes in a minor pentatonic, on the "e" and "a" of beats, in a 1-bar cell varied every 2 bars and replaced every 8.
4. Erosion with the Sine mode at 2.8 kHz, 25%, for the digital edge the original hardware/tracker versions had; Redux mild (14-bit, downsample 2) for aliasing shimmer.
5. High-pass at 400 Hz so the stab never touches the sub or the kick knock; low-pass at 9 kHz so it does not fight the hats.

Orchestral string/brass hit (Sampler + Hybrid Reverb gate)

The dramatic string or brass stab, usually sampled from a cheap orchestral rompler sound, pitched into key and cut short. It supplies tension and marks the 8-bar switch.

1. Sampler with a string ensemble multisample (or a single resampled chord). Amp envelope attack 5 ms, decay 300–400 ms, sustain 0. Play a minor chord with a flat 2 on the "a" of 4 before each 8-bar switch and on beat 1 of the switch.
2. Add the Sampler's filter morph with a slight low pass and velocity → filter for dynamics.
3. Hybrid Reverb Dark Hall in series followed by a Gate so the hall is clipped at 150 ms: a huge space that disappears instantly, the grime version of the 80s gated hit.
4. EQ the 800 Hz mud out and add presence at 4 kHz; the hit must read on a phone.

Variations: for sinogrime, replace the strings with a plucked erhu or guzheng-style sample in Simpler, add Corpus with the String resonator, and play pentatonic melodies instead of hits; for brass, Tension with the Bow excitator on a bright setting gives a convincing cheap-synth-brass stab.

Gliding sine/triangle lead (Drift with Glide)

The icy, simple lead: a sine or triangle playing a slow pentatonic melody with glides, sitting high above the vocal, with a cold digital delay.

1. Drift, Mono voice, Legato on, Glide 60–120 ms. Osc 1 Triangle, Osc 2 Sine an octave up at −10 dB for a hint of air. Filter wide open; this sound has no filter movement.
2. Amp: A 10 ms, D 300, S 0.8, R 200. Vibrato from the LFO at 5.5 Hz, depth 6%, with a 400 ms LFO attack so long notes develop vibrato.
3. Melody: 4–6 notes over 8 bars with one glide per phrase; overlap notes slightly in the clip so Legato triggers the glide.
4. Delay (the simple one, not Echo) at 3/16 with its filter high-passing the repeats at 500 Hz; a Chorus-Ensemble at 10% for a touch of width.

Variations: Wavetable with a Basics Sine and the Unison in Shimmer mode, 2 voices, for the brighter "glass" version; Operator with Osc B at ratio 3 at −30 dB for a clarinet-like hollow lead that was typical of early tracker grime.

FX hits: gunshots, glass, reverse sweeps and the "air horn" substitute

Grime uses sampled FX as punctuation: a gunshot or glass smash on the switch, a reversed hit into bar 1, a short siren. Put them all on one Drum Rack so they are playable from Push.

1. Pads: gunshot (a snare layered with a noise burst and a 100 Hz sine thump, 400 ms), glass (a Collision hit with Membrane resonator at high stiffness, inharmonic), siren (Operator sine with a 1/2-bar LFO on pitch, ±5 st), reverse crash, vocal shout, a 2-note string hit, a sub drop (Operator sine pitch envelope −24 st over 600 ms).
2. Each gets its own Simpler with Warp off; pitch the gunshot −3 st and the glass +5 st to taste.
3. A shared Hybrid Reverb and Gate on the rack so every FX hit has the same clipped room.
4. A Limiter at −3 dB after the rack so the gunshot cannot overshoot the drums.

Weightless: drumless grime from Granulator III and Spectral Resonator

The weightless strain removes the drums and keeps the grime sound palette as suspended texture: stabs stretched by granular, string hits frozen, sub notes held, the rhythm implied by silence.

1. Resample 2 bars of your eski stab riff. Load into Granulator III, Grain Size 50–80 ms, Spray 20%, scan position frozen on one stab, random pitch over 12 st at 20% probability. Hold a note for 4 bars; the stab becomes a shimmering cloud.
2. Spectral Resonator in MIDI mode: play a minor chord into it from a MIDI track and the cloud is pitched to the chord with a 2 s decay. This is the weightless "frozen stab".
3. Keep the square sub playing its riff underneath, but with the amp decay stretched to 800 ms and the notes halved in density.
4. Place FX hits (glass, reverse crash) and single kick drums on the 8-bar boundaries only; the absence of a snare is the point.

8-bar switching with Macro Variations and Follow Actions

Grime structure is the sound design: every 8 bars something flips (the stab riff, the sub octave, the hat pattern). Build the switches into racks and clips so the arrangement writes itself.

1. In the stab rack, store four Macro Variations: A (filter 3 kHz, Erosion 25%), B (filter 1.5 kHz, Erosion 60%), C (octave up via the Pitch MIDI tool mapped to a macro), D (dry, no Redux). Each 8-bar section uses one.
2. Make 4 stab clips and 4 sub clips of 8 bars each; set Follow Actions to 8 bars, "Other" with 100% chance, so Live cycles through them in order.
3. Set the hat clip to 4 bars with a Follow Action "Any" at 30% chance so the hat pattern changes unpredictably but stays in phrase.
4. Record the Session performance into the Arrangement, then tidy the 8-bar boundaries and add FX hits at each switch.