Trap drum machine: program 808 sub bass and rolling hi-hats in your browser
Trap is built on a half-time skeleton: the tempo reads 130-150 BPM, but the snare or clap only lands once per bar, on beat 3, so the whole groove feels like it moves at half speed. Underneath sits the 808 - a long, saturated sine sub that plays the actual bassline, glides between notes, and rings out far past the kick that triggers it. The movement comes from the hats: straight 8ths or 16ths that suddenly break into stutters and rolls, with an open hat on an offbeat to let the bar breathe.
How to program trap drums
- Write the 808 line first, then put a short punchy kick on top of every 808 note. The kick supplies the transient click, the 808 supplies the pitch and the sustain - if the kick also has a long low tail, the low end turns to mud.
- Keep the backbeat sparse: one snare (layered with a clap for width) on beat 3 of each bar, nothing on 2 or 4. Save extra snare hits for a two- or three-note roll in the last half-beat of bar 2 as a pickup back into the loop.
- Program hats as accent plus ghost, never a flat line: 0.85-0.9 velocity on the downbeats, 0.4-0.5 in between, then three or four consecutive 16ths with rising velocity where you want a roll. An open hat on an offbeat 16th is the classic trap lift - keep it in the same choke group so the next closed hat cuts it off.
- Leave swing at 0. Trap is rigidly straight; the feel comes from velocity contrast and from syncopating the kick against the 808, not from pushing the offbeats late.
Other styles
- Boom Bap drum machine88-94 BPM
- Lo-Fi Hip Hop drum machine70-85 BPM
- House drum machine120-126 BPM
- Techno drum machine130-140 BPM
- Drum and Bass drum machine172-176 BPM
- Afro House drum machine120-124 BPM
- UK Garage drum machine130-135 BPM
- Funk drum machine100-110 BPM
- 808 drum machine100-130 BPM
Rhythm breakdowns
- The Jungle Break: Syncopated Snares at 172172 BPM
- Boom Bap at 90 BPM: the dusty backbeat90 BPM
- Dilla-style drunk swing87 BPM
- Four on the Floor124 BPM
- The hip hop skeleton: kick on 1, snare on 2 and 4, ghosts in the gaps90 BPM
- The Full House Groove: Four on the Floor, Offbeat Hats and a Rolling Shaker124 BPM
- The Dembow Riddim96 BPM
- Trap Hi-Hats: 8ths, 32nd Bursts and a Triplet Turnaround140 BPM
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.