74 BPM
Drums
Bass
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4/4
Drag rhythmic values into up to 4 beat blocks per line to build a drum groove, or click a tile then click a block to place it — handy on a trackpad.
Jamaica's drumming changed popular music worldwide. Ska, in the early 1960s, put a skipping shuffle on the off-beats; rocksteady slowed it down; and reggae, by the end of the decade, turned the beat inside out.
The one drop leaves beat 1 empty and drops the kick and rimshot together on beat 3. Rockers puts the kick on every beat, and steppers (four on the floor with the rim on 3) became the pulse of roots and dub. Reggae was added to UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage in 2018.
Want to play along, or build a song from these? Open them in Drum Loops → Each beat becomes a loop you can edit, with fills, a count-in and a song.