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Gated-Reverb Stadium Pop

Genre: Gated Reverb Pop · Tempo: 104 BPM · Time signature: 4/4 · Length: 16 steps · Style: 1980s gated-reverb stadium pop: a building tom roll into one massive, cut-off snare hit per bar

Open this pattern in the interactive Patchpad (with playback)

The pattern

InstrumentSteps (1 = start of the bar)VelocityTiming and chance
kick1, 990-100on the grid, always plays
snare9127on the grid, always plays
tom-low670on the grid, always plays
tom-mid785on the grid, always plays
tom-hi8100on the grid, always plays
hat-closed3, 1135on the grid, always plays

Digitakt II

Tracks

Digitone II

Tracks

Syntakt

Tracks

Notes

An original pattern built around the single most famous drum-machine-era production technique of the 1980s: a tom roll ascending in pitch and velocity across three toms, landing exactly on one massive, artificially cut-off snare hit per bar. The technique -- popularised by Hugh Padgham and Steve Lillywhite's work with Peter Gabriel, and made iconic by Phil Collins's 'In the Air Tonight' -- is a noise gate strapped across a reverb return, so the tail goes from full to nothing in milliseconds rather than decaying naturally; that gate has to live on the mixer/FX chain, not in step data, so the parameter locks here just get the dry hit maximally short and loud, leaving as much reverb as possible to be gated. Not a transcription of any specific song.

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