Answer · Groove
What swing percentage gives the classic drum-machine feel?
The classic drum-machine feel sits between 54 and 58 percent swing on sixteenth notes. On that scale 50 percent is straight and 66 percent is a full triplet shuffle. Around 54 to 56 percent loosens a straight beat without it being heard as swing, and 58 to 62 percent is a clear bounce.
What the number means
Swing moves the second sixteenth note of each pair. The percentage is where that note falls within the pair: 50 percent puts it exactly halfway, and 66.7 percent puts it two thirds of the way along, which is a triplet.
At 120 BPM a pair of sixteenths lasts 250 ms, so the off-beat note is delayed like this:
| Swing | Off-beat note arrives | Later than straight | Feel |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50 % | 125 ms | 0 ms | Straight |
| 54 % | 135 ms | 10 ms | Loosened, not heard as swing |
| 58 % | 145 ms | 20 ms | A light bounce |
| 62 % | 155 ms | 30 ms | Obvious swing, still short of a triplet |
| 66.7 % | 167 ms | 42 ms | Full triplet shuffle |
The delays scale with tempo. At 90 BPM each is a third longer, which is why the same percentage feels lazier on a slow beat.
Choosing a value
- 54 to 56 % for house, techno and straight hip-hop that should breathe a little.
- 57 to 62 % for boom-bap, swung garage and new jack swing.
- 63 to 66 % for shuffles and anything that should read as triplets.
The values just under a full triplet are the ones a drum machine does better than notation: the note is late enough to bounce and not late enough to sound like a different rhythm.
It is not only timing
Swing the hi-hats and percussion and leave the kick and snare on the grid, and the beat keeps its weight while the top moves. Lower the velocity of the swung notes as well. A late, quiet off-beat is most of the feel.
In Zammoth
A MIDI clip's Quantize menu has straight and swung grids at 1/8 and 1/16. For anything between, a groove template shifts the timing at playback without moving the notes: Zammoth ships 176 of them, grouped in families such as Swing and PushSwing and applied at 25, 50, 75 or 100 percent, on MIDI and on warped audio clips. A groove can also be extracted from a clip whose feel you like and applied to another. See the manual on grooves.
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