What is a drop in music?
A drop is the moment a dance track hits: after a build-up has raised the tension, the full beat, the bass and the hook land together on the first beat of a new bar. It is dance music’s version of a chorus, the part the whole track is built around. A drop only feels big because of what comes before it, so the player below adds the set-up one layer at a time.
Build a drop, one layer at a time
Start at 1 and work up to 4. The drop itself is the same in every version; only what leads into it changes.
Make a drop of your own
Unit 1 of the course is free with a Google sign-in: the loop, the beat and your first beat on the grid. Build-ups and drops are in Unit 7, Form and energy.
Pick up where you left off
Carry on with Unit 1; song structure is Unit 7.
The four versions
1 · Straight in
Eight bars of verse, then the drop. It is louder and fuller, but it arrives with no warning, so it sounds like the next section rather than a moment.
2 · Add a build-up
The last four bars before the drop become a build-up: a snare roll that speeds up, a filter that opens, and the kick and bass dropping out for the final bar. Now you can feel the drop coming.
3 · Add a riser
A rising sweep of noise and tone climbs across the build and stops dead on the downbeat. A riser is a countdown you can hear.
4 · Add silence
The last beat before the drop is empty. A moment of nothing makes the first beat of the drop hit harder, because it follows nothing at all.
What lands in this drop
The kick on every beat (four on the floor), a clap on 2 and 4, an open hat between the kicks, an off-beat bass, wide supersaw chords and the hook, which hasn’t been heard before. The sidechain pump ducks the bass and chords under every kick, and a crash marks the first beat.
Notice that the hook is new. Saving one part for the drop gives the listener something they haven’t heard yet, not just more of the same.
Drops in different styles
- House: the full groove comes back, the kick and bass first of all. The drop is about the beat more than a melody.
- Trance: the big supersaw chords and the lead melody are the drop; the build before it is often long, 16 bars or more.
- Trap and dubstep: the drop is half-time, with the snare once a bar, so it feels heavier and slower even though the tempo is the same. The bass carries it.
- Drum & bass: the two-step break and a growling Reese bass arrive together at 174 BPM.
How to make a drop hit harder
- Take more away before it. The drop is measured against the bar before it. The emptier that bar, the bigger the drop.
- Land it on a phrase. Put the drop on the first bar of an 8 (bar 9, 17, 33), where the ear expects a change.
- Leave a gap. A beat or two of silence, or just the kick and bass cut, right before the downbeat.
- Save something for it. One part the listener hears for the first time in the drop.
All four are ways of making the listener wait, and waiting is what makes the payoff. The course’s Tension and release lesson builds a drop this way.