Speed garage: a practice guide
Four on the floor, with a bassline that does most of the talking.
What it is
Speed garage is a branch of UK garage from the mid-to-late 1990s that kept the steady four-to-the-floor kick of house music and paired it with heavy, aggressive basslines. It borrowed freely from jungle and drum and bass, and from reggae and dub sound-system culture: rewinds, sirens, echo and vocal shouts. It was built for big club systems, and it reached the charts too before 2-step took over as the dominant garage sound.
Its pairing of a straight kick with a rude, prominent bassline carried on into later British styles, most directly into bassline house in the north of England.
How it sounds
- Four-to-the-floor kick. A kick on every beat, as in house. This is the clearest difference from 2-step.
- Bass up front. The bassline is the hook. It’s often distorted, bent in pitch or filtered so it seems to talk.
- Shuffled percussion. Hats and shakers swing, though often less than in 2-step, because the steady kick already drives the track.
- Dub effects. Echo, delay throws, sirens and reggae-style vocal samples.
Tempo and feel
Speed garage runs at 128 to 135 BPM. Despite the name, it isn’t much faster than other UK garage. The “speed” describes the energy of the bass and drums more than the tempo. The feel is more insistent than 2-step: the kick never lets up, so the swing on the hats adds bounce on top of a straight pulse rather than replacing it.
How to practise it
Lock to the kick. Use the four-on-the-floor preset, two clicks per beat and no swing. Play or programme a bassline that hits with the kick on some beats and between them on others, and keep it tight to the click.
Add the shuffle on top. Switch to the swung-hats preset, four clicks per beat at a modest swing. Keep the kick straight in your head while the hats lean. Holding a straight pulse and a swung one at the same time is the core skill of the style.
For DJs. Long, steady kick patterns make speed garage tracks easy to blend. Practise finding tempos with tap tempo and mixing them with other four-to-the-floor music around the same BPM.