Create a UK Garage drum loop in a few minutes

The UK Garage genre is pretty unique - and a lot of that uniqueness comes from the drums. Especially the swing of the drum components. Swing that really makes your body move!

I will show how to create a typical UK Garage drum loop - and it will not take many minutes to create. I promise 🙂

Let’s go!

NOTE: If you want to watch a video with me showing how to create a UK Garage drum loop, then have a look below:

1. Find a kickdrum for your UK Garage drum loop

Set the tempo of your project to 132 bpm - That’s usually the tempo of UK Garage.

In UK Garage you are not bound to use the standard 4-to-the-floor pattern.

No - in UK Garage drums you spent time playing with the 16th notes to give your loop a more “breakbeat” type vibe.

Find the samples you would like to use. Load them into your sampler.

TIP: Use the FPC (Fruity Pad Controller) to create your drum loop. Then you can keep all the sounds in one pattern.

You can program a kick pattern like this, as seen below:

Create a UK Garage house drum loop in a few minutes - LÄMMERFYR

Don’t forget to add some swing quantisation to the kick pattern - it’s the secret sauce to adding swing and groove.

In FL Studio, click on the “Tool” button and select “Quantize”. If you would like some swing presets for FL Studio, you can download my FREE Swing Preset Pack.

TIP: Also try to adjust the velocity level on some of the “ghost notes” (the kickdrum note hitting on the 16th grid). This will give you a more dynamic UK Garage Drum loop.

It should sound a bit like this:

[Also read]: How to create house kick drum in 5 min. 👈

2. Add rhythm with claps and snares

The clap and snare also play a major role in your UK Garage drum loop.

Find a clap and snare sound that you like. I like to use tight and short sounds.

Use the clap on the 2 and 4 beat.

Here is where the magic happens: use the snare sound on some of the 16th notes with a bit of swing to add some bounce to the UK Garage drum loop.

You can copy the pattern as seen below:

Create a UK Garage house drum loop in a few minutes

It should sound a bit like this:

Let’s move to the hihats!

3. Add some hihats to the UK Garage drum loop

As for almost all other House genres, applying an open hihat on the offbeat will give you that head-bopping groove and rhythm that is also a huge part of the signature of UK Garage drums.

But to spice up the groove of the loop, add a couple of closed hihats on some of the 16th notes.

Here we also add some swing and adjust the velocity a bit.

This is the pattern we get:

Create a UK Garage house drum loop in a few minutes - LÄMMERFYR

It should sound a bit like this:

Now the UK Garage drum loop is starting to take form. But we can add a bit more groove with some interesting percussion sample shots.

4. Use percussion to add more groove to the UK Garage drum loop

I love to use sounds such as rimshots, congas, tambourines, shakers, and other small bits. And that is what we going to do for this drum loop as well.

The rimshot is used a lot in UK Garage to get that “shuffly” feel to the drum loop. I use them on the 16th notes or “ghost notes”. They add a tonne of rhythm!

The shaker is used on all 16th notes and with velocity changes on the downbeat and offbeat. Together with the swing preset, it gets really groovy.

I then add a pedal hat on every downbeat to introduce some dynamic change in the drum loop.

A couple of tambourine hits on some 16th notes with swing quantization applied.

You can copy the pattern as seen below:

Create a UK Garage house drum loop in a few minutes - LÄMMERFYR