Garage is a genre of electronic music originating from the United Kingdom in the early 1990s. The genre usually features a distinctive syncopated 4/4 percussive rhythm with 'shuffling' hi-hats and beat-skipping kick drums. Garage tracks also commonly feature 'chopped up' and time-shifted or pitch-shifted vocal samples complementing the underlying rhythmic structure at a tempo usually around 130 BPM. UK garage was largely subsumed into other styles of music and production in the mid-2000s, including Dubstep, Bassline and Grime. The decline of UK garage during the mid-2000s saw the birth of UK Funky, which is closely related.[1]
Commonly Referenced Subgenres:
Future Garage: its main characteristicsare pitched vocal chops, warm filtered reese basses, dark, somber, serious atmospheres, synth pads, field recordings, the use of vinyl crackle and foley for world and atmosphere building, the employment of foley percussion hits as snare and metallic preshifted percussion swung into the "snare", which is, most of the times, a rimshot or grainy, foley percussion, as well. Intense filtering can be met and organic / acoustic drums can also be heard. Characteristic syncopated / shuffled hi-hats , cymbals are usually included. The drum patterns can range from straight halftime patterns to VERY irregular 2-step patterns, with beat skipping percussion elements), while the tempo is usually centered from around 130 to 140 bpm, but can also be slower or faster, like with the case of Virtual Riot - "Part Of Me" (115 BPM). Examples:
UK Garage (UKG): Tends to featurea distinctive (less syncopated than 2-step Garage) mainly 4-on-the-floor percussive rhythm with syncopated hi-hats, cymbals, oldschool rimshot / clap samples, and sometimes includes irregular kick drum patterns. Soulful / R&B female vocals in chopped or unchopped variants are also a characteristic of this genre. Funky basslines are often accompanying. A characteristic of this subgenre is the sampling, employing the use of old-school "rave" stab / pluck samples and even singular piano notes rearranged, hence an imperfect, "detuned" sound quality may be heard. Examples:
2-Step Garage: features beat-skipping kick drums, with shuffled, jittery and broken up rhytms. Triplet grooves are often applied to other elements of the percussion for more interesting structures. Syncopation is key in this subgenre. "2-Step" and "UK Garage" are used interchangeably by some, being a matter of nuance. Example:
Stephen Emannuel presents "Colours" & June Hamm - "Hold On" (Se22 Mix)
Bassline / UK Bassline / Bassline Garage: the precursor to Bass House, makes great use of the iconic garage shuffles, swing, beat-skipping, triplet grooves and off-beat patterns, for the hi-hat and kick - snare (which is replaced by a clap sometimes) structure. Having developed from the stylistic origins of UK Garage, Grime and Speed Garage, It features distinct, oldschool, simple wavetable FM (frequency modulation), Crookers / Pressure Cooker styled synths that could be described as screechy, muffled or nasal. Usually found at higher tempos than Bass House, around 130-150 BPM. . Examples: