Trip-hop is a slow, moody, atmospheric style: a dusty hip hop breakbeat, a deep warm bass, jazzy and cinematic samples and Rhodes chords, all wrapped in a late-night haze of crackle and hiss. Here is what each part is and how they fit together.
Works in any DAW, with any sampler or synth. Nothing here needs a particular plugin.
Trip-hop is downtempo hip hop with the tempo pulled down and the mood turned up. It grew out of the Bristol scene in the early 1990s, where producers set slow, dusty hip hop breakbeats under soul, jazz, dub and electronica and let the whole thing sit in a hazy, late-night atmosphere. If you have heard Massive Attack, Portishead or Tricky, that is the sound most people point to, though the style spread well beyond any one act.
The parts are fairly consistent from track to track:
The overall feeling is melancholic, hazy and late-night, and that mood matters as much as any single part. Most of what defines trip-hop lives in a small set of choices:
| Element | Typical | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Tempo | 60 to 90 BPM | Slow and heavy, often felt in half time |
| Drums | Dusty breakbeat | A softened hip hop backbeat that sounds like an old break |
| Bass | Deep and warm | One rounded root note per chord, low and brooding |
| Chords | Rhodes, 7ths and 9ths | Jazzy, soulful and slightly unresolved |
| Samples | Jazz, soul, cinematic | Short loops you are cleared to use, for mood and harmony |
| Atmosphere | Crackle, hiss, scratches | The hazy, late-night wear laid over everything |
Program a slow, dusty breakbeat, often felt in half time, and sit a deep, warm bass under it that mostly follows the root of the chords. The beat and the bass are the floor the whole mood rests on, so they stay simple and heavy.
Trip-hop runs slow, usually somewhere around 60 to 90 BPM. The drums are a hip hop backbeat, kick on beat 1, snare on beats 2 and 4, hats in the gaps, but softened and roughed up so they sound like an old sampled break rather than a clean kit. A lot of tracks are felt in half time, with the main snare landing once a bar, which makes the groove feel even heavier and more dragging than the tempo alone. The backbeat and the swing work exactly as they do in any hip hop beat, written up in how to make hip hop beats.
Keep it deep, warm and simple. Usually one rounded note per chord, the root, low enough to fill the bottom of the track but played with restraint so it broods rather than bounces. As with any beat, leave the low end clear where the kick lands, or the bass and the kick fight and the bottom of the mix turns to mud.
Jazzy, soulful and cinematic samples and Rhodes-style chords, aged until they sound like an old record. This layer carries most of the harmony and most of the mood.
The harmony leans jazzy and unresolved: electric piano in a Rhodes-style tone, extended chords built on 7ths and 9ths rather than plain triads, and short loops of soul, jazz or something with a cinematic, slightly sad feel. Strings, horns, a filmy orchestral swell or a lone vocal snippet all fit, because trip-hop borrows the drama of a soundtrack as much as the swing of hip hop. Keep the loop short and let it repeat, the way a lo-fi beat does, since the repetition is part of the hypnotic pull.
A sample is someone else's recording, and trip-hop was built on samples, so this matters here as much as anywhere. If you sample a record you do not have permission to use, that is copyright infringement, no matter how much you filter or chop it. So work from material you are allowed to use: your own recordings, royalty-free or properly licensed packs, or a Rhodes part or loop you play in yourself. A lot of the mood comes from how you treat the sound, not from whose record it came off.
Stack vinyl crackle, tape hiss, scratches, reverb and space until the track feels hazy, melancholic and late-night. In trip-hop the atmosphere is not a finishing touch, it is close to half the genre.
Everything gets aged and darkened rather than left clean and bright:
Trip-hop is melancholic, hazy and slow on purpose. If a choice makes the track brighter, cleaner or more upbeat, it is usually pulling against the genre. When in doubt, darker and dustier is the safer way.
Most of a trip-hop track is quick to program. The part that is genuinely hard to fake by hand is the aged, drifting loop underneath: a chord or a sample that keeps moving and wearing out so it never sounds like the same two bars pasted end to end.
SILT is a generative tape-loop instrument. Run your own sample or a Rhodes chord through it and it wears the loop down with wow, flutter, crackle and hiss until it becomes the dusty, tape-worn haze that trip-hop lives on. It runs in the browser, or as an Audio Unit, a VST3, an AAX and a standalone.
It works on your own material, so the character comes from a loop you are allowed to use. It does not program your drums or write your bass; it makes the aged, drifting layer that the rest of the track sits on.
Free to hear in the browser, no signup. Everything above still works by hand in any DAW, which is rather the point of writing it down.
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