A genre detour. The Roland TR-808 drum machine changed music. This lesson explores it.
Genre: Phonk, trap, Memphis rap. 140bpm, 808 bass, distortion, cowbell.
Optional: This lesson is a sidebar. The main thread continues in L5 (Movement). Come here when you want to explore a different genre with the same tools.
What you already know: Everything from L0-L4b.
140bpm instead of 170. Four beats per cycle: 140 / 4 = 35 cycles per minute.
At this tempo, each kick has more silence around it. Listen to the gap between hits.
Add a clap on beat 3 and hi-hats:
One sound that defines this genre:
The cowbell sits in a higher frequency range than anything else in the pattern. That contrast is why you hear it first.
Hip-hop subgenre rooted in Memphis rap. Heavy 808 bass, cowbell, dark atmosphere. 130–145 BPM. What you just heard is the skeleton.
Try s("cb(5,8)") for a euclidean cowbell. Or s("cb*8").gain("0 0.5 0 0.7 0 0.5 0 0.9") for accented eighth notes.
The DnB reese used two detuned sawtooths. Phonk bass is simpler: a sine wave with a long tail.
The Roland TR-808 drum machine used this exact circuit for its kick: an oscillator that decays. Producers started pitching it down and holding it longer. The kick became the bass.
Give it a pattern. Two notes from C minor:
C, then E-flat. Root and minor third. Two pitches give the bass a melodic shape.
A sine oscillator shaped by a decay envelope. Long tail, low pitch. The pitch gives it melody; the decay length determines whether it sounds like a kick or a bass note. Named after the Roland TR-808.
Clean 808s work. Distorted 808s bite:
.distort() clips the sine wave, adding harmonics above the fundamental. A clean sine is a sub. A distorted sine is a phonk 808.
Try .distort(0.1) for subtle warmth. .distort(0.8) for aggressive clipping. Add .crush(8) after distort for bit-crushing.
Roland released the TR-808 in 1980. It was supposed to sound like real drums. It didn’t. The kick was a sine wave that decayed exponentially, generated by a bridged-T oscillator circuit. Real kick drums don’t sound like that. Roland discontinued it in 1983.
The 808 kick produces a decaying sine:
Orange: the actual waveform. Dashed: the exponential envelope. Same shape as note("c2").s("sine").decay(0.5).sustain(0). Same math, not an approximation.
In the early 1990s, Memphis producers (DJ Paul, Juicy J, Three 6 Mafia) started using the 808 kick as a melodic bass instrument. They tuned it, pitched it, ran patterns with it. Trap and phonk both descend from this technique.
Short decay: a kick. Medium: a bass hit. Long: a sub note. Same oscillator, different envelope. The decay knob decides what instrument this is.
The full track. Drums, cowbell, 808, pad. Put your bass approach from the exercises above into the capstone, or use the one here as a starting point.
note("<[c3,eb3,g3] [f3,ab3,c4] [ab2,c3,eb3] [bb2,d3,f3]>") for i–iv–VI–VII. Update the 808 roots to match: <[c2 ~ c2 ~ eb2 ~ c2 ~] [f2 ~ f2 ~ ab2 ~ f2 ~] [ab2 ~ ab2 ~ c2 ~ ab2 ~] [bb2 ~ bb2 ~ d2 ~ bb2 ~]>.s("sd(3,16)").gain(0.2).pan(0.4).note("~ <eb4 g4> ~ <c4 eb4>").s("square")
.lpf(2000).decay(0.06).sustain(0)
.gain(0.3).pan(0.65)
.delay(0.15).delaytime(0.125).delayfeedback(0.2)| tool | does | looks like |
|---|---|---|
| .room() | reverb amount (0–1) | .room(0.5) |
| .size() | reverb room size | .size(0.8) |
| .delay() | delay wet level (0–1) | .delay(0.3) |
| .delaytime() | gap between echoes | .delaytime(0.125) |
| .delayfeedback() | echo repeats (0–1) | .delayfeedback(0.4) |
| .distort() | waveshaping distortion | .distort(0.4) |
| [a,b,c] | play notes simultaneously (chord) | note("[c3,eb3,g3]") |
| <> with chords | chord progression (one per cycle) | note("<[c3,eb3,g3] [ab2,c3,eb3]>") |
| setcpm(35) | 140 BPM (phonk tempo) | setcpm(35) |
808 bass: sine, decayed, distorted, following chord roots. Drums: kick, clap (reverbed), hats, cowbell (delayed). Pad: sawtooth chord progression, filtered, reverbed. Everything in C minor.
Next: Movement. Transforms that make a track evolve.
Tracks that demonstrate this lesson’s concepts.
| artist | track | why |
|---|---|---|
| Motoi Sakuraba | Dark Souls: Firelink Shrine (2011) | (game) sparse guitar in massive reverb. The room is the instrument. |
| Manaka Kataoka | Zelda BotW: Temple of Time (2017) | (game) piano notes in silence. Delay trails as composition. |
| Koji Kondo | Zelda OoT: Temple of Time (1998) | (game) choir pad + bells. The original atmospheric Zelda. |
| Three 6 Mafia | Tear Da Club Up (1995) | (Memphis rap) foundational Memphis phonk |
| Tommy Wright III | Ashes 2 Ashes, Dust 2 Dust (1994) | (Memphis rap) bedroom lo-fi Memphis |
| DJ Smokey | Evil Wayz (2013) | (phonk) bridged classic Memphis with modern phonk |
| Kaito Shoma | Scary Garry (2016) | (drift phonk) first drift phonk, blown-out cowbell |
| DJ Paul | Wanna Go to War (1994) | (Memphis rap) solo production, the 808 as melodic instrument |
The 808 was a commercial failure. Memphis rap turned it into the most important instrument in modern music.
Ikutaro Kakehashi founded Roland in 1972. The TR-808 used analog synthesis (not samples) to generate drum sounds, a design choice driven by cost, not aesthetics. It couldn’t sound like real drums. Musicians hated it. Roland made about 12,000 units and discontinued production. Then Marvin Gaye used it on “Sexual Healing” (1982), Afrika Bambaataa used it on “Planet Rock” (1982), and it became the backbone of electro, freestyle, and early hip-hop.
DJ Paul (Paul Beauregard) and Juicy J (Jordan Houston) started making beats in North Memphis as teenagers, dubbing tapes and selling them out of car trunks. Equipment was whatever they could afford, often an 808 or SP-1200. The lo-fi quality wasn’t a choice. They used the 808 kick as a tuned bass instrument, running melodic patterns that carried the entire low end. Three 6 Mafia’s Mystic Stylez (1995) codified the sound: dark samples (horror movies, soul records), heavy 808, reverb-drenched vocals. Tommy Wright III, Gangsta Pat, and Koopsta Knicca operated in the same ecosystem.
DJ Smokey and SpaceGhostPurrp began sampling Three 6 Mafia vocals over new production in the early 2010s, calling it “phonk.” Kaito Shoma’s “Scary Garry” (2016) added the signature blown-out cowbell, launching “drift phonk.” By 2021, phonk had crossed into mainstream TikTok culture. The aesthetic is deliberately lo-fi—an homage to the Memphis tapes’ constraints.
Sources: Reid, “History of Roland” (2004); Miller, “Memphis Rap” in Oxford Handbook of Hip-Hop Music (2022); Bein, “How Phonk Went From Memphis Rap Underground to Global Phenomenon,” Billboard (2022).