Technohead - Happy Birthday - Mokum Records - Gabba

Information on the Gabba Genre

Gabber is characterised by its bass drum sound. Essentially, it comes from taking a normal synthesized bass drum and overdriving it heavily. The approximately sinusoidal sample starts to clip into a square wave with a falling pitch. This results in a number of effects: the frequency spectrum spreads out, thus achieving a louder, more aggressive sound. It also changes the amplitude envelope of the sound by increasing the sustain. Due to the distortion, the drum also develops a melodic tone. It is not uncommon for the bass drum pattern to change pitch throughout the song to follow the bass line.

The second frequently used component of gabber tracks is the "hoover", a patch of the Roland Alpha Juno synthesizer. A "hoover" is typically a distorted, grainy, sweeping sound which, when played on a low key, can create a dark and brooding bass line. Alternatively, when played at higher pitches, the hoover becomes an aggressive, shrieking lead. Faster gabba tracks often apply extremely fast hoover-patterns. The use of the hoover has evolved over the years, and in the nuskool genre, most tracks rely on a cleaner, detuned supersaw lead, similar to trance.

The aforementioned two subgenres of gabber differ in essentially one thing: the tempo.

* Oldskool gabber, staying true to its mentality, defines "hardness" in speed; tracks rarely go under 180 BPM, and bass drum rolls often go up to a speed where the beats themselves are hardly distinguishable from each other.
* Nuskool gabber, however, slows the speed down to 160 BPM, but extends the length of the bass drum so the bass-frequency resonance keeps on longer. (In this aspect, "nugabber" obviously cannot be considered less powerful than its precursor, although slower hardcore is often less energetic. A typical style is one made best known by Rotterdam Terror Corps: the beats are divided into triplets and all hoover notes are played in a short, staccato-like fashion, giving the song a march-like feel.