Groove is the key to making people move. In this breakdown Leo dissects three complete grooves layer by layer, inspired by HotLap, Juno and the Magnifik label sound.
Each one runs on a different engine: a bell that pulls the track forward, an offbeat tom that makes it bounce, and a clap rhythm that sets the dancefloor on fire. One rule runs through all three. Leave space in every layer, because the next instrument’s job is to fill it.
Groove 1: The Bell-Driven Setup
The bell is the engine here. It has real tone, so it has to fit the key of the track, and the deep toms underneath give the groove its weight. Nothing in this setup is complicated on its own. Every new layer is an answer to the one before it, which only works because there were holes left to answer.
Key settings:
- Kick as the foundation, with a tom layered on top of it
- Tom MIDI kept deliberately simple: two notes, gap, one note, gap
- A second deep percussion doubling a couple of tom hits, but mostly landing in the gaps
- The bell one step more complex, reusing some positions and shifting others until most 16ths are filled
- A clave of two 16ths back to back, looped, there purely to push
- Two shakers: a loud one with a clear offbeat velocity accent, and a plain 16th one with gentle velocity movement
Groove 2: The Bouncy Setup
Your head starts nodding when something lands on the offbeat, so this groove puts a tom where the offbeat hi-hat would normally sit. The other idea running through it: every instrument gets exactly one frequency job. The clap is chopped in Simpler with the first transients cut off, because all it needs to deliver is high end. The lows and mids are already taken.
Key settings:
- Thumpy, sub-heavy kick, four on the floor
- Clap on 2 and 4, chopped in Simpler so only the back end of the sample survives
- Tom on the offbeats: three bounces, fourth one a rest, with the third bounce dragged a 16th later for syncopation
- A second low perc loop playing only where the tom is silent, so the two answer each other
- The same 16th pattern on a bell instead of a hat, EQ’d with lows and low-mids gone and the high end lifted
- The 3-and-4 trick: take a 16th pattern, delete the first two 16ths of each beat, loop it
- A rimshot on that pattern with the lows cut and the click boosted hard
- Open hat on the offbeats, plus a shaker loop and a hat loop for the top end
Groove 3: The High-Energy Setup
The clap is the engine of this one, playing a reggaeton-influenced rhythm that fills the mids and drives the track. There is no sidechain anywhere, and none is needed: the clap loop on the downbeat makes the kick sound bigger rather than masking it. That is sample selection, not processing. Simple test: if a layer makes the kick bigger, keep it. If it sounds hollow, it is the wrong sample.
Key settings:
- Punchy kick with a strong sub
- Clap on a reggaeton-influenced rhythm as the main engine, filling the mids
- Clap loop reinforcing every downbeat right on top of the kick, no sidechain
- Perc loop with a cowbell one 16th off the clap position, and that offset is where the speed comes from
- A plain 16th element holding the whole thing together
- Toms and bongos working as one for fills, plus a fast little tom loop to restart the pattern
- High-energy shakers and a ride with a long sustained high end over the whole track
- Mids left open, because that space belongs to the bass and the synths
Grab the full project
Want to open these grooves and pull the MIDI apart yourself? Savanna Vol. 1 has all three drum projects plus 530+ royalty-free samples and 65+ Serum 2 presets with matching MIDI.
Watch the full breakdown
See every layer added one at a time:
Reference tracks
Typical reference tracks for this style are:
- andhim, adémé, malou – Feel The Love (HotLap Remix)
- Juno (DE) – Last Dance
- Juno (DE), Jamek Ortega – Get Em Up
- Arodes, Ewersen – Too Young
- HotLap – SunBeam
- Meera (NO) – No Space
- Maxi Meraki, Samm (BE), Ajna (BE) – Look Around, It’s Gonna Be Fine
- Ewersen – Keep Trying
