A blast beat is the fastest groove in metal: kick, snare and cymbal hammering away at the smallest note in the bar. It is also the easiest beat to program badly. Put every hit on the grid at full velocity and it stops sounding like a drummer and starts sounding like a drill.

Programmed blasts give themselves away in three ways: every hit is the same strength, every hit sits exactly on the grid, and the pattern asks for more limbs than a drummer has. This guide goes through the main blast beats, the tempos they are played at, a step-by-step way to write one in MIDI, and what a real one looks like note by note, taken from a played MIDI file.

In this post:

• The blast beats you hear most
• How fast blast beats are
• Programming a blast, step by step
• What a played blast looks like
• Six mistakes that make blasts sound fake
• Questions

The blast beats you hear most

Drummers argue about the names, and the same name can mean slightly different things in different scenes. The patterns themselves are simple. Here are the three you hear most, drawn one bar each in 16th notes.

Skank beat

Kick and cymbal on each beat, snare on the “and”. It is half the density of a full blast, which is why it is used to set one up, to drop the energy for a bar, or on its own in punk-flavoured parts. If a section feels too frantic, try the skank beat before you try a slower tempo.

Traditional blast

Kick and cymbal hit together, then the snare, then kick and cymbal again, on every 16th note. Each limb only plays every other 16th, which is what makes it playable at speed. This is the classic death metal and black metal blast, sometimes called a Euro blast.

Hammer blast

Kick, snare and cymbal all together, on every 8th note. It sounds like a wall rather than a roll. Because everything lands at once, it can hide the riff underneath, so it works best in short bursts or under a simple chord.

Bomb blasts and gravity blasts

Two more names you will see. A bomb blast usually means a blast with the feet playing a constant stream of 16th notes on the double kick while the hands keep a blast pattern on top. A gravity blast is a hand technique: one hand pivots the stick on the snare rim to play two strokes per movement, so the snare sounds like a very fast roll. In MIDI, a gravity blast is just very fast snare notes, and it only sounds believable if the velocities rise and fall the way a roll does.

How fast blast beats are

Blast Beat Mania has 78 grooves and 11 rolls. The grooves sit between 174 and 234 BPM, and the tempo is in every file name. Most are at 200 BPM (27 grooves) and 186 BPM (20), which is where a lot of modern death metal lives.

What matters for programming is the space between notes. At these tempos a 16th note lasts well under a tenth of a second:

Tempo	One 16th note lasts	16th notes per second
174 BPM	86 ms	11.6
186 BPM	81 ms	12.4
200 BPM	75 ms	13.3
225 BPM	67 ms	15.0
234 BPM	64 ms	15.6

That is the whole kit. In a traditional blast each limb plays every other one of those notes, so at 200 BPM the kick foot plays about 6.7 hits a second. That is fast but real. If you program a pattern where one foot has to play all 13.3, you have written something only a machine can play, and listeners hear it.

Programming a blast, step by step

1. Set your project tempo first, and your grid to 1/16. The MIDI files in the packs carry no tempo of their own, so they play at whatever your project is set to.
2. Put the kick on every 8th note (1, &, 2, & …). For a bomb blast, fill in every 16th instead, and plan to use both feet.
3. Put the snare on the 16th notes in between (the “e” and “a” of each beat).
4. Put the cymbal on the same 16ths as the kick. Choose it by section: a ride or closed hat for the tightest sound, an open hi-hat or crash for more wash, a china for the heaviest parts.
5. Give each part a range of velocities instead of one number (see below), and accent the first note of the bar.
6. Loop two bars and listen. Then add a crash on the first beat of the section and a fill into it from the bar before.

Velocity: a range, not a number

In the played groove below, the snare plays 60 notes across the file, at velocities from 68 to 97, and 22 different values. Only 3 of its 59 pairs of neighbouring notes match. Copy that idea: pick a range for each drum (for example 70 to 100 for the snare, a little lower for the cymbal so the snare cuts through), and let the notes wander inside it. Your drum VST probably has several recorded samples per drum, one for each range of velocity, so different velocities trigger genuinely different hits.

Timing: less than you think

Across 901 hits from played grooves at 110 to 200 BPM, the typical hit was about 5 ms off the grid, and nearly three in four were within 10 ms. At blast speeds, a 16th note is only 75 ms long, so a nudge of 20 ms is already a quarter of the space between notes. Keep blasts tight: a few milliseconds of movement, not more.

Quick check: solo the cymbal track. If you can hear a steady tick-tick-tick at one volume, the whole blast will sound programmed. Vary it until the cymbal on its own sounds like someone playing it.

What a played blast looks like

This is groove 2.1 from Blast Beat Mania, at 200 BPM, shown as a piano roll: one lane per drum, and each hit drawn at its own strength. Under it, the velocity of every hit.

It opens with a crash and kick on the first beat and lets it ring for the rest of that beat. From beat 2, it is a traditional blast: kick and open hi-hat together on every 8th note, and the snare on every 16th in between. Look at the velocity lane. The hi-hat and kick are never flat, and the snare moves within its range from note to note. That movement is most of what makes it sound like a drummer.

Every groove in the packs was played by a drummer on an electronic kit and kept as MIDI, not typed in note by note.

Six mistakes that make blasts sound fake

1. Everything at velocity 127. Most drum VSTs have a separate sample for the hardest hits, and hearing it 13 times a second is exhausting. Keep the top of the range for accents.
2. One cymbal sample on repeat. If your VST has alternating samples for repeated hits (often called round robin), make sure they are on.
3. Four limbs doing five jobs. A crash, an open hi-hat and a snare on the same 16th needs three hands. Check each moment: two hands, two feet.
4. Blasting for too long. Real blast sections are broken up by fills, stops and a bar of skank beat. Eight bars of the same blast in a row sound like a loop.
5. A long, boomy kick. At 13 notes a second, each kick has 75 ms before the next one. Use a short, clicky kick sound, or the low end turns to mud.
6. No way in or out. Blasts land harder after a fill. The pack has 11 rolls for exactly this.

Questions

How fast is a blast beat?

Most blasts are played somewhere between about 170 and 240 BPM, counted in 16th notes. The grooves in Blast Beat Mania run from 174 to 234 BPM.

What is the difference between a blast beat and a skank beat?

A skank beat has the kick and cymbal on the beat and the snare on the “and”, so it has half the notes of a traditional blast. It is often used to lead into a full blast or to ease off from one.

Can a blast beat be played with one kick drum?

A traditional blast has the kick on every other 16th note, which trained drummers play with one foot at these tempos. A bomb blast, with kicks on every 16th, needs both feet or a double pedal. In MIDI it makes no difference, but it helps to write what a drummer could play.

Will these MIDI files work with my drum VST?

Yes. The packs use the General MIDI drum notes (kick 36, snare 38 and so on), which almost every drum VST can read. The General MIDI drum map lists every note.

If you would rather start from blasts that already breathe, Blast Beat Mania has 78 played blast grooves from 174 to 234 BPM, and 11 rolls to get into them.