Hardstyle distorts its kick, lets the tail ring on as a tone, tunes it to the key and shifts it kick by kick – so at about 150 BPM the kick drum itself plays the bass line.
Every kick keeps time. Every tail plays a note.
Facts
- Hardstyle grew out of Dutch hardcore (gabber) and hard trance around 2000: the first tracks date from about 1999 and Q-dance's Qlubtempo nights began in February 2001. A Q-dance co-founder says the name was coined in a brainstorm from “hardcore” and “old style”.
- It usually runs at about 150 BPM. Early tracks sat around 140–150; many current ones run 150–160.
- The kick goes through distortion and EQ in series to bring out its harmonics, and its tail rings on as a tone. A cleaner kick can be layered back in to restore the punch.
- Producers tune that tail to the key and shift its pitch from kick to kick – “pitching” the kick – so the kick plays the bass line. The technique spread in the mid-2000s.
- Early hardstyle had a separate offbeat bass between the kicks, the “reverse bass”. Around 2006 it largely gave way to long, distorted kicks, though reverse bass is still played as a classic style.
- With the bass inside the kick, a hardstyle track often has no separate bass at all: mute the kick and the bass line goes with it.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Hardstyle · Wikipedia checked 7 October 2026
- Native Instruments Blog: How to make a hardstyle track (Tim Cant, 2024) · Native Instruments checked 7 October 2026
- Hard News: What is Hardstyle? (Wouter de Vink, 2015) · Hard News checked 7 October 2026
- Hardstyle Mag: Story of Hardstyle (2014) · Hardstyle Mag checked 7 October 2026
- EDMProd: How to make hardstyle (Simon Haven, 2023, updated 2025) · EDMProd checked 7 October 2026
- EDMProd: What is hardstyle? (Simon Haven, 2025) · EDMProd checked 7 October 2026
- VPRO 3voor12: Hoe Q-Dance de hardstyle uitvond – interview with Wouter Tavecchio (Atze de Vrieze, 2017) · VPRO 3voor12 checked 7 October 2026
- Nye: review of van Bergen, Dutch Dance 1988–2018 (Dancecult 13/1, 2021) · Dancecult checked 7 October 2026
- Q-dance: Qlubtempo #1 – 24 February 2001 (archived event page) · Q-dance checked 7 October 2026
- The Guardian: Gift of the gabber – the return of dance music's gloriously tasteless subgenre (Joe Muggs, 2020) · The Guardian checked 7 October 2026
- Sound On Sound: Synth Secrets – Synthesizing drums: the bass drum (Gordon Reid, 2002) · Sound On Sound checked 7 October 2026
- Attack Magazine: How to make your own kick drums in Diva (2026) · Attack Magazine checked 7 October 2026
- Sound On Sound: Q. How do I tune my kick-drum samples to fit with my song? (2010) · Sound On Sound checked 7 October 2026
- Native Instruments Blog: Kick drum EQ (2024) · Native Instruments checked 7 October 2026
- Native Instruments Blog: Distortion in music (2023) · Native Instruments checked 7 October 2026
- MusicTech: Sonic Academy Kick 3 review (Alex Holmes, 2025) · MusicTech checked 7 October 2026
- Attack Magazine: How it was made – Go Hard or Go Hardcore Vol 1 (2024) · Attack Magazine checked 7 October 2026
- Wikipedia (German): Hardstyle · Wikipedia checked 7 October 2026
All sound is original: synthesised for the episode, no samples, no licensed tracks. The narrator’s voice is AI-generated. General information. Features differ by software, player and version – check your own manual. Read how facts are checked and corrected.
Script
150 kicks a minute. Each one's a bass note. A normal kick: a short thump, dropping in pitch. Hardstyle distorts it again and again and lets the tail ring. That tail is a tone, so producers tune it to the key, then shift it, kick by kick. Listen: a bass line. Hardstyle grew out of Dutch hardcore and hard trance around 2000. Early tracks had a separate offbeat bass: the “reverse bass”. By the mid-2000s, the kick itself was playing the notes. Often there's no separate bass at all. Mute the kick… and the bass line goes too. Every kick keeps time. Every tail plays a note.
Sources last checked 7 October 2026.