Footwork
House · 2012 · 155 to 165 BPM · also known as Footwerk, Chicago Footwork
Born from Chicago dance battles at the end of the 2000s, footwork pushes juke into abstraction: 160 beats per minute, triplet toms set against offbeat kicks, vocal samples repeated into hypnosis, and brutal silences. It is functional music for dancers and a rhythmic vertigo for everyone else. Planet Mu introduced it to the world, Teklife keeps the house, and RP Boo followed by DJ Rashad stand as its architects. Its polyrhythms are so dense and its cuts so sudden that the music can feel disorienting on record even as it remains, for the dancers it was built for, a precise and functional tool.
10 reference tracks
- Traxman: The Comeback (2012)
- DJ Rashad: Feelin (2013)
- DJ Rashad: Let It Go (2013)
- RP Boo: Baby Come On (2013)
- DJ Spinn: Dubby (2013)
- DJ Manny: Signals in My Head (2021)
- Jana Rush: Suicidal Ideation (2021)
- Jlin: Embryo (2021)
- 박혜진* = Park Hye Jin*: Before I Die (2021)
- Taso, DJ Spinn & DJ Rashad: Good Newz (2024)
At a glance
- Tempo: 155 to 165 BPM
- First appeared: around 2012
- Machines: FL Studio, Roland TR-808
- The sound: Samples soul hachés, Triolets contre binaire
- Labels: Planet Mu, Hyperdub, Teklife, Dance Mania
- Key artists: RP Boo, DJ Rashad, DJ Spinn, Traxman, Jlin, DJ Taye
Producing Footwork
Footwork runs almost always at 160 BPM, occasionally 155 or 165, battle speed, with a doubled feel: dancers count sixteenths at 160 while the track can equally be heard in half time at 80, and the best tracks exploit that ambiguity. An 808 kick plays irregular, often offbeat two bar patterns, sparse on beat one and busy on the ands and as, with brutal silences, while triplet 808 toms roll against the binary kick. Bass is often the kick itself, its pitch varied kick to kick between root, fifth and lower octave so the kick line doubles as the bassline, no sidechain, no filter, sometimes the only element left when the drums fall silent. On top, soul, R&B or rap vocal samples are chopped into syllables and repeated into hypnosis, alongside sampled Rhodes stabs and video game sounds.
The full production course, in French: tempo, drums, bass, sounds, arrangement, mix, plugins and machines, and a step by step start.
Frequently asked
What is Footwork?
Born from Chicago dance battles at the end of the 2000s, footwork pushes juke into abstraction: 160 beats per minute, triplet toms set against offbeat kicks, vocal samples repeated into hypnosis, and brutal silences. It is functional music for dancers and a rhythmic vertigo for everyone else.…
What tempo is Footwork played at?
Between 155 and 165 BPM.
Who are the key Footwork artists?
RP Boo, DJ Rashad, DJ Spinn, Traxman, Jlin, DJ Taye.
