If you play the piano, violin or trumpet, to name a few, the rudiments of learning to play your instrument well include being able to play in tune and in time. As producers of electronic music, we don't have those concerns—we can input notes in step-time, or slow the click track down to record notes at a speed we can handle. We can then fix the pitch or timing of any notes we played incorrectly, giving us a safety net that acoustic musicians don't have.

In fact, when it comes to playing in time, our workstations can help us achieve the impossible: perfect timing. Using quantization, we can snap every note within our sequences to a precise location to produce a flawless rhythmic foundation. Some musical genres demand such metronomic accuracy, whereas others—despite using the same technology—work better with rhythmic variation. In these cases, rather than straight rhythms, we get a funkier, groovier result. But what does "groove" actually mean? Which rhythmic patterns fall into step with our bodies and make us want to dance? Through this feature, we'll put rhythm under the microscope to understand what groove is and which parameters will play a role in how straight, swung or diverse the results will be.

To understand groove, we first need to be familiar with the fundamentals of rhythm, starting with how units of musical time are measured. The vast majority of dance music is in 4/4 time, which means that a single bar (alternatively called a measure) of music is divided into four beats. (If you're writing four-to-the-floor patterns, with a kick drum on each beat, you now understand where that term comes from.) A note lasting for one full beat is commonly called a quarter note (or 1/4 note, as we'll write it here). Each beat can be further divided, with eighth notes (1/8 notes) dividing each 1/4 note in half and sixteenth notes (1/16 notes) dividing each 1/4 note into quarters.

Simple rhythmic pattern: This example should help us hear how these values can be combined. Here, we've got a 1/4 note kick pattern producing a note on each beat of the bar, while a snare joins it on just the second and fourth beats (commonly referred to as the backbeat). Additionally, a closed hi-hat part plays a 1/16 note pattern.

Developed pattern: Of course, there's nothing to stop us building a more sophisticated pattern by adding instruments and, perhaps, removing a few of the hi-hat notes to produce something less relentless. Alongside the modified hats, the kick and snare have been joined by a percussion sound which is playing a 1/16 note before each snare hit, as well as an additional hit in between.

This new sound introduces another rhythmic device: syncopation. Syncopated notes create rhythmic stresses that are deliberately designed to play against the main flow of a rhythmic pattern, disturbing it and placing accented notes where they wouldn't be expected. Rather than joining the kick or snare pattern, our new percussive sound is syncopated against it, dancing around the parts without letting its performance coincide with other hits. That doesn't change the fact that, as its notes are locked to the grid of 1/16 notes our pattern is using, the rhythm remains straight. However, we can introduce groove to our programmed beats by selecting an alternative, swing-based quantization value.

"Swing" is a common and popular rhythmical device that serves the purpose of making the second of two adjacent notes late on the beat. Let's suppose you've selected a swing quantization value based on a 1/16 note. This pushes the second and fourth 1/16 notes in a beat back in time so that they sound late, while continuing to quantize the first and third 1/16 notes so that they remain locked to a regular 1/16 note grid. This introduces the idea of swing, as the whole rhythm shifts accordingly. The higher the swing value, the later those second and fourth 1/16 notes become, and the more pronounced the swing feels.

Swung pattern: Here's the same rhythm we heard before, this time with quite a pronounced swing quantization value selected.

As you can hear, only a note which falls on an even-numbered 1/16 note is affected; in other words, the kick and snare parts sound exactly the same as when a straight, un-swung quantization value is selected. The hi-hat notes that fall on the first and third 1/16 notes of each beat sound the same, too. Swing quantization values are also available as alternatives to straight 1/8 note quantization, and under those circumstances, the second 1/8 note of each beat is pushed late.

Jazz swing: Swing values using 1/8 notes are so common in jazz that "swing" is a genre in its own right. In this clip, you can hear straight 1/8 note quantization becoming more swung through two subsequent jazz drum kit performances. Again, all that's changing here is that the offbeat notes—i.e. those halfway between beats 1, 2, 3 and 4—are being pushed later.

The rhythm section of a traditional rock & roll band refers not only to the drummer but to the relationship between drums, bass and often rhythm guitar. These instruments are responsible for providing the feel or groove of a track's rhythm, meaning that players need to add to the same groove, rather than create a series of different rhythmic performances that fight each other. This became particularly true when disco first gained popularity; if you listen to performances of live disco bands like Nile Rodgers' legendary Chic, you'll hear how drums, bass and guitar swing and groove together.

Straight beats and bass: This is worth bearing in mind if you're looking to bring swing to your productions. In this example, you can hear a programmed beat pattern playing against a bassline. For now, both parts are straight, using 1/16 note quantization to keep everything in strict time.

Swung beats, straight bass: Here, the drums have been swung so that any 1/16 notes in the pattern start to groove. As the bassline is kept with a strict 1/16 note quantization value, these rhythms start to fight each other rather than sound tight and together. You can hear this as a slight rip just before beats 2 and 4 in each bar.

Swung beats, swung bass: However, as soon as the bassline is quantized with the same swing value as the beats, things sound a lot better.

No-swing sequence and stab: Adding new parts to the production, you can hear how other elements would also benefit from using the same swing value. Here, we're adding a 1/16 note sequence part and a syncopated synth stab. Here they are with straight 1/16 note quantization...

Swing sequence and stab: ... and here they are locked to the same quantized swing as the beats and bass.

Even swing values won't give you a natural sense of timing, though. Just as no musician can play every single note in a perfectly straight rhythm, they're no more likely to be able to play every note of a swung rhythmic pattern locked to a groove, either. Natural timing variations in performance are a huge part of what makes rhythm sound natural, and it's worth bearing this in mind if you want to build grooves that sound less machine-like. The temptation when programming beats and even basslines is to input notes via step-time, or to immediately reach for quantization to eradicate any sense of natural timing. However, by recording in real time and holding back on ironing out timing inadequacies, you can bring a much more personal sense of groove to your tracks.

Unquantized beats: To demonstrate this, we're recording some beats in real time and leaving them quantization-free.

As you can hear, we haven't adjusted velocity from each note's live performance, either, since this is providing some natural dynamic variation. In this grab, you can see the note positions in the List Editor on the right side. Most notes are a little early, but some are a little late.

Unquantized bass: Now let's add a bassline, again leaving it without any quantization or velocity fixing.

Separated and processed beats: Now let's separate the sounds on the drum track, so that the kick, snare and hats are playing back on separate, independent tracks. This means that, as we start to apply quantization values, we can make these different for each of the drum instruments, rather than applying a global quantization value to all drum parts. Separating the parts also means we can apply separate effects to each sound source. Let's add a limiter to the kick drum, compression and transient design to the snare and EQ to the hats.

Pattern flattened: It's obvious in the previous example that the rhythmic foundation is too loose and wonky, but crucially, it's unique—no one else would have recorded these notes exactly where we have, so we shouldn't be in too much of a hurry to reach for a full 1/16 note quantization value, which would remove any sense of personality from the beat pattern. You can hear that in the following clip.

50% quantized: While we're keen to retain a sense of our own performance, we can also recognise that the live recordings are too loose. So let's open up the extended quantization options and adjust Quantize Strength to 50%. This moves each note halfway between its recorded position and a full-strength quantized result.

Varied quantization: Suddenly, the beats aren't nearly as wonky as they were before. But they have a slight unpredictability that, in turn, retains some of our own live feel. However, as the parts are separated, we can now make some value judgements about which parts need extra timing help and which can be left a little freer. The lock between the kick and the bassline could certainly be tighter, while there's less need for the hats and snare to be as locked. So we can increase the quantization value for the kick and bass to 70% and retain a value of 50% for the other two parts.

Adding delay: Sometimes, the required quantization strength is dictated by other sounds in your mix, whether these are other instruments or tempo-based effects. Here, we've removed quantization from the bassline altogether, to get back to the feel of the live performance. We've also added a delay, using SoundToys' EchoBoy. Now the timing problems in the original performance are made worse. The delays simply demonstrate how wonky the timing is.

Natural delay: The addition of this delay doesn't mean we need to revert to 100% quantization, however. Back at 70% strength, the delay picks up on the more subtle timing variations nicely.

Pad glue: It's also interesting to note that your brain latches on to rhythm much more when it's exposed patterns like these. As our track is currently only using short, spiky percussive sounds, we're forced to focus on their timing, whereas if we add a sustained musical layer on top, our ear will be drawn away from rhythm alone. You can hear that here.

Using a loop: Of course, many producers like to build rhythmic tracks from a combination of programmed hits and audio loops, either whole ones or chopped sections. These will also bring a rhythmic personality that we'll need to consider when working with less than full quantization. In the following clip, we've imported an audio loop—with its own strict timing—to sit under our programmed parts.

Groove template: This loop adds a pleasing quality to the texture of our production, but it's not helping its rhythmic personality—its percussive hits don't ally themselves to our programmed ones. To counter this, we could chop up the loop and place the hits closer to our programmed beats, or we could apply a similar quantization shape to the loop by creating a template from one of our programmed parts. Different DAWs handle this in different ways, but we're creating our groove template in Logic Pro X, using the hi-hat as our rhythmic guide. This can then be applied to our audio loop, so that any hits coinciding with notes the hi-hat plays will be automatically shifted to fit our groove template.

Chopped loop: This works nicely for the notes that coincide, but there are gaps in the hi-hat pattern, and the loop can't be expected to know where to move those hits to in the absence of that information. You can see this in the screenshot: the blue sections of audio snap to the groove template, whereas the white sections keep their hits in their original positions. However, what's interesting is that if you listen carefully, the most satisfying rhythmic fit for this loop is the very first bar of the track—the second bar in the screenshot above. Accordingly, we can chop up this loop so that only this bar repeats.

Suddenly this loop sounds like it belongs in the track. However, every other bar has a rimshot that doesn't sound right towards the end of the phrase. Simply chopping the loop to remove this section works well, adding to the stop/start nature of the overall feel.

Whenever you work with percussive sound sources, whether programmed or chopped from audio files, try to be as creative as you can. Whenever you can resist the temptation to reach for automatic quantization, you're allowing a little more of your own natural groove into your productions, and that's always to be encouraged. If the music you make demands strict quantization values, try to find other ways to bring your own flavour—where you place beats within your programmed patterns, experimenting with quantization swing and clever use of syncopation are all great places to start.