Dubstep drum patterns.

1. 1970s

   1. 1974
      

      King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown

      Augustus Pablo & King Tubby

      Root: King Tubby's dub of Jacob Miller's Baby I Love You So, drums and bass pulled apart with echo; the dub space dubstep inherited

2. 1990s

   1. 1998
      

      Stone Cold

      Groove Chronicles

      Root: El-B's dark, skippy 2-step with heavy sub; the deeper garage strand that early dubstep producers grew out of

3. 2000s

   1. 2001
      

      Landmark

      Fist of Fury

      Horsepower Productions

      Tempa 12" of stripped, dubbed-out garage: sparse broken drums over deep sub; Horsepower are credited with dubstep's birth
   2. 2004
      

      Landmark

      Horror Show

      Loefah

      DMZ's second release: a kick and a heavy snare on beat three with wide space around them; the minimal half-step template
   3. 2005
      

      Landmark

      Midnight Request Line

      Skream

      Skippy, syncopated drums under a looping melodic riff; credited as dubstep's most recognisable crossover hit
   4. 2006
      

      Distant Lights

      Burial

      Crackling 2-step-derived drums placed by hand without a sequencer; gave dubstep a loose, off-grid rhythmic feel
   5. 2006
      

      Landmark

      Anti War Dub

      Mala (Digital Mystikz)

      Half-time roller: sparse kick, snare on the three and tribal-style drum samples; a cornerstone of the DMZ sound
   6. 2006
      

      9 Samurai

      Kode9 & The Spaceape

      Sparse, martial half-time percussion and sub-bass under Spaceape's spoken voice; from the Hyperdub founder's debut album
   7. 2006
      

      Qawwali

      Pinch

      Hand-drum percussion circling a half-time snare under qawwali-style vocal; an early landmark of the Bristol scene
   8. 2007
      

      Archangel

      Burial

      Shuffled 2-step clicks and vinyl hiss under pitched vocal fragments; key track of the Mercury-nominated Untrue
   9. 2007
      

      Spongebob

      Coki

      Half-time beat driven by a mid-range wobble bass; the DMZ sound that brostep later pushed louder
   10. 2007
       

       Night

       Benga & Coki

       Half-time kick and snare locked to a rolling percussion loop and bass riff; Gilles Peterson's record of 2007
   11. 2008
       

       Where's My Money (Caspa Remix)

       TC

       Caspa rebuilt TC's drum and bass tune as half-time wobble dubstep; a big-room crossover of 2008
   12. 2009
       

       Cockney Thug

       Rusko

       Bouncy half-time beat and cartoonish wobble bass from a producer credited as a brostep pioneer
   13. 2009
       

       Digidesign

       Joker

       Bristol 'purple' sound: swung, hip-hop-leaning half-time drums under bright synth leads

4. 2010s

   1. 2010
      

      I Can't Stop

      Flux Pavilion

      Big-room half-time drop with a hard snare on three; later sampled by Kanye West and Jay-Z on Who Gon Stop Me
   2. 2010
      

      Landmark

      Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites

      Skrillex

      Half-time drops with abrasive mid-range bass and rapid edits; Dazed credited the EP with launching brostep
   3. 2016
      

      Throwin' Elbows

      Excision & Space Laces

      North American heavy dubstep: a blunt half-time kick-snare frame built around metal-style riffs and bass hits

5. 2020s

   1. 2021
      

      Skanka

      Hamdi

      New-gen UK 140: a skanking half-time groove with dancehall bounce, widely remixed (VIP, Kayzo, P Money vocal)

Press play to loop each record's busiest two bars. Patterns are machine-detected from the recordings, not verified transcriptions.