Shep Pettibone - Shep Pettibone's Snare Drum Sequencing

Shep Pettibone's Snare Drum Sequencing

During his peak years in the latter half of the 1980s and into the early 1990s, Pettibone's house remixes often included a distinctive snare drum pattern sequenced from a Roland TR-909 drum machine. These end-of-bar fills would often begin with the snare hitting once just before the end of the bar, then building over subsequent bars into a constant "machine gun" roll, the drum sounding on every 16th note.

Although abundant, prominent TR-909 snare fills were a hallmark of Pettibone's remixes from c. 1988 to 1992, the effect had a number of antecedents. For example, Steve "Silk" Hurley had much earlier (on the original mix of Isaac Hayes' "I Can't Turn Around" and many 1984 - 1985 JM Silk records) made use of a rapid fire snare, usually with more reverb applied. Chip E and Farley "Jackmaster Funk" Keith had already released records with the snare fill by 1985, well before Pettibone ever recorded it. In England, the mixes of Phil Harding would feature this element (as one can hear on Bananarama's "I Can't Help It") and, less in the spotlight, Dancin' Danny D. and Mark Saunders (both respected remixers) were featuring variations of this motif in their own work (Danny D's snare usually lacked the syncopation of Shep's while Saunders was slower and displayed a pronounced "splash" effect). In contrast, Frankie Knuckles used the snare drum in an extremely sparing manner for his trademark "Def Classic Mixes".