Footwork is a genre I've wanted to experiment with for a while, but I never produced it myself until now.
The main component of footwork is the drums, so I started out by laying those out. Although some footwork has more complex kick patterns, I went for a 4-on-the-floor approach for most of the song that taps into the genre's deep house intersections (I also added some house-y open hats) and included a different 808 pattern later on that introduces some cool rhythmic textures. By far the most important part of footwork / juke / East Coast club is the little rimshot percussion patterns that basically guide the rhythm of the song. These usually consist of triplets and other fun stuff so I really enjoyed plotting mine out.
The melodic aspects of footwork are also quite simple, usually with some kind of short repeating vocal sample or house stabs / ambient pad synths depending on if you're leaning more into deep house or drum 'n' bass respectively. I went with the latter as well as using some one-shot vocal samples in a hardcore breaks sample pack I have, adding effects to make them echoey and cool sounding. I'm really happy with how this synth turned out, it just sounds so dreamy and creates a really nice environment.
I went for more of a dnb / breakbeat leaning track, adding some chopped up drumloops in the second half. I've experimented a bit with breakcore and I find chopping up drum samples like that so much fun, it's so rewarding creating different rhythms and textures with a pre-existing loop.
The process is pretty simple but the results always sound super cool, it's a really interesting genre with a vivid culture behind it. One of my main musical influences in general is SALEM, who themselves make witch house but still have ties to footwork and other similar subgenres from their origins in Traverse City, Michigan and Chicago. Jack Donoghue had a juke project called Young Cream and SALEM's DJ mix XXJFG has a bunch of juke songs that provide insight into the origins of footwork culture. One of my favorite albums, Early Victims by DJ Lucas, explores several East Coast club subgenres, including juke and footwork. Additionally, the songs 'Hell Na' by cakedog and some of WLFGRL by Machine Girl also opened me up to different possibilities within footwork, such as sampling and incorporating jungle breakbeats, the latter of which I included in my song :)
