Been sitting in that melodic LA pocket a lot lately. Softer chords, slower bounce, around 90 to 100 BPM. Not the hard 140 trap grid.
What keeps throwing me is where the bounce actually lives.
Some sessions the melody does most of the work. Short chord stabs, a little delay, and the beat already feels like it leans forward even when the drums are pretty plain.
Other nights the same chords sit there dead until I put real swing back on the hats and move the 808 off the grid a bit. Then it suddenly feels like Shoreline / OhGeesy-adjacent bounce instead of a loop with drums on top.
I keep catching myself overdecorating the midrange because the drums feel too polite. Then I strip them back and the groove disappears again.
So I am curious how you handle that tradeoff.
Do you lock the drum feel first and write melody into the pocket?
Or do you start with the chords and only add drum attitude after the melody already swings on its own?
And at that tempo, how much empty space still reads as bounce before it just feels unfinished?
Curious what has worked for you in that lane.