Four-on-the-floor is a rhythm

Rhythm

Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...

 pattern used in disco

Disco

Disco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...

 and electronic dance music

Electronic dance music

Electronic dance music is electronic music produced primarily for the purposes of use within a nightclub setting, or in an environment that is centered upon dance-based entertainment...

. It is a steady, uniformly accented beat

Beat (music)

The beat is the basic unit of time in music, the pulse of the mensural level . In popular use, the beat can refer to a variety of related concepts including: tempo, meter, rhythm and groove...

 in 4/4 time

Time signature

The time signature is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats are in each measure and which note value constitutes one beat....

 in which the bass drum

Bass drum

Bass drums are percussion instruments that can vary in size and are used in several musical genres. Three major types of bass drums can be distinguished. The type usually seen or heard in orchestral, ensemble or concert band music is the orchestral, or concert bass drum . It is the largest drum of...

 is hit on every beat (1, 2, 3, 4) in common time. This was popularized in the disco

Disco

Disco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...

 music of the 1970s and the term four-on-the-floor was widely used in that era: it originated with the pedal-operated drum-kit bass-drum.

Many styles of electronic dance music

Electronic dance music

Electronic dance music is electronic music produced primarily for the purposes of use within a nightclub setting, or in an environment that is centered upon dance-based entertainment...

, particularly those that derived from house

House music

House music is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago, Illinois, United States in the early 1980s. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American, Latino American, and gay communities; first in Chicago circa 1984, then in other...

 and techno

Techno

Techno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan in the United States during the mid to late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno, in reference to a genre of music, was in 1988...

, use this beat as an important part of the rhythmic structure. Sometimes the term is used to refer to a 4/4 uniform drumming pattern for any drum. A form of four-on-the-floor is also used in jazz drumming. Instead of hitting the bass drum in a pronounced and therefore easily audible fashion, it is usually struck very lightly (referred to as 'feathering') so that the sound of the drum is felt instead of heard by the listener. Typically, this is combined with a ride cymbal and hi-hat in syncopation

Syncopation

In music, syncopation includes a variety of rhythms which are in some way unexpected in that they deviate from the strict succession of regularly spaced strong and weak but also powerful beats in a meter . These include a stress on a normally unstressed beat or a rest where one would normally be...

. When a string instrument

String instrument

A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...

 makes the rhythm (rhythm guitar

Rhythm guitar

Rhythm guitar is a technique and rôle that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with singers or other instruments; and to provide all or part of the harmony, ie. the chords, where a chord is a group of notes played together...

, banjo

Banjo

In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white man to play the banjo on stage. His version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth-string. There is no proof, however, that Sweeney invented either innovation. This new...

), all four beats of the measure are played by identical downstrokes.

In Reggae drumming, the bass drum usually hits on the third beat but sometimes drummers play four on the floor. Sly Dunbar

Sly Dunbar

Lowell "Sly" Fillmore Dunbar is a drummer.-Biography:Dunbar, whose nickname was reportedly given for his passion for Sly & the Family Stone, launched his musical career while still in his adolescence, playing with a local group, The Yardbrooms, at the age of fifteen...

 from Sly & Robbie was one of the Reggae drummers that played mostly in this style. Also Carlton Barrett

Carlton Barrett

Carlton "Carly" Barrett was an influential reggae drummer and percussion player. His musical development in the early years were with his brother Aston "Family Man" Barrett as a member of Lee "Scratch" Perry's "house band" The Upsetters. The brothers joined Bob Marley and The Wailers around 1970...

 from Bob Marley & The Wailers

Bob Marley & The Wailers

Bob Marley & The Wailers were a Jamaican reggae, ska and rocksteady band formed by Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer in 1963. Additional members were Junior Braithwaite, Beverley Kelso, Cherry Smith and Aston and Carlton Barrett...

 played four on the floor on several hits by The Wailers like "Is This Love" and "Exodus". In Reggae, four on the floor usually goes by the hand with a low end and powerful bassline. Four on the floor can be found in more modern Reggae derivative styles like Dancehall

Dancehall

Dancehall is a genre of Jamaican popular music that originated in the late 1970s. Initially dancehall was a more sparse version of reggae than the roots style, which had dominated much of the 1970s. In the mid-1980s, digital instrumentation became more prevalent, changing the sound considerably,...

, while it is less common to find it on Roots Reggae

Roots reggae

Roots reggae is a subgenre of reggae that deals with the everyday lives and aspirations of the artists concerned, including the spiritual side of Rastafari and with the honoring of God, called Jah by rastafarians. It also is identified with the life of the ghetto sufferer, and the rural poor...

.