On the drums a ghost note is a very soft stroke, usually on the snare, played between the main accents. A typical funk or hip hop groove has a loud snare on two and four and a scattering of quiet ghost strokes on the sixteenth notes in between; in notation they are often shown in parentheses. Bass and guitar players use the same name, or “dead note”, for a note muted with the hand so that it gives a percussive thud with no clear pitch. In jazz writing the term also describes a wind-instrument note that is fingered but blown so lightly it is almost inaudible.
Ghost notes add texture and motion without cluttering the beat. In jazz lo-fi, producers programme them at low velocity, or sample them from real drum recordings, so that a simple loop sounds as if it were played by a drummer rather than a machine.