Drum and Bass

Drum and Bass is an often heard genre, but not much people know about it. It is definitely one of the less mainstream but super POPULAR forms of music, having still a heavy relevance in the music scene, but not much in the conventional music scene. Some of the many famous producers and groups have tried out the genre, with the most famous being Pendulum, in the song WitchCraft.

Drum and Bass’s most basic rule would be a BPM that is close to 170+. Agressive heavy beats seems to be an agreement here. In order to achieve this we would want sharp attacks with a small bit of sub boom on the kick- not too much since the beats are fast.. Distortion on snare and perc would be good to use to add to the aggressive nature.

Though important, Synthesizer pads are marginalized in part of drum and bass and making them thin would allow for the beats to come through clearer. I would use a hi pass/low pass combination and only let a select frequency in on strings to thin them down. Once again a distortion effect to give them an AM radio feel would be cool.

Bass sounds are fat and aggressive. I would use split bass technique. adding different layers of - grainy, distorted and smooth - no lower than 80 hz to let the kicks shine through.- I'd have to be in it to find the right frequency zones. The highs should be enough so the bass cuts through clearly. The beat should be fast as well. I would prefer using a combination of loops for the percussive drum sounds and can focus the frequencies to eliminate any clutter.

I feel like keys are definitely very important as well when it comes to Drum and Bass, along with the stabs that come along the main beat. I would recreate this with Massive, experiment some different sounds that I can make that are dirtier/punchier for the stabs (I'm not very fluent with massive yet). I'm based off hiphop for producing, so drums are quite my forte. The importance to creating a snappy rhythm would be sample choice, and careful eq-ing. Focusing of course, on the infamous break-beat style drums for the overall drum track.