DnB help

Former Member

Hey all
i gotta create a drum and bass song for some music tech course work, the thing is i've already done an RnB song and i know all the sort of stuff like:
it has alot of tracks, beats 2 and 4 are strongly empasised, melody is generally the same all the way through etc
But i have no idea what these could be for drum and bass and i can't seem to find it on google so i no theres a few people on here that write songs like this so i was wondering if any of you could give me the main characterists of drum and bass and a few pointers on how to write them

Thanks

Former Member

What are you using to write it? and how deep do you need to go with it?

A good place to start if your looking for info on beats would be reading up on the Amen break... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amen_break)
Its an old break that was used by the winstons many years ago.. and now days its the back bone of a lot of dance music that uses broken beats...

If you want I can post up some samples of very basic DnB beat patterns to give you some ideas?
I can't do it now cos I'm at work.

What else do you need to know other than beats?

Former Member

There is this artical as well which is good actually....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_and_bass

But I mean some of the very basics are its generally written somewhere between 160-180BPM depending on what kinda vibe you want. I normally go for about 175BPM because I like a bit of pace and energy on my tracks.

Obviously the main under lying factors are the drums and the bass. You will need a good sub bass as the bed to your track. This is pretty simple as you can just low pass a sine wave right down to about 40Hz (Make sure its in mono to avoid phazing)

From there it really depends on what kinda style you want to go for... if its the darker techy side then its a case of building up layers of bass (De-Tunes saw waves are good for this) with all sort of compression and distortion.
If your going for the nicer liquid side of things, then some nice pads and strings with some a good mid range lead synth.

Former Member

i'm using logic pro,
and yeah thanks
thats really helpful actually, got a few ideas on the bass line atm

Former Member

Your on a mac then?

Grab a demo of Native Instruments Massive. The presets are pretty good for laying down some ideas.

http://www.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=massive&L=1

(I dunno what limitations the demo has tho)

Former Member

cool
thanks man, yeah, i love the mac, but i generlly use a pc for most things expect musical things where i use a mac
love 'em