Making the Beat: Drum N Bass Drums

In this week’s Audio Premium content, Mike Elliott concludes his series on creating excellent drum beats. In this final week he gives us in-depth instructions for programming DnB beats – with helpful explanation so you’re not just copying his patterns.

To learn more about what you get as part of Audio Premium, read this. To take a peek inside this tutorial, hit the jump!

Welcome to the fifth and final installment of the drum based tutorial series that will show you what the beats are and how to make them sound good. In this tutorial we are going to continue to cover one of the few styles that were originally meant for sequencing, Drum N Bass.

DnB has a unique groove that while unmistakably fast, as an overlying macro beat that is slow and smooth. Tonally, DnB can range from a liquid ambient quality, to harsh and driving, to a hip-hop tone, to even a jazz like sound. What makes DnB drums so hard to sequence? They are fast! Besides being fast, they often sound like they are in odd meters from where the kick and snare land. But fear not, we will approach this tutorial in the same fashion, just keep track of the concepts and you will be good to go! The last time we talked we built beats from smaller elements that when summed together formed our bigger beats; this tutorial will do so as well.

Keep in mind that this tutorial is not aiming for how to program all the extra drums and beats that usually come along with a lot of DnB beats. This tutorial is designed to show how a real drummer might approach DnB and to show the underlying beats that make up the more complicated versions.

With that all in mind, let the beat drop!

Here’s the kind of music you’ll be able to create once you harness the knowledge inside:

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