<<<<<<Sign up to my blog using the box on the left here for free drum n bass info!
It takes years of practice to get drum n bass production sounding right (it took me about 4 years) and here are a few tips to get you on your way in the right direction… and save you the time it took me to figure it out!
1) Drum Layering
This is a real big one to get your drums grooving along nicely. It’s not as basic as a kick, snare and one hi hat line making your sequencer blocks look like someone had a good go with an uzi. It sounds awful and it doesn’t groove. The main key is to get lots of great little lines going around your main kick and snare. Think about programming lots of interesting layers with different EQ’s and different filters to make it flow. Also play around with pre made drum loops through filters on top of your own programming and it will give a really interesting twist.
2) EQ
EQ is massively important. Think of each EQ band as a letter box. If you try and shove too many letters through one letter box nothing is going to come through the other side and you end up with a mangled mess! EQ is like that. When your writing asking yourself ‘what does this part provide’? Some of it is simple, it’s your bassline or it’s your main synth line. Other parts serve to fill out the sound. In some of my tracks such as my Inner Party System remix of ‘Die Tonight, Live Forever’ there is a ridiculous amount of little layers which some you can barely hear. Some of the sounds are really high in frequency so in your overall mix your getting a lot of bass (easy in drum n bass!!!) a lot of main synth lines to fill out your mids and a lot of moving sounds in your top frequencies to make it sound massive!
3) Compressors
There is two different schools of thought when it comes to compressors. Some people hate them with a passion and some people like myself just can’t get enough of it. If you want it heavy, squeeze every little last bit out of that sound to make your track stomp! These are great on kicks and snares and some synth sounds that may move a lot in their intensity of sound. You want to be able to hear it’s subtle parts come through your mix just as much as your loud parts so you never miss a bit of that cool sound you programmed.
You may even look as happy as this guy with your production!
Hear how this all works here http://www.soundcloud.com/strictstatus
So go away with this all in mind, have some fun and send over some of your tracks to strictstatus@yahoo.co.uk
