Beginner’s Guide to Producing Drum ‘n’ Bass part one
By Rob Sandall
| Posted in Music Technology
A second new writer for today, Patrice Maynadier discusses the most important aspects of the production setup you’ll need to start getting your beats down.
While the core of this series will concern the actual creation of arrangements and songs, let’s begin in a slightly unorthodox way by not speaking about music at all and instead concentrating on the very basics of what you’ll be using as a ‘studio’ – the tiny (or if you’re lucky, bigger) room where you’ll be spending countless hours tweaking knobs.
The first thing to know is that if the room is not treated acoustically to even a small degree, every mix you work on will sound great in the room and awful on any other system. Why? Because what you’re hearing is in fact the room and not the music coming out of your speaker – the nuances of standing waves, rogue frequencies and room reverberation. You’ll find a lot of forum threads on the net referring to these problems and explaining them in a lot more in depth, so make sure at the bare minimum you’ve treated the room to give an accurate response for your mixes.
After that’s sorted, there are some crucial parts of your setup to consider:
Monitors:
I would always advise D ‘n’ B producers to opt for bigger monitors, obviously in context with the size of room you’re using. Stay away from tiny ones, because the frequency response is not going to be low enough to tweak your bass, and when you hear your mix on a bigger system, all these frequencies – previously unheard and therefore neither cut or EQ’d – might cause problems. It’s very important to spend decent money on monitors, as they’re your main point of reference. While there are a huge number of options out there, and nothing really beats listening to comparative tests in person, my personal recommendation would be Dynaudio BM12‘s – perfect for D’n'B.
Interface:
Again, I would always advise to spend that bit more on an interface, as they control the AD/DA conversion part of the process. This will contribute to the quality of sound leaving your speakers, quantifiable as the richness of sound, or its ‘depth’. Also, latency can be an issue with computer recording, but shouldn’t be an issue with better-specced models (Google ‘AD/DA convertors’ or ‘latency’). Off the top of my head, I’d recommend the RME Fireface 800.
Computer
Invest in a machine designed to do music, rather than trying to adapt a ‘home-use’ setup. I’ll of course be a little biased and recommend Synergy computers – I prefer to use a PC, but of course just as many people will plump for a Mac. You need a machine with a drive spinning at 7200RPM for flawless data transfer, a lot of RAM – which will allow you to run more than one plug-in on your D.A.W at the same time – and of course the fastest processor you can afford. Remember that this element of the studio will determine whether or not you’ll actually have fun, i.e. the likelihood of your system crashing every five minutes.
D.A.W:
I won’t argue about this D.A.W being better than that one. My advice would be to actually try some out in the stores and choose the one that you feel the most comfortable with. Pick carefully, because there’s nothing more frustrating than working on a D.A.W that you hate. A few to consider are Cubase, Logic for Mac, and Pro Tools.
The conclusion of this kick-off is that if you want to make music and have fun while achieving results you’re happy with, it’s going to be a real investment. You need to have proper gear to make proper D ‘n’ B – there’s no shortcut, and taking the time to save up that bit extra before you commit to setting yourself up really is worth it.
In part two, we’ll get stuck in with the most important part of your song: the beat!
Tags: dnb tutorial, how do i make drum n bass?, making drum n bass, writing drum n bass