Drum and bass is fast, breakbeat-driven electronic music, usually around 170 to 175 BPM. A chopped and rearranged breakbeat drives it, with heavy sub bass and detuned reese lines underneath that sit at half the tempo feel, and atmospheres, pads and samples laid over the top. It runs on the contrast between fast drums and slow, heavy bass. Here is what each part is and how they fit.
Works in any DAW, with any drum samples and any synth, hardware or software. Nothing here needs a particular plugin.
Drum and bass is fast, breakbeat-driven electronic music, usually around 170 to 175 BPM, built on a chopped and rearranged breakbeat with heavy sub and reese bass underneath. The trick of the style is the contrast: the drums run fast while the bass moves at roughly half that speed, so a track can feel heavy and spacious at the same time. It grew out of jungle in the early 1990s, and it is now a family of styles rather than one fixed sound.
The ingredients are fairly consistent from track to track. Get the break and the bass locked together first, and the style you build on top is mostly a matter of which parts you lean on and how you process them:
| Part | Typical | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Tempo | 170 to 175 BPM | The drum and bass range, fast but still danceable |
| Breakbeat | Chopped and rearranged | A fast, syncopated drum pattern that drives the track |
| Snare | On the backbeat | Lands on beats two and four, the anchor of the break |
| Sub bass | Deep and clean | The low weight that carries the tune under everything |
| Reese or mid bass | Detuned and growling | Bass with movement and aggression in the mids |
| Half-time feel | Bass at half the tempo | Makes it sit heavy against the fast drums |
| Pads and samples | Long and atmospheric | Chords, textures and vocal or sound samples on top |
Like most dance music, drum and bass is really a family, and the branches differ mostly in mood and in which parts they push forward. A few of the common ones:
| Subgenre | What changes | Feel |
|---|---|---|
| Liquid | Smooth chords, soulful samples, rolling drums | Warm and musical |
| Neurofunk | Dense, distorted, resampled reese basses | Dark and technical |
| Jump-up | Big, bouncy, often cartoonish basslines | Playful and high energy |
| Jungle | Raw chopped breaks, ragga and reggae roots | The original 1990s strain |
Take a fast drum break, chop it into its individual hits, and rearrange those hits into a new syncopated pattern with the snare landing on the backbeat, usually at 170 to 175 BPM. The classic source is the Amen break, a short drum recording that most of the genre traces back to, though you can chop any break the same way. The chopping and reordering is what turns a plain loop into a drum and bass rhythm.
Slice the break into its separate hits, the kicks, snares, ghost notes and hats, then program those slices into a new order rather than letting the loop play straight. Keep a snare on beats two and four so the backbeat stays clear, and use the smaller hits in between to build the fast, rolling movement. A famous break like the Amen can carry rights, so the safe path is to chop your own recorded drums or use cleared or royalty-free breaks, and treat the classic ones as a reference for the feel rather than something to lift.
Two common drum feels sit at the core of the style. A two-step feel is sparser, with two main snares in the bar and a lot of space around them, which leaves room for the bass and reads as smoother. A rolling feel is busier, with more continuous movement in the hats and ghost notes so the break feels like it keeps tumbling forward. Most tracks lean on one of these, and many switch between them across sections to change the energy.
A chopped break on its own is often too thin for a big system, so it is common to layer your own kick and snare under the break for weight, then process the whole thing for punch. EQ to carve space, compression to even the hits and glue them, and a little saturation or distortion to add bite are the usual moves. The aim is a break that cuts through and hits hard while staying tight, since the drums have to hold up against a very heavy bass.
Drum and bass usually runs two bass layers: a deep, clean sub for the low weight, and a detuned reese or mid bass for growl and movement, both written to feel like half the tempo of the drums. Keep them out of each other's way, with the sub sitting in mono at the very bottom and the reese filtered and processed above it. That split is what lets the bass feel enormous without turning to mud.
The sub is the foundation, usually a clean sine or triangle kept mono and centred, and it carries the actual notes of the tune down low. It wants to be simple and steady so it holds the weight on club systems without smearing the rest of the mix. Building one that translates from headphones to a big rig is its own small job, covered in how to make a sub bass.
Over the sub sits the bass you actually hear moving: often a reese, a growling, metallic tone made by detuning sawtooth oscillators against each other, then filtered and distorted for aggression. This is the layer that gives neurofunk and much of the genre its snarl and character. How the growl is built, kept solid in mono and made aggressive is covered in how to make a reese bass, which is worth reading alongside this one.
The bass generally moves at about half the speed of the drums, holding longer notes or a slow-moving figure while the break rattles along on top. That half-time feel is a large part of why fast drum and bass still feels heavy and unhurried rather than frantic. Lock the bass notes to the groove of the break, leave space so the sub and the kick do not fight, and let the slower movement underneath anchor the fast drums.
Drum and bass is usually arranged around the drop, so you build tension in an intro, release it when the full break and bass land, then break down and drop again. The pattern tends to be a mixable intro, a first drop with the main groove, a breakdown that strips things back, and a second drop, with atmospheres and samples threaded across the top throughout.
The intro and the outro are often kept fairly plain, sometimes beatless or half-time, so a DJ has room to mix in and out. Between them, the energy comes from adding and removing layers around the two drops rather than from constant new material.
Loop the chopped break with the sub and the reese on their own and leave it playing for a minute. If those three already lock together and pull you in, the track will work, and the pads, samples and arrangement are what you build on top. If it bores you or feels weak before the minute is up, the fix is in the break and the bass, not in more atmosphere over the top.
Everything above is a set of decisions you can make by hand, and it is worth learning to make them. The slow part is often the bass writing itself: finding a sub and reese line that lock to your break and carry the half-time feel, then getting them into the track as notes you can still edit.
REHEAT is a writing tool that generates the part for you. It writes the reese and sub basslines drum and bass rides on, the growling mid line and the deep sub that sits under it. Find a pattern you like and you have two ways to use it: drag the MIDI straight onto a track in your DAW, or play it live through your own bass patch, locked to your drums. Either way the notes are yours to keep, to change the key, the sound or the timing later.
That is the point of writing the part rather than printing the audio. A bassline is worth more as notes than as a recording, because the notes survive every later decision about the sound and the arrangement.
Free to hear in the browser, no signup. It runs as an Audio Unit, a VST3 and an AAX. Everything above still works by hand in any DAW too, which is rather the point of writing it down.
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