drum ’n’ bass track-builder <

7. Arranging a slick DnB tune made with free plugins

At 192 bars, our project is relatively short for a
non-‘radio’ track, but it’s pretty DJ-friendly and
it sticks to the conventions of dancefloor DnB.
Things kick off with a beat-driven intro,
where the single-hit drums play with just a pad
for accompaniment – this will make it very easy
for DJs to cue up the track and mix it in without
things sounding messy.
The extra breakbeats, string and harp are
introduced to ramp up the tension, and at bar
33 we arrive at the first breakdown. During this
section, the pads and harp filter in, and at bar
49 the beats, bass and electric piano drop.
We leave out certain elements to give the
mix somewhere to go, and the next 16 bars see
the introduction of the high pads and synth
leads – this is the crescendo of the track.
Subsequent 16-bar sections see elements
added and removed to give the track a little
light and shade, building to a second
breakdown, where we downshift to a more
subdued, pad-less drop, in which a simpler
version of the bassline gives the listener a
break from the intensity and the DJ an
opportunity to mix in another track.
After this, the track shifts back to high-
energy mode, giving the listener another
chance to hear all the elements before building
to the explosive ending.
The track could be made more DJ-friendly
by winding down to a beats-only outro before
it ends, which would allow the DJ to bring in
the next tune more gradually.

Watch the final video

or listen to Master.wav
to hear our finished
drum ’n’ bass track!

8. Mixing and mastering a DnB track with free plugins

Like most electronic music made today,
most mixing tasks will occur throughout
the production process. For example, once
the drum parts were created and routed to a
bus, we used eaReckon’s CM-COMP87 to ‘glue’
the sounds together. Maintaining transients
was a concern, so we used a long, 225ms
attack time, and a Wet/Dry mix of roughly
50% to ensure we didn’t take too much
punch out of the mix.
Another way to get the drums punching
through is to sidechain some track elements
off the kick and snare channels. Although there
are some free sidechain compressors out
there, routing them is inconvenient, and Live
has a fantastic one built in, so this is one
situation in which using freeware doesn’t
really make sense.
At this point, it became clear that the high
end of the drums was too harsh, and that the
balance between the kick and bass wasn’t
perfect. These are probably the two hardest
elements of any drum ’n’ bass track to get
right. We tamed the highs by inserting a gentle
bell EQ into the drum bus and softening the
5-10kHz region, then turned down the kick
slightly to stop it from popping through the
mix so much.
When it comes to mastering, getting a loud,
fizzy, punchy – but not harsh or distorted –
final sound is the Holy Grail of drum ’n’ bass
production. First, Plugins’ STA Enhancer
was applied to excite the mix, then a couple
of instances of DDMF IIEQ Pro CM were
brought in to get a more even tonal balance.
Live’s Group function and Voxengo MSED
were deployed to split the signal into mid
and side channels, each of which is boosted
using Barricade CM. After that, the whole
signal was run through another Barricade
CM to get it as loud as possible without
clipping – job done!

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