⏱️ The Tempo 174.5/175 Beats Per Minute is the rule of thumb, but the range is between 160 and 180 BPM. So when we're dancing the base each beat is a jump to a different position. 2 min of dancing ~350 jumps !🥵
🎵 Breakbeats The base beat of the kick drum is used in a syncopated rhythm meaning, in Drum and Bass instead of the kick hitting only on those predictable beats, the second kick of the 4 beat sequence is on the "off-beat".It adds excitement and unpredictability to the movement of the beat.
Breakbeats are essentially drum patterns that have been sliced from segments of music—often from funk, jazz, or soul tracks—where the drum part is played solo or with minimal instrumentation.
A few of the most iconic breakbeat samples that have become staples in Drum and Bass music are:
😇The Amen Break: Originally from the song "Amen, Brother" by The Winstons, this is perhaps the most sampled drum break in the history of electronic music. Its energetic pattern is a fundamental element in many DnB tracks.
🥁The Funky Drummer: Sampled from a James Brown song of the same name, this break features the drumming of Clyde Stubblefield and is celebrated for its groove and feel!
🤔Think Break: From the song "Think (About It)" by Lyn Collins, produced by James Brown. It features a powerful and highly danceable drum pattern that has been used extensively in hip hop, breakbeat, and DnB!
🪶Apache Break: Taken from the song "Apache" by The Incredible Bongo Band, this break is known for its distinctive bongo drumming, which adds a unique flavor to tracks across various genres.
DnB genres There are many.
Check this YouTube video for 26 of dnb styles with examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VeH1o_PQLI
Full range is best visually explored on this map with examples and timeline: Ishkurs's Guide to EDM genres: Breaks
The time siganture is 4/4.
🤔 What does that mean?
Above we covered that the tempo is 174 BPM (beats per minute). That's great, but we want to have a way to predict when something happens in music like a drop, build-up or bridge. For this we need to investigate Time Signatures.
🎞️ Key Frames
Imagine your dance as a sequence of still frames, like an old photo film, where each picture represents a different movement you do. Each of those frames are spaced out evenly. Similarly in music the beats are seprated into frames spaced out over a even amount of time. How many frames, over what amount of time is what the Time Signature explains.
Example: 2 / 4 - Two beats in a span of four beats
Let's say we're training our choreos. You would count the beat "1, 2, 3, 4,", making sure each step is equal in duration, but would skip one number. It's 2 beats for a 4 beat cycle.
Example: 3️⃣ / ♩♩♩♩ - Three beats in a span of four beats
Now, what if we change the game a little and use 3 jumps evenly spread out within the same time span. This time, you'll count the same "1, 2, 3, 4" beats but will only jump 3 times. This would be 3 beats within a 4 beat duration.
♩♩ + ♩♩ / ♩♩♩♩ - Four beats in a span of four beats or 4/4
If we take it one more step back we can even do just 2-best loop. By going to just two corners of a triangle, but to keep the movement more dynamic, so we vary to which side corner we go. So this in effect would be 2x2 beats within a 4 beat loop.
🔼 The first number in the time signature tells you how many steps you'll take in your dance before starting over the count. This creates a nice even structure over the whole track. 4 beats make a bar/ measure.
🔽 The second number, tells us about the duration/size/length/ of our steps. With 175 BPM tempo those 4 beats are equivalent to about 1.37 seconds (0.343s per beat).
In drum and bass and most of music the time signature is in general 4/4.
It helps you to dance in the same beat together with anyone, stepping at the same time and making the dance look neat and synchronized!
So 4 beats make the first group called a "bar". Kind of like 4 letters can form a "word".
Bars are a collection of certain number of beats. In music with a time siganture of 4/4 one bar generally is 4 beats.
The intro is a "phrase" in music. It's generally a set number of bars that work together to form a coherent musical idea. The phrases in dnb as with most electronic and dance music, often consists of 8 and 16 bars.
The following is a common pattern to illustrate, not the rule of law that is followed
Commonly the structure:
intro 12 bars + 4 bar breakdown/buildup
From the dancing perspective we care more about beats than bars. So the same idea in beats:
Very commonly you'll hear the 8 beat loop highlighted with a some flourish or accents.