


The structure of drum and bass isn’t too dissimilar from other genres of electronic music, but it’s definitely got some unique traits.įirst, you should think in terms of phrases. You can use a simple pitch shifter to correct this, but it will affect the texture of your sample. Not all time-stretching algorithms are created equal, and it’s likely that the sample will get pitched up or down. (When something is quantized, it matches perfectly to the bpm and time signature of your track.) You might need to stretch or compress the sample to make it fit your track. Since these are recordings of humans playing live drums, they aren’t always going to be perfectly quantized. This can often be a good thing, but if you’re looking to keep your drum and bass ultra-clean and modern sounding, this is something to be aware of. įurther, since most breakbeats are sampled from vinyl records that were recorded using older equipment, there are sometimes sound artifacts or other organic textural qualities present in the sample.

Try and source your samples from quality sample packs or trusted sites like Splice. Depending on where you got it from, the sample could have been compressed and encoded dozens of times, which is no bueno in terms of fidelity. First, the quality of the breakbeat sample is not always guaranteed. Working with breakbeats can be a bit of an art, and there are several things you’ll want to keep in mind.
