How To Play Drum & Bass Beats

In this lesson we're going to learn how to play Drum and Bass beats similar to the ones that ?uestlove (Questlove) and Jose Pasillas from Incubus create.  Drum and Bass beats or d’n'b or aka Jungle is a style that originated in the UK in the late 80’s. Consisting of really fast breakbeats or "broken" beats and really heavy bass lines usually sampled from dub style reggae. Its a cool sound because you have a really fast drums going over a complex bass and slow moving melodies.  Some cool tracks that would be worth checking out would be the ending of Break You Off by The Roots, or Magic Medicine done by Incubus. Let's Learn How To Play These Drum & Bass Beats To learn how to play drum and bass beats we'll start by taking an ordinary beat and adding elements to it. Starting with grace notes or ghost notes in between each 8th note played by the hi hat. - After you get that down, then its time to get the beat up to speed. The starting tempo should be moderately slow, around 70bpm would be a good start. Then you just gradually speed it up until the beat is completely doubled. Meaning that, at 70bpm your going to be playing 16th notes on the hi hat instead of 8ths. - Once you have the beat and are comfortable play at that tempo, then its time to start playing around with back beat. We move the snare hit on beat 4 and the kick drum hit on beat 1 back a half a beat. To the “and” of 4 and the “and” of 1 giving it that d’n'b feel.  - When learning how to play drum and bass beats keep in mind the idea behind these is they’re meant to sound like they’re “broken” and really choppy. Almost to the point were you can tell where the down beat is. A couple tricks I like to use would be: - Dampening the snare head with my right hand while still playing the hi hat. It gives off a totally different snare sound. - Put my keys on the snare while playing. it gives it a really dirty kind of industrial sound. One of my favorites. - Or a small cymbal like a splash on the snare drum to give it a real metallic sound.

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