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Drum & Bass - help me get my head/ears around it


Mykesbass

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7 hours ago, Nail Soup said:

A lot of Jungle D&B is based around the 'Amen break'..... here's a short YT vid on the topic.

The man on the rght is the drummer who originally payed it - Gregory Coleman.

 

Thanks. Got to catch up with all this tonight.

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Jungle basically became DNB. Jungle is typically the 'Amen' drum break (or similar) cut up and looped at about 170BPM with Reggae/Dancehall vocals and samples and basslines. It became DNB as it got more 'techy', not built around samples and Reggae vocals so much, more of a focus just on the drums, bass, synths. 

 

Take some pills, go to a loud dark club and get on the dancefloor at 2am is about the only way I'd say it's fully undertstood. There is 'daytime radio' type DNB but that's not the good stuff in my book and not where DNB originated or where it's soul is.

 

This tune for example - nothing flashy, but if you know the feeling then you love DNB. It's not for everyone though I guess. It's the same sort of ethos as Dub or Techno or minimal funk, or tribal drumming, there's not really anything to 'get' other than how the groove of it makes you want to listen to it loud and dance.

 

 

Edited by SumOne
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I'm not any expert on D&B, but am open minded towards it and my feelings on it are as follows:

  • Not too keen on the jazzy stuff (but that goes for any genre to be honest !)
  • Prefer the weirder, noisier stuff (but that goes for any genre to be honest !)
  • I think I've not really heard it properly - mainly on radio speakers and earphones - D&B sounds like it needs to be heard on a massive sound system.
  • It maybe doesn't fit for me in the context of my life-style.... it's more of a "going-out" type music and I'm more of a 'bedroom' listener.

There used to be a kind of pirate radio station in Luton which used to crash my car radio sometimes which played mainly D&B.... it would have sounded ok, but the 'DJ' just talked over it so much.... nothing interesting or imaginative, just an endless stream of "shout out to XYZ" 😞 .

 

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1 hour ago, Nail Soup said:

I'm not any expert on D&B, but am open minded towards it and my feelings on it are as follows:

  • Not too keen on the jazzy stuff (but that goes for any genre to be honest !)
  • Prefer the weirder, noisier stuff (but that goes for any genre to be honest !)
  • I think I've not really heard it properly - mainly on radio speakers and earphones - D&B sounds like it needs to be heard on a massive sound system.
  • It maybe doesn't fit for me in the context of my life-style.... it's more of a "going-out" type music and I'm more of a 'bedroom' listener.

There used to be a kind of pirate radio station in Luton which used to crash my car radio sometimes which played mainly D&B.... it would have sounded ok, but the 'DJ' just talked over it so much.... nothing interesting or imaginative, just an endless stream of "shout out to XYZ" 😞 .

 

Think I'm in the same boat when it comes to points 3 & 4.

 

Glad to see that even the big fans of the style seem to feel it is much more something to experience rather than listen to. Makes me feel better about not really liking what I hear on the radio.

 

Really appreciate everyone's input. Thanks 

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On 07/08/2022 at 09:09, Fishfacefour said:

 

Listening to individual tracks only gives you half the picture. This is dance music and the performance is in the mixing of the tracks together to make new hybrids. 

The 'music' exists in the timbre, the rhythmic complexity and subtleties in programming. It's hard to appreciate in a single YouTube track.

Also most of the tracks originally had an extremely short shelf life, only existing as dubplates. The attraction was similar to reggae dancehall where the newest sounds are an attraction. This is why they style changed so rapidly over a relatively short space of time (93-95), after that it became codified in to a genre, with bandwagon jumpers a plenty ( cough David Bowie).

 

 

 

It's all very alien to me... I never went clubbing etc as a youngster

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