Atmospheric drum and bass production
Here is the ambient/atmospheric/intelligent drum and bass track I produced and what follows is the production write up :
I thought I would make an ambient (intelligent / atmospheric) drum and bass track, parting with trance for a little while. I was not sure whether to make a very dark and heavy sounding track or something smoother and lighter. I went with the latter producing an atmospheric drum and bass track. (A.K.A ‘Intelligent’ drum and bass) There were a few compilations called “intelligent” and as I gather this is where that slightly odd and condescending phrase came from. Anyway, so be it, ambient drum and bass, atmospheric drum and bass or intelligent. It is how it sounds that ultimately matters.
Atmospheric D&B was a breath of fresh air in the 90’s and resulted in slightly more smooth and polished sounds, less distortion, grit (sometimes anyway, I heard a few distorted sub bass boomers in a few references), and slightly silkier sounding mixes. Often characterised by funky, soulful sounds combined with a spacious, ethereal atmosphere. With nice melodies in equal measure. That was the plan.
Cubase running around 50 tracks for an atmospheric drum and bass track
The project studio of the 1990s
As usual I add my own interpretations of 90’s style production, a project mixing console, not going overboard with lots of effects processors that would not be present in a project studio. Keeping automation to a minimum as would have been the case in a well equipped project studio of the time. (minus the Spirit Absolute 2’s ! – If you were lucky.) I worked with SSL E this time on Slate VCC (and did not overthink this – suffice to say as long as there is desk emulation present it would be fine. Arguably the Trident would have been a slightly lower end option, more akin to a 24 channel project studio desk.) and I drove “the desk” a little harder, yet as can be seen on the master bus plug in no red lights were illuminated. Certainly no audible distortion though likely a little harmonic generation present.
Slate VCC console emulation drive levels. (viewed horizontally to conserve space)
Other than a Sontec EQ that is set flat (with its analog model set to standard) emulating the solid state bus output (it is a highly revered solid state op amp based EQ afterall) there was nothing except Slate VCC bus plug in on there which adds a touch of crosstalk between the stereo bus L/R channels. Moderate drive levels used.
No mix bus compression
To sample or not ?
90’s drum and bass is synonomous with Akai, EM-U and Roland samplers (I used to own a AKAI CD3000 back in the day – and S3000 with a CD-ROM built in.) and my initial intention was to use TAL sampler for this track.
TAL Sampler and Nugen Stereoizer for ‘narrower-izing’
It turned out that in the main I did not need to use the sampler much. Atmospheric or ambient drum and bass does not use that many chopped up breaks. In fact it seems once a good break for the style is established they are often run as a nice rolling loop whilst the music itself dictates the flow and progression of the track. I kind of knew this anyway but after checking some refs, as it has been a while, this became clear. (Much to my relief as it has been quite some time since I have MIDI programmed multiple, cut up breakbeat sections.) TAL sampler did feature though in places it has a nice DAC feature which emulates the DAC output of a few samplers. Of note the AKAI S-1000 model seems to bring a somewhat punchier presentation of drums.
As such I timestretched my selected drum breaks to tempo (using Cubase) as this is the suggested working methodology for this sampler, from a possible 20-30. I selected a set that worked nicely with each other, in total 4 breaks. This took a little time to work out what suited the style. TAL Sampler did feature in the intro where I used a chopped section into a delay for an intro break. However in the main these breaks are run as audio files.
And also I added a layering break to augment the main break in the track. The track is entitled “Touching the void”. As such a suitable vocal sample was found and inserted. Each break is uniquely EQ’d and level balanced to make disparate break beats work nicely together. A case of even-ing out the differences and getting the kicks to work given they have been pitched upwards at the track’s tempo (164BPM).
Sweet, beautiful pads
This style of D&B loves some ethereal pad sounds, so I knew roughly where I would be headed for those. RP Blue III and Xpand!2 and also a lovely preset pack producer from “Thought Forms” who sells various preset packs for the Korg Wavestation and other synths. I quickly became aware that a lot of this drum and bass uses a Minor 9th chord for ease of writing. It has some specific benefits as well as a lovely mysterious suspense to it.
Best pads for ambient drum and bass ?
I thought this might be a little too easy and cliched, however, that chord which is ubiquitous in this D&B sub genre does set the track up before it changes feel a little. I also employed lush pitch bend that adds to the ethereal and other worldy nature to the intro. The main chord sequence is a departure from the intro but I admit to being a little bit lucky in that the pitch bend allowed me to seemlessly transition into the main chord progression/s.
Pad sounds from the Korg Wavestation VSTi
At quite a late stage in production I noticed my main chord sequence pads were a little bit static. So off to the LFO and LPF in Rob Papen’s Blue III synth in order to give them just a little movement. Adding to their ethereal and dreamy, smooth wave like motion throughout the track.
90s esque reverb using Cubase roomworks, sounds nice for an older algo reverb
Funky and spacey together ?
I thought this might be a tricky combination at first but found the bedrock chord progression allowed great freedom to experiment and improvise with different funky melodies and spacey sounds which all worked a treat. Sylenth1 VSTi had a nice sound with a bit of tweaking of the synthesis did well as a substitue for wah wah funk guitar. (The funky melody that has been running around my head for the last many weeks, that was probably a good sign.)
https://www.lennardigital.com/sylenth1/
Modern classic, the trusted VSTi Sylenth1
What would D&B be without bass ?
When this track was made I had also recently been listening to Gary Newman’s “Music for Chameleons” which also subsequently featured in the comedy Alan Partridge sketch. The amazing fretless bassline on the Gary Newman track was played by Pino Palladino. I wanted some fretless bass action in this track ! Cue Spectrasonics Trilian which has a wonderful set of fretless bass Gliss presets giving the characteristic slide notes that feature.
A powerful and versatile bass synth Spectrasonics Trilian
Fretless bass, even just nicely programmed adds a little human dimension to this music and works nicely with human played breakbeats.
Along with Trilian which is an amazing bass synth, I used RP Sub boom bass II with some additional processing. This was not the preset as it was originally though. I tweaked the amp envelope in detail to get everything right for the track tempo/feel by ear. Added velocity sensitivity and tweaked note velocities as I saw fit. The bass has some light compression on it as well without any HPF in the side chain of course. I also did a little broad EQ boost above the bass fundamentals as there seemed to be some information above the fundamentals despite being a sine wave bass. There are some very deep notes in the bass line on this track that reach 30.87Hz (B0). There is a very small amount of saturation from a “valve/tube” plug in and tape emulation in mastering on the sub that creeps through, more about that later. (I did not use the MC77 though in the insert chain in the end favouring another compressor choice.) A case of a multi pronged attack for a little better bass cut through on smaller systems on what is a very deep bass line that lives 30-80Hz. The lowest sub bass note in the track is B0 at 30.87Hz.
Subs produced by Sub Boom Bass II
During mixing I adjusted MIDI notes to ensure the lower notes were at least slightly louder to assist with reduced efficiency on smaller systems though the fundamental compromises on weak bass output system will be evident. I also had to adjust the MIDI velocities downwards on any “octave up” sections so they sit nicely to the ear. It is a bit of creative vs technical compromise. Despite essentially being a sine wave boomer style bass it manages to cut through reasonably well even on a set of 3.5 inch multimedia speakers.
I also wanted that huge sub of the low notes giving that all pervading body throbbing, deep, vibrant sound that only seismic sub bass can provide on a large club or festival system.I also transposed a few of the lowest note sections up an octave here and there throughout the track to keep those using small speakers happier, which is a nice little bass accent in its own right. Most of the kick drums in the pitched up break beats sit above 100Hz so they are out of the way and do not interfere.
EQ to produce presence (that worked for this tracks bassline), compression and light saturation settings for SubBoomBass. Attack 12ms – Release 200 ms 2dB gain reduction, no SC filter. Freeware Transature plug in.
Other important sounds
I noticed some pads and sounds were coming in a tad wide and remedied this by EQing the mid channel a little at relevant frequencies and also narrowing (Using NUGEN Stereoizer – with some irony my favourite “Narrower-izer” by maybe 10-15pct) and bumping the faders up a touch to compensate for loss of mix volume. I used a lovely sound for a spacey arp style sequence later in the track using the superb u-He Repro-5 and fortunately my CPU allowed me to switch that into HQ mode for full “analogue” emulated glory.
Repro-5 by U-he, superb analogue synth emulation.
Xpand2! also featured as it has a lovely glassy clarity, 90s-esque feel to its sound, rather like some of the Roland /Kurzweil synths of the time.
Xpand!2 features once again
I have always liked a specific pitch bent synth sound that featured in a few tracks I recall in the 90’s so I used Sylenth1 to attempt to recreate this. I heard something a little in this direction when listening to tracks in the atmospheric / ambient D&B genre to get my ear freshly in tune with the sound. I made a decent version which involved a pitch envelope at the start of the sound on what I recall as being a square wave, delay and verb, however by fortuitous luck stumbled on an even better version of the same sound ready made in Xpand2! so I used that instead, which simply made sense. I get Roland D-50 vibes from this sound.
I used some SFX from Predator 3 as it has loads of presets and it is quite easy at the end stages of production to find a few nice ones that fit the atmosphere just right.
This track took quite a long time to complete mainly due to heavy workload and life getting in the way rather than writing or production difficulties. I have to say I enjoyed it once again I am pleased with how this track has turned out. It is nice to move around in the genres when producing DAW music.
The track production adheres loosely to the sound of the 90’s but I did not force this too hard this time and if I felt the need I was not too strict to hold back on using a modern technique if need be. Broadly speaking it falls into line with some references of the time.
Close to completion, the final leg
As far as mastering, this was especially fun and slighty unconventional, breaking with what probably happened in the 90’s. I used Slate Digital, Virtual Tape Machine VTM (which I hold in high regard as a good tape emulation) I know the traits of this Studer A80 1/2 inch deck emulation well, its sonic imprint so to speak.
This worked a treat doing exactly what I wanted. Though I did tailor some of the key parameters to the track and sound I was hearing over the PMC IB1S. I decided wow and flutter had no place, nor did any additional noise from emulated tape. I used very low drive levels hitting -10VU or so. I also trimmed the bass setting down a little so the deepest notes had just the right grunt. An unusual choice but it simply worked with this mix.
Slate virtual tape machines, VTM, a credible and very useful tape emulation
I used the Sontec EQ to cut a little flab in the lower mids which Slate VCC also adds. This is a very good example of knowing the idiosyncrasies of gear very well be it virtual or hardware analogue. It allows you to deploy a specific device to powerful effect. This comes from monitoring accuracy and knowing the traits through being able to hear the entire spectrum and what any given process is really doing to audio. (and being able to tailor it.)
I gave some air to the mix using the Sontec EQ as well.
Some quality light compression was applied and as transparent as possible limiting to get the volume upwards towards where such tracks might sit. The beauty being is ambient drum and bass was not mastered very loudly and it sounds fantastic as a result of that.
It makes little sense to make these tracks sound too far remote from their original dynamics back in the 90’s. You can push it a bit as todays tools allow some perceived volume lift without detriment to fidelity or unduly stifling dynamics. As usual I get the mix right first rather than do too much heavy lifting in mastering.
I master music for a living, very comfortable with all genres, including of course drum and bass so do not hesitate to get in contact, keen prices and more than 20 years of professional experience to apply to your music see link just below.
1T £30.00 | 4T EP £120.00 10-12T Album £230.00
Email Barry at : safeandsound123@googlemail.com