Atmospheric drum ‘n’ bass is known for its rich textures and sophisticated beat programming, but thankfully, you don’t need to be rich or sophisticated to make this kind of music! With the array of free samples, synths and plugins available to electronic music producers, you can start creating smooth DnB grooves gratis, right now.

Here’s what you’ll be making today:

• READ MORE: How to use mix correction plugins for creative sound design

We’re going to use Ableton Live for this guide, but you can follow along with any DAW, though other DAWs will handle audio their own way and have slightly different stock effects. If you’re still looking for a DAW, you can check out our favourites.

Programming a break

Load up your DAW and set the project tempo to a brisk 165 BPM. We’re going to use a breakbeat sample from BandLab Sounds as the basis of our track, specifically from the ’90s Jungle pack.

Our sample is recorded at 155 BPM, so we’re going to speed it up slightly to fit with our project tempo.

[Editor’s note: BandLab and MusicTech are part of Caldecott Music Group]

In Live, do this by dropping the sample onto an audio track, turn off any warping that may be applied to the audio clip, and pitch the beat up to +1 semitone 21 cents. This puts the beat in time with project tempo — we can see this because the kicks and snares line up with the grid. As we’re repitching the audio without warping and timestretching, this helps keep the break’s transients snappy.

Now that the break is at the project tempo, you can chop duplicate sections of the audio as you see fit. We suggest keeping a kick on the first beat of the bar and a snare on the second beat of the bar, and restrict chops to being placed on 8th notes.

Once you’ve got a four-bar groove going, you can add some tonal parts.

Adding a pad

Pad chords are ubiquitous in atmospheric DnB, and they’ll give your beat a musical foundation to add other elements on top of.

First, grab the free Spitfire LABS plugin and ensure the Electric Piano and Synth Pads packs are downloaded. Again, you can use any synth or sampler you like, but we found the LABS plugin perfect for this track.

Now load up the plugin on a MIDI track, select the Synth Pads pack, and load up Pad #0006. This is a rich, mellow pad that when played with a jazzy chord will instantly give us that ambient jungle vibe.

Sequence a G minor 7 chord with an extra G note on the octave below (so that’s G1, G2, A#2, D3, F3), using velocity values of 100. This chord will give you the basis for a deep DnB vibe that sets things off nicely.

Creating an arpeggiator-style lead

Now let’s add a rhythmic lead to add some energy to our beat. On a new MIDI track, load up another instance of Spitfire LABS, and this time load up the Electric Piano – Chorus preset.

We’re going to sequence 8th notes with this sound, with a pattern that plays G2, D3, A3, A#2, and F3. Now duplicate this pattern for the rest of the four bars.

Because this pattern has five notes, it gives us a cool polymeter that plays off the break nicely.

Time to tweak your electric piano so that it sounds better in context. First, turn the Spitfire LABS Dynamics fader up to around 90 per cent, then add a subtle phaser and synced 3/16 delay effect. This gives it a little more movement and space.

Making a deep 808-style bass line

Now let’s make ourselves a big, booming 808 bass with the free version of Vital. Starting with the default patch, set the first oscillator’s wavetable to Basic Shapes to give us a smooth sine wave.

Next, turn down ENV 1’s Sustain to zero, and set its Decay to around 2.5 seconds. This makes the bass note fade out smoothly.

Now select ENV 2, and drag its modulation handle over to to Pitch Transpose parameter. This means we’re now controlling the pitch of the oscillator with ENV 2. We’re going to use this to make the patch drop in pitch whenever it’s played, giving our bass note a more percussive quality. Set ENV 2’s Sustain to zero, and its Decay to about 0.5 seconds.

You want the transposition amount to be quite small, so right-click the Oscillator 1 Transpose parameter, select Enter Value, and enter a value of 1.

You only want to be able to play one note at a time, so set the Voices parameter to 1.

Now program in a bass line. In our example we’re using the root note, the third, fifth and octave. Check out how the bass line sits smoothly with the beat, playing on some of the kicks and snares to give the beat a solid, rolling feeling.

Now you’ve got your beat, start adding and arranging elements to transform this into a fully-fledged original track.

Tim Cant is a music technology writer and educator. He produces and releases music as Tim Cant, and has upcoming releases on Okbron and Curvature.

Learn more production techniques at musictech.com/learn/.

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