The Low Down on Drum and Bass

Recently, the genre has started becoming more popular with youth around the world thanks to the internet revolution. Drum and bass is synonymous to jungle, a type of electronic dance music which can be identified by its fast tempo and broken beat drums. The bass is also very heavy. Though today it is still underground, it is slowly surfacing and making its way into youth culture, especially in the UK, where it originated.

Drum and bass branched off from the rave scene during the 1980s and since then, multiple elements have been incorporated into it. Jazz, rock, trance, metal, house, hip hop, and many other genres fused into the bass beats to give each track a unique feel.

The beats per minute in drum and bass tracks are usually from 160-180, compared to other forms of breakbeat that have paces of 130-140 BPM. As time has gone by and the genre has evolved, the BPM has raised and as a result, the tracks seem faster now a day.

The bassline in drum and bass plays half of the speed of the drums. The changing of this equation produces "faster" and "slower" sounding tracks. Guitar riffs and extra beats are added and the BPMs are made higher to alter the sound of the song. Since 1996, tracks have remained in the mid-170 BPM range, producing what we know today as drum and bass.

Because it is a type of dance music, drum and bass can be best appreciated to the fullest extent in clubs and discotheques. The bass is very pronounced, suggest by its name. Despite the popular preference of it being club music, many albums have been produced for personal listening. The most successful drum and bass artists to date include Pendulum, Shy FX, High Contrast, and Black Sun Empire.

Though the home base of drum and bass is in the UK, this infectious genre has spread itself globally. Strong scenes include: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, and the United States. Drum and bass also enjoys popular in Eastern and Northern Europe as well as South America, particularly Brazil and Venezuela. Asian drum and bass scenes include Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

Though it is frequently played on the radio in the UK, drum and bass's real life line is the internet. Its online presence is immense, specifically with internet radio stations dedicated to the genre and its promotion. The latest mixes also come from the internet. Two of the most popular drum and bass website are Drum and Bass Arena and Dogs On Acid.

Drum and bass is slowly becoming more heard around the globe and is for sure to supplant current standing genres as the beat of the future.