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Counting drum and bass
On YouTube this video is called Dj help,Counting drum and bass
What this lesson teaches
He admits straight away that this is one of the hardest kinds of music to count, which is a better starting point than pretending otherwise.
Two methods
Count every beat. At drum and bass tempos this means going one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight at a rate that, in his words, makes you look like a madman. It works and it is impractical.
Count the bass beat only. Half the rate, half the effort, and you can actually keep it up for a whole record.
Be consistent
His warning here is the one to take seriously, and it is the source of most of the confusion people have with this music.
If you count one drum and bass record in half time, count them all that way. Otherwise you end up comparing a number you counted at one rate with a number you counted at another, and concluding that two tracks are twice as far apart as they are - or that they match when they do not.
The same applies to the BPM figures your software reports. Analysis software sometimes reports drum and bass at half its real tempo and sometimes at full, and two tracks showing 87 and 174 may be exactly the same speed.
Why it sounds chaotic
The structural observation is the valuable part.
A drum and bass producer will set up a pattern - hi-hat, bass, hi-hat, bass - and then turn it around: hi-hat, bass, hi-hat, bass, bass, hi-hat. The accents move. The pattern you had locked onto two bars ago is not the pattern now.
To an ear trained on four-to-the-floor that reads as the beat falling apart. It is not: it is the same grid with different events on it, and the bar lines have not moved at all.
Which is why the advice is to find something that does stay put - the bass beat, or better still the snare - and count that, letting the detail move around on top.
The method still works
The thirty-second count and double still gives you a BPM. You are just counting a slower thing.
Contents of the video
0:00 A lot of people have asked me about counting drum and bass
Alright folks, a lot of people have asked me about counting drum and bass. They find it's very difficult, which it is actually. It's one of the most difficult types of modern day music to count the BPM in because there's so much going on. Two things you can do. One, the first being a bit silly and that is counting every single beat whereby you'll be going 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 very fast. The other one is where you count just the bass beat. Right, what we're going to do, we're going to look at three different types of drum and bass, three different tracks. Adam F., Music In My Mind, we've got M-Beat featuring Nazalin, Sweet Love, and then one of my favourites, which is Earl Grey and it's Oblivion Express. It's Rugged 16, OK? So the first one is an intricate type of drum and bass, whereby what the producer does, he actually...
He starts off, let's say, with a bass beat and goes hi-hat, bass, hi-hat, bass, hi-hat. And then what he'll do, he'll go hi-hat, bass, hi-hat, bass, hi-hat, bass, bass, hi-hat. He's almost turning the beat the other way around, which to the person who's not used to drum and bass, it sounds all over the place. But like with most types of modern day dance music, all you've got to do is listen, concentrate and count. And anyone, eventually, when you get used to it, you can count the beats per minute and get used to counting the bars. Okay, so what we'll do, first of all, is we'll start it at the beginning of the beat. We'll find it first. Okay, there we go. So what we'll do, we'll count. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24. Now bearing in mind, if I was counting that...
For 30 seconds, I would double it. So again, you look at your watch, you count how many beats are on 30 seconds and double it. But this is what I was saying earlier on. If you did that, you'd be talking as though you were a madman. This is how you count it half beat. It's a lot easier. Bearing in mind they're very important. If you do this counting with half beat with one drum and bass record, it's advisable to do them with all of them. So we get the start.
So we're doing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32. We had a slight change, which was this. That bit. We had more going on. Now believe it or not, after counting 32 at half beat, I actually counted two bars, okay? In other words, 1-1-2-3, 2-1-2-3, 3-1-2-3, 4-1-2-3. And there you had a break. So even with intricate drum and bass, you can still count the bars, okay? Now what we'll do, we'll go into something slightly more commercial.
3:30 Your watch
We'll do the same. We'll get ready at the beat and we'll count the beats. Now again, you get a stopwatch or a watch. There's no point counting 30 seconds and trying to count the beats in 30 seconds. It's impossible. You need a watch. Look at your watch. As soon as that hand gets to a certain point... Make a note of that point, make a note then of when it gets to 30 seconds and then of course logically you count up how many beats you've got. So here, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, now if I was to count double time it would sound like this, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. Okay, there you go. So there's two of them. Now the reason I've got this Earl Grey track is because what I want to show you here is at the beginning of the song there's no beat but we can still actually count the timing. We still know what the timing is and we can still count how many beats there are and we could even go as far as counting the beginning and knowing what the beats per minute was. If it's at the right speed that is.
Alright, we haven't got any beat, but we've got a melody. 1, 1, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3. 2, 1, 2, 3, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3. Did you get my drift? Okay, that was counting the bars. Now we're going to count the beats now, okay, to get the beats per minute. Start it again. Okay. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Now did you notice there again, at 32... Again, exactly the same with the other song, we had a change, which again is down to the bars. We have that clap, well, the hi-hat sound, or cymbal should I say. Now what we'll do, we'll bring it on to the beat. It should come in pretty much now. Hold on. There we go. OK, we'll count. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32. There you go, and again we had a change after 32. Two bars straight in something different. Okay, so what do we do?
Bringing in it at the one with drum and bass is exactly the same as all kinds of modern day sort of dance music. The only difference with drum and bass when you're counting the beats per minute, if you were actually to physically count the bass and the hi-hat... Thanks a lot, bye bye.
This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.
