This track is in the style of Drum & Bass, with a 4×4/techno breakdown in the final pre-chorus. The intro focuses on euphoric chords and atmospheres in the buildup into the heavy drop. While making this track I was inspired by dance floor producers such as Sub Focus and Dimension, but then also jump-up producers like Sota and K motionz. Drum & bass is fundamentally designed for the dancefloor, so the track was structured with that environment in mind. The build-ups are arranged to maximise tension before the drop hits. The drop itself is engineered for impact, with emphasis on low-end weight and rhythmic drive to create a strong crowd response. The inclusion of the 4×4 techno-style breakdown in the final pre-chorus introduces contrast and reflects how contemporary club sets often blend genres to maintain energy and to surprise the audience. I also added this section because it is quite rare that a Drum & Bass song reaches 5 minutes, so I felt that it was important to maintain the listeners attention.

Above I have examples of many of the synthesisers I used to create the basses, plucks, pads, leads, and mid-basses in the track. I used a digital synth called Serum 2, which allows for a huge amount of control when sound designing. Initially when making the basis of the sounds, I changed parameters such as the LFO and envelope shapes, the wavetables, wavetable positions and filters. I then added post processing within serum in order to elevate these sounds by using Hyper/Dimension, lots of distortion such as diode, hardclip, or tube, single and multiband compressors, chorus, plate and hall reverbs and stereo delays. Finally, for select sounds, I used the matrix tab in order to automate these parameters often to the LFO or macros. This means that when the note is triggered there is movement while the note is being played out, which allows for some very interesting sounds to be made. Above I also have a couple photos of the midi to show chord structure and also the arpeggiator effect I used in the intro to emulate an arpeggiator.

This video shows an example of the first heavy bass used for the impact of the drop. It demonstrates the movement specifically when the note is triggered, through automated filters, distortion, and LFOs

This is a short video of the track playing in its original DAW session. N.B.: I have had to convert some of the midi files into audio files, as my laptop couldn’t handle the processing power that Serum 2 uses for some of the synths that I created.

This is a short video that shows the mixer. It demonstrates the processing used within the mix.