Computer Music

Our doc builds liquid DnB funk beats

The doc gets his breakbeat on with some classic DnB drums

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Liquid funk, or liquid DnB, is a form of drum ’n’ bass intended as much for listening as dancing to, characteri­sed by emotionall­y stirring, jazzy melodics, rolling basslines and the frequent use of vocals. Renowned exponents of the form include Fabio (who ‘invented’ and named it in 2000), High Contrast, Calibre, Lenzman, DJ Marky, Nu:Tone, Logistics and Commix.

The drums in liquid funk are similar to those of intelligen­t DnB and other less aggressive styles, with chopped-up breakbeats and sampled live drums taking precedence over electronic­ally generated sounds – although the latter certainly play a part. A high-pass-filtered break (the Amen or one of its ilk) is often layered in for top- end ‘splash’, too.

In this tutorial ( and accompanyi­ng video), I’m going to show you how to program a liquid- funk drum pattern from scratch, and process it to get it sounding on point. I’m using Toontrack’s EZdrummer 2 virtual acoustic drum kit in Ableton Live 10, although you can easily achieve similar results using a well- chosen handful of samples loaded into any sampler or drum machine.

Alternativ­ely, for a more retro- inspired sound, don’t be afraid to mix and match classic breakbeat samples with one- shots.

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