Podcast Research

Notes on Drum and Bass:

First appeared in the mid 90s It was originally African Cultural origins- Bristol, London (UK) Typical instruments used- synthesizer, drum machine, sequencer, keyboard, sampler, personal computer, DAW Sub genres- dancestep, hardstep, atmospheric drum and bass, drumfunk, jazzstep, jump-up, drumstep, clownstep, liquid funk, nuerofunk, techstep. Record Labels- Hospital Records, Basement Records, Ram Records.

Podcast timetable
Week 1 - Pre-production (Script and composition) Week 2 - Production (Recording and re-recording) Week 3 - Post-production (Editing) Order of Podcast:

Intro, title, (From the Roots Up: A History of Drum and Bass) and names. History (3 songs from 90s, 00s & now. Background knowledge, 1st decade of dnb, Sub-genres, Record labels) Interview News (dnb artist with upcoming album) Outro

Research used about the history of Drum and Bass:

Background knowledge

Originally African then became rave scene music in the UK, electronic music, came about in mid 90s, between 160-180 bpm, can have heavy bass and sub-bass lines.

1st decade of dnb

Incorporated from different musical genres, including amen beat - came around in the 60s & became the main beat used in dnb music.

Sub-genres

Maily Jump-up & Jungle but also dancestep, hardstep, atmospheric dnb, drumfunk, jazzstep, drumstep, clownstep, liquid funk, nuerofunk & techstep.

Record labels Hospital Records, Basement Records, Ram records, V Recordings, Full Cycle (Sony Pendulum)

Research sources
Links where we got information for the content of the podcast: http://www.globaldarkness.com/articles/history%20of%20drum%20and%20bass%202.h tm http://www.imorecords.com/drum-bass-articles/history-drum-bass-key-drum-andbass-artists/ http://www.allmusic.com/subgenre/jungle-drumnbass-ma0000002557 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_and_bass http://www.innovation.gb.com/index.php/podcast http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p010j8y5/features/shows-and-downloads Links of songs we used: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYpDJw7fThU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtTTf4pHPjM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM_DwcxlztY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwQLk7NcpO4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w7RshwXdQU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg_lSNLAGuU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr-5PdZqkDw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogMNV33AhCY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRKJTZ_M1Pg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwfWSX0FYlI We also used iTunes to research albums, songs and artists involved with Drum and Bass such as, Camo and krooked, their album Zeitgeist and their single All Night.

GC2
MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface which allows a variety of electronic musical instruments, computers and other devices to communicate and connect with one another, one MIDI link can carry up to 16 channels of information. A MIDI keyboard is typically a piano styled device to send MIDI signals/commands to other connected devices. Most MIDI keyboards include the ability to change the pitch and octaves and many also have modulation wheels. Some have various other knobs or buttons to send MIDI messages. Other features that a MIDI keyboard might include are; an input for a foot switch, semi/fully weighted keys, may have the capability to send aftertouch and a USB port for a direct connection with a computer. MIDI keyboards come in a different range of sizes, from 25 keys to full length 88 keys but MIDI keyboards with less than 61 keys usually dont have weighted keys.

As seen in the pictures there are many different buttons and knobs to carry out different tasks and there are also many different inputs and outputs for things such as; USB, audio, sustain pedal, headphones ect.

Not all MIDI keyboards are traditionally piano styled, some have pads or buttons which can also send MIDI signals, most of the pads can sense velocity so varying volumes can be played. An example of this type of MIDI keyboard is the Continuum Fretboard, as shown in the image below.

With Words - Task 1

For the With Words project we were asked to produce a Podcast on any of the aspects that make up the sound and recording industries such as; the birth of a musical genre, trends of musical styles etc. in a group. I am working in a group with Kat, Olivia, Tom, Harry and Luca and the topic weve decided on for our podcast is the birth of Drum and Bass. As a group when we were first given this project we all decided to do the birth of a genre of music because we all thought it would give us a wide variety of information and research we could use to give our podcast good content and quality. We then started to talk about what genres of music we all liked and listened to and at first we originally chose our topic to be the birth of Jump-Up music, but after attempting to research into it we couldnt find much information so we instead decided we needed a topic which would provide us with an appropriate amount of research to ensure our podcast would be of good quality, we then decided on Drum and Bass as its a similar type of music to Jump-up but had a lot more information and history to it that we could use. I think that Drum and Bass is an appropriate choice of topic for our podcast because it is related very closely to our original choice of topic, its a popular type of music and we all didnt know much about it in the first place so we all learnt something about it during the process of the project. It is also a wide genre of music, it has a wide variety of sub genres and has a very interesting history which means there is a lot of information about it which we can and have used for the project.

A similar topic to the one we chose is The styles/trends of Drum and Bass music which would concentrate just on the style of the music but we chose the birth of DnB because we wanted to concentrate wholly on one musical genre compared to just one aspect of a genre, so as well as mentioning the styles and trends of DnB in our podcast we will also be talking about other aspects of it such as; the history of it, record labels associated with it, Sub-genres etc. which is why itll be different to just talking about the trends/styles of a genre as there will be various aspects to the whole genre which we will mention. Originally I didnt know much about Drum and Bass, I only knew a few artists and songs so for the project I wanted to find out a lot more about DnB like; more artists and songs, about DnB record labels, how it came about and progressed etc. This is also what I want the listeners to learn from our podcast, I want for them to have a basic background knowledge of Dnb and how it came about and different aspects of it, what it was like in the past, what its like now and DnB artists past and present. There is source material we can provide to justify our research into Drum and Bass: http://www.globaldarkness.com/articles/history%20of%20drum%20and%20bass%202.h tm http://www.imorecords.com/drum-bass-articles/history-drum-bass-key-drum-andbass-artists/ http://www.allmusic.com/subgenre/jungle-drumnbass-ma0000002557 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_and_bass There are other sources of information about Drum and Bass other than the internet, there are a few different books on Drum and Bass providing information that we couldve used. For example; All Crews: Journeys through Jungle/Drum and Bass Culture, The Rough Guide to Drum N Bass ect. Using just the internet for research wouldnt be totally conclusive because sometimes information on the internet is not always legitimate and can be changed quite easily by the public also making a lot of it unreliable, a lot of the information also doesnt have a source so we dont know where its coming from and if it is reliable. Some of my research has been used in the content of the podcast, we all looked at each others research and picked out bits from everyones then put it all together to create content with the key points we needed to use. I found everyones research useful as we all came in with different bits of information about Drum and Bass giving us a good variety to use for example, Tom found out about the Amen beat

which no one else found out about and we have incorporated that into our History section which was very useful. I think in this project it is better to work as a team rather than individually because different people within the group may be better at specific things for example, one person may be good at the pre-production and planning of the project and another person may be good at the editing and putting everything together, this means that peoples personal skills can compliment well with each other. Working in a group is also good because other people can give constructive criticism on ideas that I, or someone else, may not realise isnt such a good idea or could be improved therefore improving the quality of the project as a whole. Also, when researching for this project each team member may find different pieces of research which can then give the project a wider variety of content. The project is appropriate for the course because it involves radio production, which is suited to the course more than something like a TV feature because a podcast is focused more on music and sounds to provide a better effect and quality for the listener. There were a lot of other subject areas for the podcast that could have been equally as appropriate as Drum and Bass, at some point we mentioned maybe using Marching Bands as our podcast topic and other genres of music, but we chose Drum and Bass because we thought wed find a wider variety of information on the genre to use in the podcast and we all didnt know much about it but wanted to find out more about it. In our group we aimed to get a general background knowledge of Drum and Bass ourselves and take notes of anything we thought would be useful and interesting, we then talked about what pieces of research we could use from different people and we used a few different pieces from everyone so we got a range of information. We also made a timeline of when we were going to carry out different parts of the creation of the podcast. We aimed for the pre-production to be done in week 1, this included script writing and composition, week 2 was for the production of the podcast, we aimed to have the recording and some editing done and week 3 was meant for the post-production which included putting everything together and finalising the podcast, I think its important to plan the project to keep everyone working at a constant pace, to keep on track and to give ourselves enough time to do everything and time to redo some parts if we need to. We also assigned different roles to everybody within the group; myself and Olivia were in charge of script writing, Harry and Luca were co-producers, Harry and Tom were going to work on the composition, Kat was going to be the main presenter and we were all going to be involved with the research, editing and pre and post production. After actually getting into the

making of the podcast we realised our podcast wasnt the best it could be and could be improved a lot so we switched roles within the group and came up with some new ideas to improve the quality, which ended up working very well.

With Words - Task 3

We found a lot of information as a group. We all found out that Drum and Bass was originally African and we put this in the History section of our podcast. I also had the idea of putting in a news section about a new album/artist in Drum and Bass, so we did some researching and found that a DnB duo Camo and Krooked had a new album out which is what we used for the News section. We also came up with the idea of researching record labels some Drum and Bass artists were signed to so we mentioned that when we played their songs, so we researched and found that Shy FX were signed to Sound of the Underground Records, Chase and Status are now signed with their own record label MTA (More Than A lot) and Netsky were signed by Hospital Records and we put this information within the History section as well. We used quite a bit of information on how Drum and Bass originated and came about but we didnt mention the cultural origins or typical instruments used within DnB music. We used some research that we found about what artists made DnB popular and we also used research we found on the sub-genres of DnB and examples of songs of those sub-genres but we only mentioned two and didnt use the other 9 I found out about. We used songs and information about DnB artists through the years to show how it progressed and also incorporated some research we found out about record labels associated with DnB, although we didnt mention all the records labels within the DnB world. We researched into upcoming albums from DnB artists and used that within the News section. I think that one of the best and key pieces of information we found was about the Amen Beat because we found that its the main beat used in most DnB songs but the actual beat originated in the 60s and DnB didnt come about until the 90s, Tom found this out from the DnB page on Wikipedia. There may have been pieces of information on Wikipedia and other websites we used that could have been unreliable but we tried to see if there were the same pieces of information across different websites to make it more reliable but we do not know for sure if some of the information we found is completely reliable. Although, I think all the information we used in our podcast is relevant to our topic The birth of DnB because it all relates and links in so none of it is irrelevant. Within the research I think we all found that the History of DnB generated a lot more information than other areas related to

DnB but even so we didnt struggle in finding information on anything else like record labels, sub-genres ect. I dont think we went into great detail about everything we mentioned in the podcast, we went into quite a bit of detail talking about the history of DnB and the Amen Beat by giving examples as well as talking about it but we didnt go into great detail about how it became popular or the sub-genres in it so some of the information we talked about was a little broad. We could have avoided it by adding more detail to some of the information we talked about and maybe using a little less music or shorter pieces of music so it could all fit in. At first as a group we chose Jump-Up as our genre of music to research into for our podcast but after realising there wasnt much information available about it we then changed our topic to Drum and Bass which turned out to be a good decision as we found there was a lot on information on it everywhere like; iTunes, Wikipedia, YouTube ect. which we used for the content of our podcast. I think there are a few things in our podcast which we could have researched into a little bit more for example, we could have looked more into exactly how and why Drum and Bass became popular, and we could have also talked about more sub-genres as we only mentioned two but I know from research there are a lot more. If I were to do this project again I would approach it in the same sort of way but I think Id write out a more detailed time line to follow and make sure I stick to the timeline more strictly because even though we planned a timeline to follow we didnt quite stick to it as much as the time went by so I would definitely make sure what needed to be done was done each day if I were to do it again because I think it is important to have a clear structure to stick to so we know what were doing. I would also rehearse how the podcast was meant to go more just in case anything was wrong or needed to be changed. I would also test out ideas near the beginning to see if they work well just in case they dont so Id then have enough time to think of other ideas and still get everything done. If we were given more time on this project I think I would have gotten more information from places other than the internet. For example I might have gone to the library and read through some relevant books to see if I could find some more information that may have been slightly more reliable than information found on the internet. If given more time I could have also listened to many more podcasts to make myself more familiar with how they are structured and I could have listened to DnB podcasts to also find out more information about our topic.

During the making of the podcast I actually learnt a lot about Drum and Bass, I learnt that it was originally African, that a lot of the music in the genre centres around the amen beat, when and how it came about, different DnB artists and song, that it has a lot of sub-genres, about record labels that have signed DnB artists ect. and all this information is portrayed effectively in the podcast so the listener will come away from it also having learnt all these different things about DnB and how it came to be. We could have presented all this information and research in many different formats other than a podcast, for example we could have made a TV episode, write a song about it. written it as an essay/short book/article/magazine, made a video on YouTube or you could even