Jump-Up
Drum and bass built for the front of the room and nothing else.
The pattern
2 bars, sixteenth notes. Loops until you stop it.
True tempo, 174, two bars. The kick lane is the tell. Beat 1, then again on the a of 1, then squarely on beat 3 as well as the and of 3, which is four kicks in a bar where the two-step has two. That extra hit right after the downbeat is the bounce. Hats sit on every eighth and are mixed loud, with an open hat splashing the last offbeat of bar one. Bar two drops the kick on beat 3, adds one on the and of 2 and another on the last sixteenth as a pickup, and puts a snare on the and of 4 to throw the loop forward.
What it is
The populist branch, and the one that has kept British dancefloors full since about 1996. DJ Hype, Aphrodite and Zinc took drum and bass back towards funk and hip-hop samples, made the basslines into hooks you could hum, and simplified the drums so the crowd could find the beat instantly. It went out of critical fashion and stayed in the clubs, then came back in the 2010s through Hazard and Original Sin with the bass distortion turned up considerably. The drum programming is the simplest in this family, on purpose.
What it sounds like
Loud, bouncy and immediate. A kick with a fast attack, hi-hats on every eighth at a level you cannot ignore, and open hats splashing at the end of the bar. The bass is a repeating two-bar riff, usually a squelchy filtered saw or a hard-clipped growl, and it functions as the chorus. Vocal samples are chopped hip-hop or ragga, dropped in for a bar and gone. Very little atmosphere and very little space.
Key elements
- The bounce kickAn extra kick on the a of beat 1, right after the downbeat. That single hit is what separates jump-up's feel from the flat two-step and it is where the name comes from.
- Kick on the 3Unlike the two-step, jump-up often puts a kick squarely on beat 3 as well as around it. It makes the bar read as two halves rather than as one long phrase.
- Loud eighth-note hatsHats on every eighth, mixed hot, with big open hats on the offbeats. No subtlety, and it is what makes the pattern legible over a crowd.
- The bass hookA two-bar riff with a rhythm of its own, usually landing in the gaps the drums leave. Written as a melody, then made ugly with distortion.
How to get them
- KickShort and clicky, with the body around 70Hz rather than 50Hz. It has to be heard against a very loud bassline, so weight matters less than attack here.
- Bass hook firstWrite the bass riff before the drums and then program the kick around its gaps. Every producer in this genre works in that order and it is why the patterns interlock the way they do.
- Distortion stagingFilter the bass first, then distort, then filter again. Distorting before the low-pass gives you harmonics you can shape; distorting after just makes it harsh.
- Open hatsLet them ring most of a beat and choke them with the next closed hat. Set both to the same choke group so the sampler cuts the tail rather than letting two hats overlap.
- Keep the arrangement bluntSixteen bars of intro, eight of build, thirty-two of drop, repeat. The DJ is mixing this in a loud room and any subtlety in the structure is lost before it is heard.
Reference points
DJ Hype, Aphrodite, DJ Zinc, Hazard, Original Sin, Serum, and True Playaz, Ganja and Playaz as labels. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements or as anyone to imitate.
The pattern is a starting point rather than a rule. If you want the theory underneath why any of it works, Battuto measures it.