Sambass

What it is

Brazilian producers got hold of jungle records around 1995 and did the obvious thing, which turned out not to be obvious at all. DJ Marky, XRS, Patife, Drumagick and the crowd around Sao Paulo's Lov.e club started laying samba percussion over a two step drum and bass skeleton and sampling bossa nova guitar instead of ragga vocals. The scene had a compilation series and a name by 1999. In 2001 Marky and XRS cut LK with Stamina MC over a Jorge Ben sample, Bryan Gee put it out on V Recordings, and for about eighteen months a Brazilian record was the biggest thing in British drum and bass. The reason it belongs on its own page rather than inside the drum and bass family is that the kit is not where the music happens. The kit is a rented skeleton. The tamborim and the ganza are the record.

What it sounds like

Bright and open, which is unusual at this tempo. The bass is a round filtered sine or a played electric bass rather than a Reese, so the low end has notes in it and no distortion on it. Above the kit sits a real percussion section, recorded or sampled: ganza or shaker running continuous sixteenths, tamborim playing the teleco-teco, sometimes a surdo on the downbeats and an agogo answering. Harmony comes from nylon-string guitar or Rhodes playing major sevenths and ninths, and vocals are sung in Portuguese, mixed forward and dry. Reverb is short. The whole thing is mastered brighter than a London record from the same year.

Key elements

• The ganzaA metal shaker running continuous sixteenths under everything, accented on the beats. It is the part doing the work the hi-hat does in every other drum and bass subgenre, and it never stops.
• The tamborim figureThe teleco-teco: a syncopated bell-like pattern that avoids the downbeat and lands on the a of the beat. Played on a small frame drum with a stick, or an agogo if you want it louder.
• A borrowed two stepThe kick and snare are the standard drum and bass skeleton, unaltered. Saying so is more useful than pretending otherwise, because it tells you where the effort actually goes.
• Melodic bassPlayed or programmed as a bassline with real intervals rather than a one note sub. Often a sampled upright or a filtered sine following the guitar's root motion.
• Bossa harmonyMajor sevenths, sixths and ninths from nylon guitar, lifted from a record made forty years earlier and pitched to fit. The chords are the reason this feels warm at 172.

How to get them

• Build the kit lastProgram the percussion first and the drum and bass skeleton afterwards. Doing it the other way round produces a jungle track with a shaker on it, which is a different and much duller thing.
• Get the ganza rightContinuous sixteenths at velocity 38 to 64, accented on the quarters and a little softer on the offbeat eighths. Vary two or three of them by five or six counts each so the lane breathes.
• Play the teleco-tecoHits on the a of 1, beat 2 and the and of 2, then the same shape from beat 3. Keep it above 800Hz with a short decay so it cuts through the hats instead of competing with the snare.
• Sample from before 1970Nylon guitar and voice from a bossa or MPB record, time-stretched rather than repitched so the guitar stays in tune. Filter the top off the sample and let your own percussion supply it.
• Keep the bass cleanA sine with a low-pass around 400Hz, or a real bass DI'd and compressed at 4:1. No distortion and no Reese. The moment the low end gets aggressive the percussion stops reading as percussion.
• Master it brightA gentle shelf of two decibels above 8kHz on the master. These records were mixed for a warm room and they sound wrong when the shakers are dull.

Reference points

DJ Marky, XRS, DJ Patife, Drumagick, Fernanda Porto and Stamina MC, plus the Sambass compilation series on Trama and the V Recordings and Movement catalogues. Reference points for the sound, not endorsements.