Drum and bass techniquez!!

Hey got any tips for making drum and bass. Any tips would be helpful, like some old school trackz. THe stuff that was poppin in 94... like the amen jungle.

Score a copy of Amen Brother. Sample the break, chop it into pieces, not just one-shots, but bigger pieces. Turn the pitch on them up until they match your fast tempo (around 170 more or less.) Get some 808 bass, or sinewave bass samples, freak that sh!t in there....and then mix in whatever other kinds of samples to give it your own flavor.
Just as a starting point, obviously.

OK, but i was wondering is that how most dnb producers do it? Or do they bang out the beats themselves on the mpc pads? I have a hard time hearing the what notes the drums hit on. its so fast.

If you're talking about the old mid-90's jungle stuff, that's roughly how it's done. You still use the pads, but instead of one-shot drums on the pads, you have bits of sped up break on the pads.
It's hard to explain unless I just show you what I mean.

use recycle and export some breaks into the mpc. go into step edit and rock the sequencer. u can get some tight shiz going on. plus you got pitch, decay and fliter to vary the notes up a bit. dont be afraid to experiment.

im not sure if this tip will neccessarily apply to d&B

but i do it with breaks to add my own flavor, and give em some 808 umpfff.

anyways, loop the break....or chop variations and loop that. Then take a single snare hit, and kick hit....then overdub it over the snares and kicks of the break. Sometimes the kicks dont have to match perfectly.

I also try to overlay a hihat.

Then i keep the loop behind my drums to sort of fill in and keep that break texture.

You do have to pick single hits that blend well, but add that snap and punch you like.

then i go for the bass line, or the instrumtals.....but if you get a nice layer over a break, and the layered hits bang!!! ususally the rest is easy because you dont need alot, its already banging.

for d&b im sure all you would need them are some exotic textures, like a pad, or wacky stab/picatto type hit with reverb or delay.

I always wanted to try a break like this, a break that is a little rusty from the vinyl being dirty, then overlaying a smooth raggae git with some delay on it. Kinda like a dark raggae joint.

A really cool technic is to take a 2 bars breakbeat , and programing several loops on it ( i did that with soundforge ) , you can program the number of repetition , so your break start , at the snare it loops three times then continues , then loops to the next kick 4 times ...
I remember with my old s 1000 i did that too ( multi loops for one sample ) . With the amen break it really starts to sound like thr real s##
Another one is with fruity loops ( don't scream at me ) , you program several patterns like one really straight and others with f##d up rolls , then you play your main beat and just tap the numbers on your computer keyboard like crazy ( in time that's better ! ) so it sounds like everytime your pattern change , see ?
Sp 202 is cool too because you can have your main break , and start tapping the pad to enter new start and new end , if you have finger rythm skills ( you should with an MP ) , you can do cool things .

If you want jungle stylez like the Amen break then you almost gonna have to get the amen and chop away - thats if you want it to sound "94" .. but if your trying to do the similar thing but with your new sound i agree with Cyrus.. having a loop running quietly in the background with your own beats over the top adds that really fast chopped sound thats so hard to replicate with programming..

I usually slow the tempo way way down and tap it all out then speed it back up... and that way you get your fast hits in there..

Analyse most jungle breaks and you'll notice the kick is usually on the first with a quick succession of snare rolls (as opposed to tech-step or rollers where the snare is more constant..) .. try and write your breaks like that and you'll notice your feel with be a bit more junglier.. and alot of breaks have a crash on the first..

Another way is to Record your simple pattern Kick/Snare/hats at a slow tempo and on Full volume/velocity (seperate tracks for each). After you have done that go back to each track and turn off the full volume and speed the Temp up to the speed you want it to be. Now overdub the snare and hats and the odd kick if u like.. (go a little crazy with the snares and hit the pads at different speed and strengths) and because they are on the same track the the original full volume hits will be reduced automatically giving you some cool screwed up snare attack action.

Then go through the bars that sound good and copy specific bars and put them all together.

Thats just some of the ways i make my dnb choons.. (or beats at least) i find though after i have the beats the rest falls in line...