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Over the past few years, Holland’s Icicle - aka Jeroen Snik - has notched up releases on a number of drum ’n’ bass labels, ranging from liquid stalwarts Fokuz and Soul:r to darkside heavyweights Renegade Hardware and Cylon.
His minimal yet muscular sound has made him the darling of the DnB scene, and recently he’s started creating dubstep too, with tracks such as the dark and funky Xylophobia on Shogun Audio. So how does Jeroen find producing dubstep in comparison to DnB?
“In drum ’n’ bass you can get away with drums that are more punchy - you don’t need as much sound because there are just more hits per second, they’ve got less room,” muses Jeroen. “With dubstep you have much more space in the drums; when I first started making it, I struggled because the drums are so sparse. Because of that space, your drums are far more exposed!
“So, they need to sound better: they need to have a bit more release and more character. I never used to put reverb on drums, but when you’re producing dubstep you have freedom to experiment more with your drum sounds.”
In the following tutorial, Jeroen show us how he makes his distinctive bass and beats using Logic and Reason, and gives us a few helpful hints on producing big, punchy mixdowns.
