My theme for this year has been Drum and Bass so this is what my research assignment is based on. I started my research by finding out the origins and history of drum n bass. I thought this would be essential to understanding the genre and finding out how the genre has evolved over the couple of decades that it has been around. Next I chose to research how the music is made and what instruments were important to the making of the music. Another piece of information that I researched and that I found most interesting was the album art and the concert posters used to promote gigs.
Concert posters are essential to promote gigs, without them not many people or no one is going to know about the gig. During my research I found that the concert posters had these essential things; who was performing, the date of the gig, ticket prices and where to get them, and in some cases if there gig was on to promote an album there would be an image of the album cover. Now what ranged with the posters were the illustrations used. When it comes to the drum n bass genre the concert posters are generally darker in colour, this is probably because it is an underground genre and generally involved with the nightlife culture or rave culture. The majority of the posters I looked at also had the artist/s somewhere on the poster, they didnt seem to be a particular image on the poster more like part of the poster themselves i.e. blended into the background. The posters that I looked at that didnt have the artists on them tended to have stencil graphics on them generally of sci-fi or of militia type illustrations. The reason for this I think is that sci-fi sounds and music appear alot on drum n bass tracks perhaps referring to the futuristic sound of the genre. And with the militia type graphics I think this was merely just a reference to the genre been underground, not so mainstream and therefore referred to fans of the music to rise up and get drum n bass ‘out there’. Circle shapes also appeared in alot of the concert posters I looked at.
What I have learnt during this assignment is how drum and bass is made, using turntables, synthesizers, keyboards and PC’s in particular. I learnt how the music originated from the UK rave scene and using influences from hip hop, dub, and reggae beats. And I learnt about the art approaches involved in the production of album covers and concert posters, I think this information is most likely to help me with my own personal graphic design and I was thankful that I chose to investigate further into this subject.
The further avenues that could be relevant to learning more about drum n bass would be to gain a wealth of knowledge of other similar music genres such as techno and speed garage. Also learning more about the production and technicalities of the making of drum n bass would be relevant. And last, to learn more about the effects of certain drugs. This may seem irrelevant but it’s common knowledge to know that drug use plays a part in the rave scene and for some musicians can give them inspiration for developing new music.
A research strategy that I didn’t use was to actually ask members of a group who produce drum n bass with some success. This would have given me a better understanding of the making of the music and I could have asked them about their personal experiences when it comes to making, listening to, and generally enjoying the best music genre in the world, Drum and Bass.
