How to make neurofunk

Tempo and the drum foundation

172–176 BPM, with 174 the safe default. Programme a tight two-step first: kick on the one, snare on the third beat of the bar, ghost notes filling the gaps at low velocity.

Layer the kick from two sources — a short punchy body plus a clicky transient — and keep the snare bright and forward. Hats sit quiet and dry at sixteenths; the drums must stay clean because the bass is going to occupy every other space.

Reese bass design, step by step

Start with two detuned saw oscillators an octave apart, add a third slightly out of tune, then run the stack into a notch or comb filter with slow movement on it. That interaction between detuning and filtering is what makes the classic Reese growl.

Then resample. Bounce the bass to audio, reload it, and process the audio again — distortion, formant filtering, phaser, bit reduction. Neurofunk bass is almost always several passes of resampling rather than one clever patch.

Split the bass in two: a clean sine sub holding the low end mono below roughly 100 Hz, and the growling mid-range layer high-passed above it. Never let the designed layer carry the sub — the low end stops being controllable.

Movement: the bass is the melody

Write the bass rhythmically rather than melodically. Two or three notes, syncopated against the drums, with automation on filter cutoff, formant position and distortion drive so each repeat of the two-bar phrase sounds slightly different.

Modulate on every bar. A static neuro bass sounds like a preset; the same three notes with changing timbre sounds like a record.

Atmosphere and top end

Keep the melodic content sparse and cold: a filtered pad, a metallic stab, a reverse cymbal, sci-fi textures at low level. Anything warm or chordal pulls the track toward liquid.

Use the space above 8 kHz for detail — noise sweeps, ride wash, granular texture — so the mix feels wide while the mid-range stays owned by the bass.

Arrangement and switch-ups

A working shape: eight-bar intro on drums and atmosphere, a 16-bar build with the bass filtered, the first drop at bar 33, a mid-track breakdown that drops to texture and a single hit, then a second drop with a different bass patch.

That second-drop switch-up is the convention — a new patch, a rolled rather than stepped bass, or a half-time section. For how neuro sits against liquid and jump up, the drum & bass production guide maps tempo and arrangement across the family.

Mixing the bass against the drums

Carve rather than compress: notch the mid-range bass where the snare lives, and sidechain the growl gently to the kick so the transient always reads.

Keep everything below roughly 100 Hz mono and check on a small speaker. Neurofunk is judged on club systems, where an uncontrolled sub eats the whole mix.