Bass Music

Putting The Science Into Music

Bass Music is a broad term for electronic styles in which low frequencies, sub-bass and rhythm form the main musical focus. Rather than describing one fixed genre, it takes in dubstep, drum and bass, jungle, grime, UK garage, bassline, trap and other forms of club music.

Its foundations reach back to Jamaican sound-system culture, reggae and dub, where powerful speaker systems gave bass a central physical and musical role. Dub producers used mixing desks, tape machines, filters, delay and reverb to strip recordings back to drums and bass before rebuilding them as new versions.

Jamaican music and sound-system practices had a major impact on British club culture through migrant communities, record shops, pirate radio and local events. These influences later fed directly into the foundations of jungle, drum and bass, UK garage, grime and dubstep.

During the 1990s and 2000s, British producers built numerous bass-focused styles from breakbeats, syncopated percussion, sampled vocals and digitally generated sub-bass. Dubstep grew out of South London's garage scene, while related producers moved between grime, drum and bass, techno, house and experimental electronic music.

The term Bass Music became increasingly useful as artists began combining influences that no longer sat comfortably within a single category. It now covers music across many tempos and rhythmic structures, connected by prominent low frequencies, sound-system presentation and production that treats bass as a leading element.

At Scientific Sound Asia, bass music occasionally surfaces within Ministry Of Breaks, Control Tower and Global Bass.