The Drop Thread // How To Make Drops

[Mike Renai]

Writing melodic baszlines, doesn't mean they all have to be playing a melody. It just means, have them "respond" to each the other in gestalt fashion.

Thanks, will look into that. Your tracks on soundcloud are dope by the way.

[hasezwei]

i don't know if its your kind of dubstep but listening to this piece regularly can teach you a lot about call/response and ways to keep a simple theme interesting throughout the whole tune

[ephyks]

The best drops are those that follow the rhythm of the intro. This is a clear example of that.

[claudedefaren]

Writing melodic baszlines, doesn't mean they all have to be playing a melody. It just means, have them "respond" to each the other in gestalt fashion.

Thanks, will look into that. Your tracks on soundcloud are dope by the way.

thank you very much!

[claudedefaren]

this might help as different wording: you'd be surprised how much sense some seemingly unrelated sounds can make when thrown together, esp in a complextroish bassline. that is gestalt theory at its essence. a melange of seemingly unrelated things (or related i suppose in some cases) that when thrown together into one setting (your song) make perfect sense and form something new (a complex bassline)

[OfficialDAPT]

That Baxta song reminds me so much of Rusko at first.

[daeMTHAFKNkim]

The best drops are those that follow the rhythm of the intro. This is a clear example of that.

A lil off-topic but Brown & Gammons rendition is pretty awesome also.



Get 8 bars and put it on repeat. Open up 4-8 instances of massive. Make a full melody(lead) with 1. Then split the whole melody to each massive to switch it up. Open up patches/make a wub with each instance. Pretty much the gist of it.

[hutyluty]

i don't know if its your kind of dubstep but listening to this piece regularly can teach you a lot about call/response and ways to keep a simple theme interesting throughout the whole tune

I always got the feeling that Vex'd spent a really long time on their tunes- refining and modifying and stuff. I mean if I made say the main bass line to gunman then that'd probably be it: 2X128 bar loops with 32 bar breakdown. But they make sure the tune constantly sounds a tiny bit different- which is probably why it still sounds so fresh now compared to a lot of the more 8bar style stuff made back then

[Mr 50]

Hopefully I'm not repeating something that's already been said as I didn't read all of the thread, but a quick tip (old trick) that works well:

To build tension and get ready for the drop is to Low or High pass leading up, except for 1 main element that remains unaffected.

For examples, drum rolls, incidentals, sweeps, everything gets hi passed, except that arpeggiated synth so that it really rises to dominance. Right at the last moment this gets filtered to and insert a little vocal snippet or anything really before that drop kicks in.

This isn’t anything new, but thought I’d chip in!

[hasezwei]

i don't know if its your kind of dubstep but listening to this piece regularly can teach you a lot about call/response and ways to keep a simple theme interesting throughout the whole tune

I always got the feeling that Vex'd spent a really long time on their tunes- refining and modifying and stuff. I mean if I made say the main bass line to gunman then that'd probably be it: 2X128 bar loops with 32 bar breakdown. But they make sure the tune constantly sounds a tiny bit different- which is probably why it still sounds so fresh now compared to a lot of the more 8bar style stuff made back then

spot on! and i mean that's the way to do it isn't it? their use of ambience is very important, too. i think i've read somewhere that one of them (roly?) made dark ambient soundscapes and the other (jamie i suppose) made the beats separately...

anyway, thread got merged with a lot of other threads discussing midrange complextro zappy noises so what's the point in continuing

[Dj Rephlex]

Ok, I've been trying to ask this for awhile now because it's the only limiting factor for me right now.
Every single time start to work on a drop I get hyped as fuck, 10 minutes later I have 3-4 synths that I want to use for a drop but I can't because the sounds just don't "flow"
I know other people have had this problem aswell. No matter what synths I use they just don't sound like they fit together.
Does anyone know how to help with this or know of a good tutorial I could check out?

[PillowFight]

group them all together once you've mixed them down and run them through the same compressor (try to keep this compression pretty light), high end reverb, EQs, etc. and do the same for subs. This tends to "glue" things together a bit more. Also you can try parallel compressing them and layering the parallel compressed bassline with your original bassline.

[Dj Rephlex]

Holy shit that was like a magic trick. Thanks! ALOT!

[PillowFight]

Holy shit that was like a magic trick. Thanks! ALOT!

No problem, happy music making

[syrup]

or use, you know... less synths

[invisibled]

if you have an idea that you want to get out.. but can't necessarily get out right away, start simple, make your bass's go for half bar's to change every snare hit / kick as a really simple template of your final idea. I find having a bit of structure and then building up little pieces helps me get out complicated or hard-to ideas... hopefully this makes sense?

[Dj Rephlex]

if you have an idea that you want to get out.. but can't necessarily get out right away, start simple, make your bass's go for half bar's to change every snare hit / kick as a really simple template of your final idea. I find having a bit of structure and then building up little pieces helps me get out complicated or hard-to ideas... hopefully this makes sense?

Very wise words. Actually, I've been trying to sculpt up my drops using this "formula" if you will for awhile now I just didn't start simple, which is the whole idea hahahahaha.
Cheers man

[Icetickle]

Recently I made 2-3 really cool bass let's say patches (etc. wobbles) but I they just don't sound good next to each other! And this happens to me most of the times when I'm making the drop. It just sounds weird!
Does anyone know why Is this happening to me all the time ?

[Brothulhu]

Try and make them complement each other, don't make a bunch of random basses and hope they fit. Maybe try bus processing them together with a compressor and whatever sounds good. Failing that make one really good patch and automate everything, have effects switching on and off etc so it sounds different. The latter sounds a lot better imo

[Icetickle]

Try and make them complement each other, don't make a bunch of random basses and hope they fit. Maybe try bus processing them together with a compressor and whatever sounds good. Failing that make one really good patch and automate everything, have effects switching on and off etc so it sounds different. The latter sounds a lot better imo

Yeah, how do I make them complement each other? Also I'm not really sure what bus processing is, to be honest...