Dubstepforum.com

deadly habit wrote:

Hurtdeer wrote:i don't know how people bother doing this stuff without trackers

i used to but hell i switched over and it's just so much easier


more choppy/scatty drums dubstep though please!!

i can do it either way
now chopping up a break straight on a s2000 with no computer...

i did that for years... took a day just to chop a break. i dont miss the akai at all.

although could never reproduce the tpower filter to velocity filter drops in kontakt... akai is 'like the record'

eg - http://soundcloud.com/t-power/09-amber

btw loads of old tpower on his soundcloud for free.

paradigm x wrote:

deadly habit wrote:

Hurtdeer wrote:i don't know how people bother doing this stuff without trackers

i used to but hell i switched over and it's just so much easier


more choppy/scatty drums dubstep though please!!

i can do it either way
now chopping up a break straight on a s2000 with no computer...

i did that for years... took a day just to chop a break. i dont miss the akai at all.

although could never reproduce the tpower filter to velocity filter drops in kontakt... akai is 'like the record'

eg - http://soundcloud.com/t-power/09-amber

btw loads of old tpower on his soundcloud for free.

damn it i already need to get another hard drive as is
never tried replicating the filter to velocity in kontakt come to think of it, you'd think it would be able to do it...

it works just doesnt sound anywhere near as good.

paradigm x wrote:

deadly habit wrote:

paradigm x wrote:
I always preferred the heavy remarc/dillinja beats to the clever/'realistic' paradoxy stuff myself.

yeah, they were 2 champion choppers back in the day. Photek of course got some twisted sounds out of breaks too, not quite as heavy as those 2 but there was a deadly stealth involved. I usually prefer it when the drums sound like they couldnt possibly come from a real drummer.

As for the Photek and Goldie tunes, its more funk rhythms and fills than typical jazz stuff. It sounds complex but the more you keep programming these sort of things the more youll get your head around them, untill it all becomes quite obvious whats going on. Theyre chopping up old funk breaks, and if you are just starting out learning to program those kind of rhythms I sugest you do the same at first. Reason being your hats and what not are all tied into the hits, so youre only triggering 1 sound at a time. Youve got little sections, a kick folowed by a snare with a 1/4 note gap between them, one with an 1/8 note gap between them, a little shuffle thing which is basicly 2 hats an 1/8 note apart with 2 rim shots on the 16th notes between them etc, and just by rearranging 5 or so little sections like that youll be able to recreate 90% of Photeks patterns. Once you can do that, each little chop is just 3/4 hits in a chunk so itll be pretty obvious how to then program the same pattern in midi. That Hidden Camera track has a little more too it, but those little roll type hits on the snares etc, youll find breaks with those in and it just becomes another little chop.

I find a good way of getting unusual beat patterns in that Photek vien is to just change where the loop is on the pattern. If you find your patterns getting a bit repetative, just work out a usual 4 bar loop with some variations and pick a really random kick somewhere in the middle of a bar, then make that the start of your beat and let it loop from there. I was trying to recreate a Photek pattern once, cant remember which tune, I took off my headphones for a bit and when put them back on it was still looping and sounded like a really conventional pattern, but when I looked at the screen I was hearing the start point as being on a really off note somewhere mid bar. When Im making beats now and I think christ, Ive used this rough pattern too much, I try looping it off random kicks, you can get some cool results.

I've been having a time trying to figure out how to chop/resequence my grooves.

I have the equip and ability to record my own drum breaks, so I've really invested some time in trying to figure out how to go about it.

It seems like there are 2 or 3 major ways to go about it... (correct me if I'm wrong... and I'm not saying that these are the only way by any means.)

1. Chop the break into approximately 1/2 bar sections (kicks, snares) and put em through a tracker (oldschool jungle method as far as I understand).

2. Slice on (pretty much) each transient and keep the rest of the loop intact (photek's method?) and trigger each slice as desired.

3. Chop it up at the original tempo and resequence at a faster tempo, not changing the break's bpm (what I could gather from the DOA q&a w/ Paradox)

I've had marginal success with the first method, but just got a decent beat down using Paradox's tips EXCEPT that I set the break's tempo to the project's tempo....

I get that it's just practice/work/patience, which I'm willing to invest, but I just can't grasp...

How you can resequence a break at a faster bpm w/o it's tempo matching the projects.
Chop like photek and trigger each slice while retaining the groove from the previous slice.

/venting

I learn something new each time I try to tackle the sequencing aspect, just a bit overwhelmed by all of it...

There's also trackers and use the sample offset command. 09xx in Renoise for example.

Sync break to desire length and trigger your desired drumhit using the 09xx command.

sackley wrote:I've been having a time trying to figure out how to chop/resequence my grooves.

I have the equip and ability to record my own drum breaks, so I've really invested some time in trying to figure out how to go about it.

It seems like there are 2 or 3 major ways to go about it... (correct me if I'm wrong... and I'm not saying that these are the only way by any means.)

1. Chop the break into approximately 1/2 bar sections (kicks, snares) and put em through a tracker (oldschool jungle method as far as I understand).

2. Slice on (pretty much) each transient and keep the rest of the loop intact (photek's method?) and trigger each slice as desired.

3. Chop it up at the original tempo and resequence at a faster tempo, not changing the break's bpm (what I could gather from the DOA q&a w/ Paradox)

I've had marginal success with the first method, but just got a decent beat down using Paradox's tips EXCEPT that I set the break's tempo to the project's tempo....

I get that it's just practice/work/patience, which I'm willing to invest, but I just can't grasp...

How you can resequence a break at a faster bpm w/o it's tempo matching the projects.
Chop like photek and trigger each slice while retaining the groove from the previous slice.

/venting

I learn something new each time I try to tackle the sequencing aspect, just a bit overwhelmed by all of it...

I have mostly used the second method, so you can re-arrange your hits but still retain that important rollidge in the tail of the sample. The one thing you did not mention, and if you are having troubles with tempos, is Timestretch!! Timestretching is the key because with a lot of these funk breaks they may be at like 110 BPM but the tune you are working on (in the jungle days) is 160 BPM. I would generally timestrech and then start chopping so I can hear how the patterns start playing out at the desired BPM.

EZ

To me the paradox stuff only sounds natural because he does very little provessing. The actual flow of his beat doesn't sound natural at all IMO.

If you are looking for stuff to listen to you can find some choice breaks in Tech Itch and Dom & Roland. 90's stuff preferably but those are two guys that are good at programming and sound design. Total package. And obviously you can't go wrong with Photek and Source Direct.

Much appreciation!

Yea I usually sync the break tempo to the project tempo, my point was that I don't understand how some (paradox for example) can use a break at tempo 'X' and the project is set to 'Y' BPMs (... not 'X', or vice versa... whatever, you get what I'm saying, heh)

Will check all that out now abZ.

And I just don't get the sample offset thing... I haven't tried it, so I'm not knocking it, but it seems foreign to me. I use Modplug Tracker and wouldn't probably upgrade to renoise just to sequence my drum lines. Would that still work? From what I can gather it uses the regular Decimal system, not Hexidecimal... but again, I really don't know what the hell I'm talking about... hahaha.

sackley wrote:Much appreciation!

Yea I usually sync the break tempo to the project tempo, my point was that I don't understand how some (paradox for example) can use a break at tempo 'X' and the project is set to 'Y' BPMs (... not 'X', or vice versa... whatever, you get what I'm saying, heh)

Will check all that out now abZ.

And I just don't get the sample offset thing... I haven't tried it, so I'm not knocking it, but it seems foreign to me. I use Modplug Tracker and wouldn't probably upgrade to renoise just to sequence my drum lines. Would that still work? From what I can gather it uses the regular Decimal system, not Hexidecimal... but again, I really don't know what the hell I'm talking about... hahaha.

You are over thinking it a bit I think. Basically that way was the way they had to do it before you had the stretching technology. The easiest way to explain it I guess is with the amen break. You just take a measure of it. There is a hit on each 16th note so you make your cuts there, every 16th note. So in a bar you should have 16 cuts. Just load them into a drum machine style sampler. Program each of the hits in succession 1 through 16 in the sequencer. Then it's locked in. You can make the tempo in the sequencer whatever you want the beat will have the same groove at the original pitch. The amen is around 140 bpm so if you use 140 then it should sound close to the original. If say 120 then there will be a space between each hit because the samples will be shorter but it will still have the same groove. If you make it jungle 170 then all the notes will overlap and sound messy but there is where you can adjust your decay and release to make it sound how you want. Does that makes sense? It's the easiest possible concept you just have to do it to understand and I hope I have confused you further as I don't have the gift of text tbh.

In The Shadows wrote: yeah, they were 2 champion choppers back in the day. Photek of course got some twisted sounds out of breaks too, not quite as heavy as those 2 but there was a deadly stealth involved. I usually prefer it when the drums sound like they couldnt possibly come from a real drummer.

As for the Photek and Goldie tunes, its more funk rhythms and fills than typical jazz stuff. It sounds complex but the more you keep programming these sort of things the more youll get your head around them, untill it all becomes quite obvious whats going on. Theyre chopping up old funk breaks, and if you are just starting out learning to program those kind of rhythms I sugest you do the same at first. Reason being your hats and what not are all tied into the hits, so youre only triggering 1 sound at a time. Youve got little sections, a kick folowed by a snare with a 1/4 note gap between them, one with an 1/8 note gap between them, a little shuffle thing which is basicly 2 hats an 1/8 note apart with 2 rim shots on the 16th notes between them etc, and just by rearranging 5 or so little sections like that youll be able to recreate 90% of Photeks patterns. Once you can do that, each little chop is just 3/4 hits in a chunk so itll be pretty obvious how to then program the same pattern in midi. That Hidden Camera track has a little more too it, but those little roll type hits on the snares etc, youll find breaks with those in and it just becomes another little chop.

So say for example you're working with a break that has a hit on every 16th note, you would only chop it into a few sections (after time stretching it to the right BPM). Then re-arrange these wee sections (e.g. kick/hat; snare hat hat; kick hat snare; whatever) into your rhythm? So end up re-arranging all these little chunks of the break into a new beat.

Sorry for my lack of learning, but would you mind doing a little detail on the hidden camera trick?

In The Shadows wrote:

paradigm x wrote:

deadly habit wrote:

paradigm x wrote:
I always preferred the heavy remarc/dillinja beats to the clever/'realistic' paradoxy stuff myself.

yeah, they were 2 champion choppers back in the day. Photek of course got some twisted sounds out of breaks too, not quite as heavy as those 2 but there was a deadly stealth involved. I usually prefer it when the drums sound like they couldnt possibly come from a real drummer.

As for the Photek and Goldie tunes, its more funk rhythms and fills than typical jazz stuff. It sounds complex but the more you keep programming these sort of things the more youll get your head around them, untill it all becomes quite obvious whats going on. Theyre chopping up old funk breaks, and if you are just starting out learning to program those kind of rhythms I sugest you do the same at first. Reason being your hats and what not are all tied into the hits, so youre only triggering 1 sound at a time. Youve got little sections, a kick folowed by a snare with a 1/4 note gap between them, one with an 1/8 note gap between them, a little shuffle thing which is basicly 2 hats an 1/8 note apart with 2 rim shots on the 16th notes between them etc, and just by rearranging 5 or so little sections like that youll be able to recreate 90% of Photeks patterns. Once you can do that, each little chop is just 3/4 hits in a chunk so itll be pretty obvious how to then program the same pattern in midi. That Hidden Camera track has a little more too it, but those little roll type hits on the snares etc, youll find breaks with those in and it just becomes another little chop.

I find a good way of getting unusual beat patterns in that Photek vien is to just change where the loop is on the pattern. If you find your patterns getting a bit repetative, just work out a usual 4 bar loop with some variations and pick a really random kick somewhere in the middle of a bar, then make that the start of your beat and let it loop from there. I was trying to recreate a Photek pattern once, cant remember which tune, I took off my headphones for a bit and when put them back on it was still looping and sounded like a really conventional pattern, but when I looked at the screen I was hearing the start point as being on a really off note somewhere mid bar. When Im making beats now and I think christ, Ive used this rough pattern too much, I try looping it off random kicks, you can get some cool results.

yes interesting post. I think that is the key, a whole lot of different chunks. I didn't know this for years though and used to try and program everything by hand, and as a result I know a lot more about what is going on, and this helps when I'm either making intricate stuff with one shots or using chunks. Photek was amazing, one of my favorite producers. Great vision.

Good replies!

That's the thing though, I don't want to chop my breaks into every hit. By doing that it ends up hard-quantized, and to me, will lose the groove. When I hear about guys using "chunks" of the break to make their own stuff, that's the feel I'm going for.

I probably am over-thinking it. I have had a pretty successful go at it by matching the break tempo to project tempo, chopping into "chunks" as I wish and then resequencing those (as audio items) as I see fit. In Reaper I tab to transient, figure out how long I want the slice to be, then tab to the point I want the next slice to start and cut the break. Then I use Paradox's advice in the DOA q&a of getting "air" (basically the reversed tails of a single drum or cymbal) and match them up to any gaps after I get the basic groove laid out.

green plan wrote: So say for example you're working with a break that has a hit on every 16th note, you would only chop it into a few sections (after time stretching it to the right BPM). Then re-arrange these wee sections (e.g. kick/hat; snare hat hat; kick hat snare; whatever) into your rhythm? So end up re-arranging all these little chunks of the break into a new beat.

Sorry for my lack of learning, but would you mind doing a little detail on the hidden camera trick?

In the technique I just described yeah, Id just cut it into little sections that contained a few hits. Its sort of the way I do it, I dont really make jungle/dnb anymore but for garage/breaks type stuff I still do it that way. I also cut out all the different kicks on their own, the different snares, the hats and rims where they are noticably different from eachother, all down to 1/8 or 1/16 note one shots, just so I have them if I need em. But I dont think thats always needed, and I recon its probably harder to start with a bunch of single hits. If you can get a chop with 'kick-hat-snare' and one with 'kick-snare' then the majority of movements between kick and snare are covered just with those 2 chops, plus you retain the groove of the original the more intact you can keep the bits.

Im no expert with production so dont take anything I say as gospel, its just my own experience with these things. It depends on what break Im using how I do it, a lot get cut on every note and resequence that way. People are talking about timestretching the break to the tempo. Might just be terminology but I think of timestretching as changing the tempo of audio without changing the pitch, in the same way pitchshifting is changing the pitch without tempo. I wouldnt do either to a break as they usually distort the sound. Sometimes you want the distortion but if you just want it to speed up the way Id do it is to resample it. That moves the tempo and pitch together so the wave shapes stay undistorted, just get closer together, like speeding up a record on a deck. If you listen to this tune from about 1:38 or so....



you can hear a little vocal in the beat saying 'yeah' or something. Its from the Think break if memory serves, at its original tempo its a man saying it, but it sounds like a little squeeky hamster in Dillinjas break because hes resampled it up to speed. Depending on how far up in tempo you want to go, and what break you are using, theres going to be a limit to how far you can resample it before the drums just sound too chipmunked to have any real thump. The funky drummer break for example, I dont think you can take that all the way to 174bpm and leave it unlayered, it gets too high pitched. So sometimes Ill cut a break at every hit because its been resampled as far as it can go and its still not fast enough. If Im layering the break over single hits, which is most of the time, Ill cut it at every hit so that it lines up with my single hits on the grid. Also, different snares in a break can sound quite distinct, the Think break you can get 4/5 different sounding snares out of it, the one on the end has a really savage metalic crack to it, so its nice to be able to decide where you use the different sounds.

Theres no real trick to hidden camera, its just a lot of cutting I would guess. Taking different snares and rim shots that have been hit differently and using them to enhance your pattern rather than just having a single kick and snare youve cut out. Depending on where hes taken the break from a lot of the fills in there might be in the original, I dunno. Im guessing its a lot of cutting though.

grooki wrote:yes interesting post. I think that is the key, a whole lot of different chunks. I didn't know this for years though and used to try and program everything by hand, and as a result I know a lot more about what is going on, and this helps when I'm either making intricate stuff with one shots or using chunks. Photek was amazing, one of my favorite producers. Great vision.

yeah I like having chunks where possible. Often even when I need to chop at every hit Ill drag the whole wav onto a track in ableton and resequence chunks against the grid by eye, then bounce them out. I try and end up with a cut at the start of every main kick and snare, because Im usually layering that lets me up the attack slightly on each of those chunks to dodge the attack of the big single hit snares and kicks Im putting on top, almost like a sidechain would. The ableton way is nice because when you have a gap between the end of one slice and the start of another, rather than having to bridge it with a bit of air stolen from elsewhere you can just drag the start of the following hit back a bit so you have the air before where youve slice filling the gap. Im sure the same can be done in a lot of daws.

Photeks definatly one of the greats, him and Amon Tobin are my favourite 2 guys for break based beats. You can hear when Photeks just chopped an amen or whatever, but I think some of his more unusual stuff hes cut together and layered hits from different breaks and ones shots to make his own weird sounding beat, so I think its important to experiment and see what happens as well as following known methods.

Great post! Only reason I use "air" is because if I drag back the next hit I will most likely end up with another hit in there.

You, sir, know wtf you're talking about.

Edit: Here's the example of manually chopping and resequencing in Reaper w/ bits of "air". Just used my break from the VSTi Comp.

Soundcloud

deadly habit wrote:
me too... i wish i had a kit so i could get back into practice
i find working with midi in cubase or just straight audio in renoise with breaks to be just as intuitive as each other for me
prolly a little bi-polar and ocd when it comes to working with breaks though

haha, being able to try and reverses and drills and gates and pitch shifting in seconds is the best thing ever, i can do it in logic but it takes so long-i got a bit of the bipolar in me too and it's best that i get ideas down before my brain decides what i'm doing has gone from the best thing ever to a complete waste of time

but i just wanna be able to write extra wanky chops all the time

In The Shadows wrote:
Im no expert with production so dont take anything I say as gospel, its just my own experience with these things. It depends on what break Im using how I do it, a lot get cut on every note and resequence that way. People are talking about timestretching the break to the tempo. Might just be terminology but I think of timestretching as changing the tempo of audio without changing the pitch, in the same way pitchshifting is changing the pitch without tempo. I wouldnt do either to a break as they usually distort the sound. Sometimes you want the distortion but if you just want it to speed up the way Id do it is to resample it. That moves the tempo and pitch together so the wave shapes stay undistorted, just get closer together, like speeding up a record on a deck. If you listen to this tune from about 1:38 or so....

You know timestretching is a technique that goes back to the early days of jungle, I don't know if you want to dissuade people from using an important technique. Fact is some breaks sound fine pitched up and some don't. If you have a funk break at 94 BPM and you are making a DnB tune at 174 BPM, sometimes timestretching is the way to go. It doesn't add any noticeable distortion if you do it right. Sometimes you might want to keep the original timbre of the drums but move them to a new tempo.

EZ

http://akaizer.blogspot.com/
for those of you after that classic sound who don't have the gear

deadly habit wrote:http://akaizer.blogspot.com/
for those of you after that classic sound who don't have the gear

genius! thanks man

Hurtdeer wrote:

deadly habit wrote:http://akaizer.blogspot.com/
for those of you after that classic sound who don't have the gear

genius! thanks man

heh it's also handy for when i don't feel like booting up my akai for quick snippet and digging out a floppy