MAKING BREAKS PART 1: 72

When taking hits from breaks try to avoid kick drums with
hats and rides over the top, try to get all parts clean.

Need to use compression and distortion on breaks to

make them sound beefy.
Subtlety plays an important part with Ghost notes being
the key to adding complexity.
If track is good and bass heavy then may not need ghost
notes. Ghost snares nearly always needed for realistic
rhythms.
The interplay between ghost snares and hi hats gives you
that chicka chicka shuffle.
Try this technique of over sounds and grooves and in
different places.

To keep parts from going stale make small change like

delaying certain hits by a beat and bringing in and
chopping out extra hi hat and ride parts can work a treat.

Turn off quantisation and move hits backwards or

forwards a bit.
Extract grooves from breaks and use them on your own
loops, don't make it too sloppy as it won't be able to be
mixed.

To make breaks fat:

Compress breaks using fast compression i.e. short attack
and release times.
Adjust threshold to -21db and whack up gain to 9db.
Add overdrive plug in before dynamics (scream 4) and
increase bass, mid and high by 0db, 2.5db and 1 db
respectively.
Place reverb as a send effect and effect separate drums
accordingly.
Can add a limiter to make it grittier.
EQ each drum channel separately to get sound you want

Tricks:
For tough drum fills map a snare sound across a few
semitones and use it like you would a regular pitched
instrument.
Play break an octave down for huge slow motion fill this
will invigorate your break when it returns with extra
energy.
Render your break then pitch shift it an octave while
retaining its tempo then pitch shift to different keys to
use as percussion fills and cal and response sections.
Use velocity to get delay style effects on repeated notes.
Reverse beats take break add reverse reverb/echo and
then render it and reverse it. This will give you sucking
effects when played back and can be added to the
original break to create variations on the beat.
Use a big reverb and turn it on when you a particularly
devastating fill that disorientate the listener. Same can
be done with feedback delay in a dub style, make sure its
tempo synced though.

5 top breaks Bob James – Take me to the Mardi Gras,

Commodores – Assembly Line, Led Zeppelin – When the
Levee Breaks, Kool and the Gang – NT, Bobby Byrd – Hot
Pants.

Website www.the-breaks.com

AND THE BEAT GOES ON 35

Need good drum track programmed initially.
Important to add plenty of changes so as not to bore
listener.
Easiest is to remove fist kick drum, so loop starts on
different sound, when done between two loops this can
give a new edge to loop giving it a more subtle feel.
Reverse a hit in loop, though not to often.
Add a reverse reverb to one hit of the break, usually the
snare (try 6ms pre delay)
Apply extreme amounts of compression around 10:1 this
will make loop sound more powerful than it is.
Use an EQ and record yourself fiddling with it live.
Gentle EQ movements can produce interesting variations
on a rhythm.
Take into account the frequencies that need to be left for
rest of the instruments.
Try applying changes to 100Hz, 250Hz, 800Hz and 12
KHz areas.
Steinberg magneto is great for adding warmth to a loop.
Delays and noise gates can add more movement.
Try delay of 3ms with a gate to cut delay tails to thicken
up loop.
Reverse loop add delay and then play the right away
around and gate it again, can make loops sound more
complex.
Use Northpole free from Prosoniq.com close filter to 50%
and push up resonance and delay controls.
Using a chorus sparingly with a noise gate can help widen
drum tracks image and give it more life. Any chorus
applied should be subtle try a low frequency around 200
Hz with a 4ms delay as a starting point.
Use reverb on sounds, try large amount of reverb with a
very short pre delay.
This adds the impression of a loud and powerful drum
loop with a surreal sense of space.
Vocoders can be good, but bit clichéd now, try settings of
50/50 mix but go higher if you want, be careful not to
lose dynamic edge of loop though.
Distortion and overdrive can add interest if added just to
kick, snare or hi hats. Try to avoid whole loops as they
can add extra harmonics to the sound which occupy the
300 Hz to 800 Hz region which are known as irrational
frequencies, try cutting these areas with EQ if it’s a
problem.
Use automation to open filters, resonance etc over the
loop or to affect single hits like having a filter go on and
off on the kick or snare, be careful to only have slight
movement on filter as you don’t want to cut sound out
completely.
Modulate the pitch of a snare throughout a track to
create complex sounding rhythms, pitch only needs slight
modulation and should be used infrequently throughout
the loop, sounds like you are using lots of different
snares.
On single hits try using filters to boost resonance on hi
hats to make them brighter and use cut-off to reduce
harmonics in the kick drum.
Try changing the amp envelope of every drum
particularly the attack and release settings. Using a long
attack on snare sounds can give rise to a strange
sweeping effect which if used sparingly can be very
effective.
Adjusting release settings can create strange loops, don’t
do it on the kick as it will ruin its impact. Aim to adjust
release of snares, hi hats and percussion.
Automate filter to sweep the entire drum track so that it
slowly sweeps in the drums.
BEAT THIS 11:

Drum programming basics:

Listen to loops you like and notice where the kicks and snare are.
Kick should be following bassline to a degree.
Hi hats can be accented on the beat or off it or at irregular
intervals. Try breaking up the pattern into something more
syncopated or skipping the beat using groove quantise.
Hi hats are often replaced by rides for the chorus or anywhere
where the part needs shifting without altering the pattern of the
track.
Crash cymbals are for accenting, usually on a downbeat or a fill,
although interesting patterns can be had by reversing crash
cymbals or sequencing fast 16th note patterns.
Toms are most applicable to fills and be used as an offbeat
accompaniment to the snare.
Get drum tracks simple unless you want them complicated.
Play same patterns using different kits to get variation.

Tips:

Decide whether to produce realistic patterns or synthetic.

To get snares and toms to sound natural vary dynamics of beat,
particularly the opening beats.
Often certain patterns are instrument specific, but can be good to
vary.
Break up patterns with fills; classically they contain toms and link
verses and choruses.
Create different endings of drum sequences by letting loop play
first beat of bar then stopping.
Accent hi hat patterns.
Use different samples for hi hat patterns such as sticks, shakers
etc.
Some accented beats have greater impact if programmed as
flams, particularly the snare.
If programming accented beats on the cymbals use the bell
sample as it cuts through.
Move bass and snare slightly ahead or behind the beat to get
more urgent/relaxed feel, don’t overdo it though.
Use different kits for different parts of the song.
Add delays to drums using tempo sync, best tempos are triplet
delays, using instruments such as marimbas and other dry
percussion sounds can build up complex multi layered patterns.
Use distortion to dirty up individual sound or loops.
Sample drum sounds at lower resolution to get grainy sound.
If you like reverb on the kit but it is swamping the sound use a
gated reverb programme.
Use different reverbs for different drum sounds.
Use different snares in pattern, ones with long and short (for fills)
decay.
Go easy on crash cymbals and toms; try using china or splash
cymbal instead of crash.
If you want patterns to sound like everyone else use 808 and 909
kits if not then don’t.
Don’t over quantise, only quantise enough to get rid of glaring
mistakes.
Try extracting grooves from different parts to quantise drum
loops.
Use recycles to cut up breaks.
If writing jazz parts use jazz drums such as ride cymbals instead
of hi hats, brush snares etc.
Transpose midi notes to get patterns playing different sounds.
Drums and bass lock in together in most tracks, use loose bass
over tight drums or vice versa.
Learn importance of tempo many patterns are the same just
played at different tempos.
Take into account drum lengths and tempo as long drum sounds
will clutter high tempo music.
Change the levels of the drum sounds throughout track to get
different feels.
Play drum sounds backwards.
To make a roll program 16th or 32nd notes in and draw a velocity
slope upwards, since this sounds synthetic use a synthetic snare
sound.
To make a pattern more interesting take occasional snare and
change to a different sound, like rim shot or side stick, anything
really.
Try layering drum tracks.
Successful rhythm programming is as much about what you leave
out as a busy drum track leaves little space for other sounds.
Use non percussive sounds in your drum tracks such as vocal hits,
found sound,
anything.
Try adding extra deep sub bass booms to your patterns especially
for drum n bass and trip hop. Generally the purer the waveforms
the better, sine waves are usually best.
Compress drum loops.
If writing drum n bass out go the toms, all the percussion
instruments, claps, cowbells and the like and in comes the short
duration kicks and snares, hi hats, side sticks and cymbals. Get
the tightest sounds you can.
Don’t neglect panning your kit should be evenly spread from left
to right with kick in the middle.
Also see midi patterns in this section there are Latin, jazz,
ambient, dramatic effects and ethnic.

PROGRAMMING OLD SKOOL DRUM N BASS GROOVES 79

Set tempo to 174bpm.

Snare needs to tight and snappy.
Pitch up sounds 3 semitones as this simulates unavoidable pitch
speeding up of old samplers.

Basic pattern 1:
Kick 1 – 3 – 11 – 12
Snare 5 – 7 – 8 – 10 – 13
Ride every 8th

Basic pattern 2:
Kick 1 – 3 – 11
Snare 5 – 7 – 8 – 14
Ride every 8th

Basic pattern 3:
Kick 10
Snare 1 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 9 – 13
Ride every 8th

To make this into a 4 bar loop copy pattern 1twice then add
pattern 2 & 3.
Set tempo to 140 and this is a basic amen pattern with none of
the feel.

In bar 1 lower the velocity of the second snare and play about
with other snare velocities to get some feel. Lower the pitch of the
second snare hit to mimic a drum being hit less hard. Repeat in
bar 2 and lower the velocity of the third kick drum hit and play
around with the other kicks velocities. Apply groove quantise or
move hits around slightly to add feel. Increase tempo to 174bpm.

Draw in snare fills which raises in pitch at 13 – 14 – 15 – 16 of bar

1 do same in bar 2 but go down in pitch.

Add some grunge using cubase grungliser or distortion unit.

USE GOOD SAMPLES"