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Forums - Drums / rhythms / programming
Subject: Tech-ed up drum beats?
Original Message 1/25 12-Aug-01 @ 08:01 PM - Tech-ed up drum beats?
Mage
Posts: 50
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OK, I knew it already and then Jasper spelled it out for me after listening to the track I mentioned in the music tracks forum, but any suggestions ideas on some good techy drum patterns. I'm a horrible amateur (sp?) at this, so any advice would be appreciated. I'm wanting to make some hard tech-ed out beats to lay down under some grooves that lie on the border of techno and trance (check out my track "Electric Purple" in the mp3z on http://www.sectionz.net)
Thanks!!!
Mage
Message 2/25 13-Aug-01 @ 12:28 AM - RE: Tech-ed up drum beats?
First thing you should do is get hold of some drum sounds that are cut out of loops, check the link, a lot of those sounds are in the track I uploaded.
The main thing is they are gritty and will sit nice in a track with the minimum of tweaking.
Now you need a pattern, make a simple pattern of random beats repeated over half a bar (easier to create a groove with a short loop), it may sound shit but keep shifting notes about keeping the little bits that sound good until it starts to take shape.
Just mess with some sounds and see what you can come up with, things to try are reversing the odd note maybe 1/16th before the kick and playing with the attack of some of the beats. Use fx and stuff to the warp the outcome.
A technique I use is using two compressor plugins in cubase so that the kick drops the volume of the rythm loop when the kick plays, it's called ducking and I picked it up from kilo here about 3 years ago (only just got any good at using it though).
Message 3/25 13-Aug-01 @ 06:34 AM - RE: Tech-ed up drum beats?
Mage
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Can you go into more detail on the compressor trick you described above? In fact, can you explain the use of compressors on beats for me, because I've read a few things about it, but everytime I've tried it I've totally killed the drum sound...
Message 4/25 13-Aug-01 @ 10:25 AM - RE: Tech-ed up drum beats?
Jasper
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Are you using cubase or a similar sequencer?
If so then you need to get a compressor like the db-audio compressor or the mda one. Both of these allow you to send and receive triggers.
You can read about how compression and gating works in the articles section under fx-articles.
I'll give you a working example though.
You need the kick to go through a separate channel of it's own and the drum sounds to go through a channel of their own.
Load a compressor as an insert effect into the kick channel and set it like this.
threshold=0db
limit/ratio=infinity (no compression)
output=0db
send/trigger=send A (or similar)
this isn't doing anything to the sound of the kick all it is doing is triggering the compressor on the drums channel.
on the drums channel load another compressor as an insert effect.
threshold=-10db
ratio=1/8
output=whatever to gain enough withoug clipping
attack=0ms
release=20 to 50ms
receive=A (has to match the kick send)
now on the drums channel the compressor will only work when the kick plays, without the kick the sound passes through unprocessed.
On my track (and most techno tracks) you can hear his when the kick drops out the sound boosts in volume. Changing the settings of the compressor on the drums channel will change the feel of the pumping effect, a lower threshold (2db say) and a lower ratio (1/1.2 say) will give a less prominent pump. Also the volume and shape of the kick envelope will affect the compression time.
Hope this helps.
Message 5/25 13-Aug-01 @ 01:11 PM - RE: Tech-ed up drum beats?
ah...jasper, just a small remark:
you must have meant zero ratio on the kick drum, not infinity, as that would be hard limiting?
Message 6/25 14-Aug-01 @ 12:39 AM - RE: Tech-ed up drum beats?
Jasper
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ah, erm.. probably..
it shouldn't be limiting at all with a threshold of 0db and a volume of less than 0db
but point taken
Message 7/25 14-Aug-01 @ 05:32 AM - RE: Tech-ed up drum beats?
Mage
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Hmm... Actually, I've been using Fruity Loops as like I said, I'm a beginner producer (although not musician) and it's been great for me to work with while I get down all of the audio concepts. Anyways, I'm not to sure about how I'd do this in Fruity, you can assign channels to particular fx channels and there are 2 send channels that each fx channel can be linked to in varying amounts... Not sure how to set this up like the above example, though... Maybe it's time for me to climb the Cubase and/or Reason learning curve? I've got both, but haven't wanted to take the time to learn them when I've got Fruity going pretty well... Anywayz, I'm rambling...
Message 8/25 14-Aug-01 @ 08:09 AM - RE: Tech-ed up drum beats?
oh yes guys!! - the answer to all our dreams... I just added ti to the SAMPLES/FILES Library section of the site.
"Hybridalien midiGate is a FREEWARE plugin for Cubase VST. It uses MIDI note on/off events to open and close a noise gate, recreating the ducking/gating effects so popular in dance music.
Does away with the hassle of using an external noise gate with a separate audio trigger source."
You just insert it over a mono or stereo audio or VSTi channel such as a nice synth pad etc... then it appears like a VSTi in your arrangepage sequencer Track headers as a destination for ANY midi track!! - sequence your required trigger pattern and adjust the gate! - or copy drum parts over to new track to create drum_pattern part based gate triggering - drooooool!!!...
___________________________________
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Message 9/25 14-Aug-01 @ 12:36 PM - RE: Tech-ed up drum beats?
Jasper
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oh yeah!, great stuff thanks
Message 10/25 15-Aug-01 @ 06:32 PM - RE: Tech-ed up drum beats?
hey that's a pretty cool trick....
is that kind of sidechain stuff done a lot? I mean, is it kind of a standard practice?
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