Computer Music Special Make Better Beats...
575
royalty-free samples from future loops
Make better
Improve your groove with our essential drum and percussion production tutorials
Featuring Get hands-on with NI Maschine, Akai MPC Software and Vengeance Phalanx Create perfect sampled acoustic drum kit tracks The best software drum machines revealed Talking beats with Mr Scruff, Reso, Om Unit and more
Special 66 2014 Future Publishing Ltd. 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW Tel: 01225 442244 Fax: 01225 732275 Email:
[email protected] Web: www.musicradar.com/computermusic EDITORIAL Editor: Ronan Macdonald Art Editor: Stuart Ratcliffe Sub-editor: Kieran Macdonald Disc Editor: David Newman Contributors: Tim Cant, Jon Musgrave, Scot Solida, Alex Williams, Danny Scott Editor, Computer Music: Lee Du-Caine Cover illustration: Simon Middleweek Senior Art Editor: Rodney Dive Creative Director: Robin Abbott Editorial Director: Jim Douglas ADVERTISING Tel: 01225 442244 Fax: 01225 732285 Advertising Sales Director: Clare Coleman-Straw Advertising Manager: Amanda Burns Account Sales Manager: Leon Stephens CIRCULATION & MARKETING Marketing Manager: Sarah Jackson Trade Marketing Executive: Juliette Winyard PRINT & PRODUCTION Production Coordinator: Frances Twentyman Production Manager: Mark Constance LICENSING Licensing and Syndication Director: Regina Erak Image Library: To purchase images featured in this publication, please visit www.futuremediastore.com or email
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welcome As the bedrock on which all the other elements of any dance or electronic track sit, getting your drum and percussion parts – collectively, your beats – sounding their best is probably the most important part of the entire production process. Weak beats will undermine everything else in an otherwise solid mix, whether that weakness comes in the form of bad (meaning bad) sound selection, tepid processing or pedestrian programming. With this Special on your studio bookshelf, such groove-sapping issues need never trouble you again. Over these 98 walkthrough-packed pages, we’ll get you up to speed on working with synthesised and sampled drum sounds, programming electronic and ‘acoustic’ drum and percussion parts, creating larger-than-life, Hollywood-style beats, getting hands-on with Maschine and MPC Software, and more. Each and every tutorial comes with all the files required to follow along on your Mac or PC, and six of them are brought to life onscreen in video form. As well as that little lot, we’ll also reveal our pick of the finest software drum machines on the market and get some words of wisdom from seven masters or the beat-making art. So, whether you’re creating house, techno, trance, chillwave, hip-hop, DnB, dubstep, EDM or trap, rest assured that you’ve come to the right place to righten your rhythms. ENJOY THE ISSUE
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special Issue 66
contents
07 Drum sequencing essentials If you want to make awesome beats without relying on prefab loops, you need to get your sequencing chops together…
16 S ampled beats
Get more from your rhythm loops with our guide to slicing, dicing, layering, processing and generally messing with sampled beats
76 B uild a sample kit with Phalanx
Vengeance Sound’s powerful, flexible drum sampler is a onestop shop for dance and electronic beats of all kinds
80 Gear guide
Whether you’re after a synth-based drum machine or a realistic drum kit ROMpler, our pick of the finest virtual instruments on the market will see you right
24 Synthesised beats
With our help you’ll soon feel right at home with analogue-style subtractive synthesis and physical modeling
32 P rogramming realistic acoustic drums
While the majority of this Special is dedicated to the discussion of ‘electronic’ beats, every producer should be able to program convincing drum kit parts should the need arise. We show you how
40 Programming percussion
Congas, bongos, djembe, timbales – weaving intricate percussion lines into your beats isn’t as hard as you might think
48 Cinematic beats
Inspired by the big, bombastic sounds of Hollywood movies, we explore a range of larger-than-life percussion possibilities
89 The beat makers 54 Mixing beats
Once you’ve selected your sounds and sequenced your groove, it’s time to get mixing
Seven of the electronic music scene’s leading lights tell us how they go about the process of beat production, and let us in on some of the software they use to do it
64 Make beats with Maschine
NI’s hybrid groovebox might be cutting-edge, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be used to make high-fat old-school beats
70 Make beats with MPC Software
Go back to the future with the 21st-century incarnation of Akai’s seminal sample-based grooveboxes
98 DOWNLOAD You can get your hands on all the tutorial files, samples and videos that Special on the disc accompany this and at vault.computermusic.co.uk – select ‘Computer Music issue 66’
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Future Music is the mag for the latest gear and how today’s cutting-edge music makers use it. We’ve been making the future since 1992. Make sure that you’re part of it.
Drum sequencing
essentials
Sequence your own house, trap and DnB beats from scratch with our easy-to-follow walkthroughs
With countless excellent sample libraries just a few clicks and a credit card away, it’s easy to find pre-programmed loops in practically any conceivable style these days. But although they can be a convenient shortcut to producing professional-sounding music, relying on them for all your beats isn’t an approach we’d recommend. The advantage of being able to program your own beats from scratch is that you’ll gain a better understanding of how they work, both rhythmically and sonically. Knowing what gives a particular genre its groove and which drums are used to generate which sounds is a hugely useful skill when it comes to composing and mixing dance music. Creating rhythms using one-shot samples or drum machines gives you a far greater level of control over the sound than loops ever can – and, of course, there’s nothing to stop you from combining both.
Of course, starting your beat production endeavours with nothing more than a blank arrange page can be somewhat intimidating, especially if you don’t even know what tempo you should be working at for your particular genre, let alone the specifics of which sounds or rhythms you need to use to create an appropriate beat for it. Never fear, though, because that’s where this tutorial comes in! Over the following pages, we’ll show you how to make beats in three of the hottest dance music styles entirely from scratch, either using drum kits included with your DAW or samples provided in our Tutorial Files folder. Don’t worry if you’re an absolute production beginner – these walkthroughs will show you what to do click by click, giving you a better understanding of how dance music beats are constructed and hopefully inspiring you to come up with ways in which you can put your own creative spin on them. Computer Music special / 7
> drum programming essentials > Step by step 1. Making a house beat in Cubase
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Create a new project in Cubase, then right-click the Track List and select Add Instrument Track. Click the instrument slot in the window that appears and select Synth»HALion Sonic SE. When you click the Add Track button, a new instrument track with HALion Sonic SE on it will appear.
Close the window layout panel by clicking outside it, then select the Drum&Perc filter in the Category column. Activating this filter means that only drum kit presets will be shown in the list on the right, making it much easier to find what we’re looking for. Scroll down to the bottom of the list and double-click T9 Analog Kit.
Click the Loop button on the transport bar to activate the loop, then double-click the first bar on the instrument track to create a new MIDI region. Select MIDI»Open Drum Editor from the menu. Let’s start with a four-to-the-floor kick drum. Click the Drumstick icon on the Tool Buttons menu at the top left-hand corner of the interface.
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To load a drum kit, click the Load Program button (the square with the downwards-pointing arrow towards the top centre of the interface). This brings up a huge list of presets. Open the window layout panel with the button at the bottom left-hand corner of the interface, and activate the Filters option if it’s not already on.
This closes the Load Program menu and loads ourchosen kit. You can hear how it sounds by playing your MIDI controller or clicking the keys on HALion Sonic SE’s virtual keyboard. Close HALion Sonic SE’s interface, and drag between bars 1 and 2 on the ruler above the arrangement to set up a loop.
Using the Drumstick tool, add hits by clicking the vertical lines. The darker lines represent the fours beats of the bar. Click every beat of the bar in the Bass Drum row to create a four-to-the-floor kick pattern. Press the Play button in the transport bar to hear how it sounds. While the beat continues to play, let’s add some more sounds.
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Add a Hand Clap on the second and fourth beats. As well as putting sounds on beats, we can put them between beats, too. There are four beats in a bar – these are called quarter-notes, and we’ll also use eighth- and 16th-notes in this example. By default, Cubase’s grid also displays paler 16th-note divisions.
Add Closed Hi-Hats on the first, second, eighth and tenth 16th-notes. This sounds OK, but the rhythm is very straight – it’ll sound a lot better with some swing. Turn the Swing parameter on the left up to 50%. As you do this, every other 16th-note grid line will move to the right slightly, ‘shuffling’ the beat.
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Two 16th-notes are the same length as one eighth-note. Put Open Hi-Hats on every other eighth-note. This kick, clap and open hats pattern gives us a very basic house music template to work with, which we can make more interesting by adding other sounds. Let’s give the beat more energy with the addition of some closed hats.
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Press Ctrl+A on PC or Cmd+A on Mac to select all the drum hits, then Q to quantise them. Most of the hits will be unaffected because they’re on quarter- or eighth-notes, but the Closed Hi-Hats on 16th-notes will be moved to the shifted grid lines. This gives us a much funkier, classic-style house groove. (Audio: House beat.wav)
Timing is everything This may sound obvious, but it’s easy to underestimate the importance of timing when it comes to making dance beats. The subtle ‘swing’ timing change applied in the last step of the walkthrough above only makes a difference of a fraction of a second to a handful of the sequenced hits, but it greatly enhances the overall feel. The beat instantly sounds funkier, and is much easier to listen to for an extended period. So what exactly is swing, and why is it such a powerful tool? Swing – also known as ‘shuffle’ and ‘groove’ – is a rhythmic device that first emerged in a formal sense with the blues, the great-granddaddy of contemporary popular music. It involves varying the timing of the rhythm, usually so that every other eighth- or 16th-note plays slightly late, giving the beat a shuffled feel. In step 9 of the walkthrough, all
the beats have perfectly rigid timing, which is pretty unexciting to listen to. When we delay every other 16th-note in Step 10 by turning up the Swing parameter, the slight timing variations from note to note turn the beat from flat to funky. It’s important to note that you don’t have to apply swing to a whole drum track to capitalise on the effect. Swinging just one element (the hi-hats, usually) teases the ear while maintaining the overall tightness of the beat. Part of the reason that breakbeats (sampled drum breaks) are so popular in dance is that their inherent groove gives the
producer a quick and effective way to lend a track a funky feel. You can learn a lot about rhythm programming by simply loading a break you like the rhythm of into your DAW, setting the project tempo to that of the beat,
“Note that you don’t have to apply swing to a whole drum track to capitalise on the effect” and examining the timing fluctuations. Some DAWs even have the ability to analyse audio clips and extract the timing and volume variations of their groove as a template that can then be applied to audio and MIDI parts. Computer Music special / 9
> drum programming essentials > Step by step 2. Sequencing a trap beat in Logic Pro
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Start a new project in Logic Pro with a software instrument track. Click the button with the arrows on the right-hand side of the instrument slot in the Inspector to bring up a list of available instruments, and select EXS24 (Sampler)»Stereo from the list.
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Double-click the Tempo field in the control bar and set it to 130bpm, then click the Display Mode button and select Custom. This is important when creating a trap beat, because it enables us to switch the Piano Roll Editor’s grid between time signatures on the fly.
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Double-click the MIDI region to bring up the Piano Roll Editor. We’ll start by adding the fundamental elements of the beat: the kick on beat 1 and the snare on beat 3. Hold Cmd to switch to the Pencil tool, and click B0 on the first beats of the first and second bars.
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By default, the Bus 2 send is turned up a little, so turn it down to 0. In EXS24, click the empty patch name slot above the Cutoff knob and select Drums & Percussion»Electronic Drum Kits»EXS 808. This gives us a set of awesome Roland TR-808 drum machine samples to play with – an essential ingredient of trap.
Drag over bars 1 and 2 in the Cycle Area above the arrangement to set a loop, then right-click that area on the EXS24 track and select Create Empty MIDI Region. Next, drag the right-hand side of the region over to the end of the second bar – now we have a two-bar MIDI region to program our beat in.
This creates a powerful, booming 808 sub note, though if you’re listening on laptop speakers all you’ll hear is its high-end attack! As always, headphones or proper monitors are recommended. Add D1 notes on beats 1.3 and 2.3. We now have the bare bones of our trap rhythm, which we can spice up with extra elements.
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# For starters, let’s beef the snare up by layering it up with D 1 (clap) and E1 (higher snare) notes on the same beat. This makes it sound bigger and sharpens its attack. Adding some kicks gives the beat more of a rhythmic feel. Copy the kick pattern shown above, which is a little more interesting and ‘danceable’.
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In the control bar, click /16 under the time signature and select /12 instead. This enables us to quickly enter triplets. Add six more # hi-hats on F 1 on the final two beats of the first bar, as shown above. When you’re done, return the grid to /16.
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Currently, all of the hits are at the same volume level. This isn’t a problem for the kicks and snares in this particular beat, as we want them to be consistently loud and solid-sounding, but the hi-hats would sound a bit more natural with some volume variation. Click the MIDI Draw button to show each hit’s velocity level.
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Trap isn’t trap without those sparkly hi-hats, and these are typically the most complex part of the beat. We’ll use the closed hi-hat # sound on F 1 for this pattern – start by drawing in eighth-notes for the first two beats. Next, we’ll change up the rhythm by introducing some triplets. This is where we need to change the timing of the grid…
Now enter another four eighth-notes on the first two beats of the second bar. For the last two beats, use /12 then /32 to add triplets followed by a quick roll. To shorten the length of the 32nd-notes, drag their right-hand edges to the left. This interplay between the kick and hi-hat rhythms is what a trap beat is all about.
As you can see from the panel that appears, each hit has a velocity value, which tells the EXS24 how loud you want the note to be. To change the velocity level of a hit, drag over it to select it in the piano roll editor, then drag its velocity value in the MIDI Draw panel. Add some variation to give the beat a more natural, human sound. (Audio: Trap beat.wav)
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> drum programming essentials > Step by step 3. Programming a drum ’n’ bass beat in Ableton Live
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Launch Live and press the Tab key to switch from Session to Arrangement view. We don’t need to use the default setup’s audio tracks, so select them all and press Backspace to get rid of them. Enter 174 into the tempo field at the top left-hand corner of the interface.
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Drag over bar 5 on the MIDI track and press Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+M to create a MIDI clip, then Ctrl/Cmd+L to loop the region. Doubleclick the MIDI clip to bring up the MIDI editor.
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Double-click the title of the second MIDI track to select it, and this time drag Snare 1.wav onto the channel strip. Add hits on 1.2 and 1.4 that last until 1.2.3 and 1.4.3, as shown. This kind of kick-and-snare rhythm is the foundation of most DnB beats, but it needs the addition of a few more elements to make it fuller and faster.
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In the Tutorial Files/Drum programming essentials/ Programming a DnB beat in Ableton Live folder you’ll find some DnB-ready drum sounds. Select the first MIDI track and drag Kick.wav into the empty device chain pane at the bottom of the interface to automatically create a Simpler instrument that we can trigger via MIDI to play back the sound.
Double-click C3 on the first beat of the bar, and drag the right-hand side of the note created so that it runs to 1.1.2 – this may not be visible depending on your zoom level, but it’s half way between the start of the first beat and 1.1.3. Create another beat of the same length starting on 1.3.3. When combined with a snare on beats 2 and 4, this creates a 2-step pattern.
Press Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+T to create a new MIDI track. Drag Hat.wav onto it to call up a Simpler instrument, and create a new MIDI part. Put a short note on the first beat of the bar that lasts until 1.1.1, then press Ctrl/Cmd+4 to turn off snap to grid.
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Hold Alt and drag the note over to just past 1.1.2 to make a copy of it. Again, you can drag vertically on the ruler at the top of the editor to zoom in and out. We want this hi-hat to be quieter than the first one, so drag its velocity level in the panel below down to 40 or so.
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The hi-hats are quite loud, so turn the Track Volume down to -3dB. Now our beat is rolling along nicely, let’s funk it up a little bit. Add another MIDI track, drag Snare 2.wav onto it and create a new MIDI clip. We’re going to use this new sound to play some ‘ghost notes’.
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We want this snare to be much quieter than the main one, so turn its Track Volume down to -7.5dB. We can use this ghost snare part to provide variation to the beat and help it sound less repetitive. Click the arrow at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen to hide the MIDI editor. Drag over all the clips created so far and duplicate them.
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This timing and velocity variation will give us a more natural, rolling hi-hat pattern that will complement our rigid kicks and snares. Press Ctrl/Cmd+4 to turn snap back on, then drag over the area between beats 1 and 1.1.3. Now Press Ctrl/Cmd+D to duplicate the hats and copy them out so that they last for the whole bar.
A ghost note is a quieter hit on the snare with a different timbre to that of the main hits, used to make the rhythm more syncopated and ‘involved’. Double-click the MIDI part to bring up the MIDI editor and add 32nd-note hits on 1.2.3, 1.2.4 and 1.3.2.
Now click the first of the two ghost snare clips and press 0 to mute it. This very quickly turns our one-bar loop into a two-bar loop that’s easier to listen to for extended periods. Select the entire sequence by dragging on one of the tracks, and press Ctrl/Cmd+L to loop it. Another way to keep a dance music beat involving is to add and remove elements as the track progresses.
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> drum programming essentials > Step by step 3. Programming a drum ’n’ bass beat in Ableton Live (continued)
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Duplicate the two-bar section out three times to make an eight-bar sequence. Add a new MIDI track and drag Ride cymbal.wav onto it. Create a new one-bar-long MIDI clip at the start of the second half of the sequence and trigger the ride cymbal sound on eighth-notes. Turn the Track Volume down to -9dB.
Grouping the tracks enables us to edit them as a single entity. Zoom in on the bar before the ride begins, then drag over the sixth eighth-note on the group track and delete it. Highlight the fifth eighthnote and duplicate it.
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Drag the right-hand side of the clip out so that it lasts until the end of the sequence. To make the transition between the sections more exciting, let’s create a fill. Select the kick and ride tracks (hold Shift) and press Ctrl/Cmd+G to group them.
This creates a fairly subtle variation on the beat that indicates to the listener that something is about to happen. Another useful tool for accenting particular parts of a beat is the crash cymbal. Create a new MIDI track, drag Crash.wav onto it and trigger a single note at the start of the ride section lasting for an entire bar so that the whole sound can play. (Audio: DnB beat.wav)
Pick and mix In these walkthroughs, we’ve focused purely on sequencing drum sounds rather than processing them. The resulting beats might be relatively simple, but they’re solidsounding and consistent with what you might expect from their respective genres. An important element of this is sound selection. For each tutorial we’ve specified that you use a particular set of sounds, and it’s easy to hear how differently things can turn out – just load the EXS24 or HALion Sonic SE with a different kit after you’ve programmed the beat. Sometimes the results will be interesting (for example, the Goa Remix kit makes a surprisingly cool substitute for the EXS 808 one), but more often than not they will be less than satisfying. Trying to make a particular style of beat without the right sounds is often frustrating, 14 / Computer Music special
and it takes time to learn what kinds of sounds work in any particular context. It can be tempting for new producers to always pick the biggest, baddest-sounding sample or kit, and then make it sound even more extreme by heavily processing it in ill-advised ways. If you find yourself falling into this trap, practice your beat programming with the pre-programmed kits from sample packs or your DAW’s included library. These will offer a sonic consistency that makes it easier to concentrate on learning how to use each sound and the tricks that you can achieve with variations in velocity and timing.
Once you’ve got to grips with creating beats using preset kits, you can take things to the next level by selecting each sound individually and processing it. Get your hands on high-quality versions of tracks that you
“Practice your beat programming with the pre-programmed kits from sample packs” consider to have decent beats – preferably ones where the beat plays on its own during the intro or outro – and load them into your DAW, where you can loop the relevant sections and study them more easily.
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Sampled beats Working with sampled loops is an effective and fun way to produce beats – but only if you know how to step beyond the obvious…
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Using prefab drum loops to quickly make beats is probably one of the first things that you did upon coming face to face with a DAW for the first time. It’s a quick, easy and fun way to make music, particularly for beginners, though that’s not to say that it can’t also be a creatively valid and rewarding technique – you just have to look at hip-hop, a genre that began with DJs creating extended, looping drum solos by using two turntables and two copies of the same record, to see just how innovative and exciting loop-based music production can be. DAWs are hugely powerful audio editing tools, and by fully exploiting them, we can turn loops into flexible musical building blocks that offer endless scope and potential. Not all loops will sit together perfectly, because of differences in timing and/or tuning. Thankfully, both of these issues can be resolved
pretty easily with the advanced timestretching and pitchshifting trickery that today’s music software is capable of. Ironically, to get the most out of loops, it really helps to have a good understanding of how beats are programmed from scratch: if you don’t know how to construct the kind of rhythms you want to create, or have a grasp of how swing works, say, you’re going to be limited to making only the most basic of alterations to your loops. In these walkthroughs we’ll show you how to slice, fade, rearrange, layer, timestretch, EQ and pitchshift loops to create new rhythms and create fuller, more satisfying beats. Combine these techniques with the advice in Drum Programming Essentials on p7 and you’ll be fully tooled up with the beat-sculpting skills required you to make your biggest, baddest-sounding drum tracks yet.
sampled beats < > Step by step
1. Basic beat-slicing in Logic Pro
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Create a new project with an audio track, and click the Apple Loops button at the top right-hand corner of the interface to bring up Logic’s Loop Browser. Near the top left-hand corner of the matrix of search filters is a button that reads All Drums. Click it to filter the view down to just drum loops.
Press Enter to select Import, and the loop will appear on the audio track. Drag over bars 1 and 2 in the ruler above the arrangement to activate Cycle mode and press Play on the transport bar to play the loop back. Because we’re working with an Apple Loop, it’ll automatically change its tempo to match the project.
We can change the rhythm of the beat quickly and easily by slicing the loop. Click the Apple Loops button again to hide the menu, then click the left-click Tool menu and select the Scissors tool. Now you can slice the audio by clicking it. Zoom in so that you can see the waveform more clearly.
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Scroll down to House Grounded Beat 01 and drag it onto the audio track. A window will pop up, asking if you’d like to import the loop’s tempo information. In this case it doesn’t matter whether we do this or not: this Apple Loop doesn’t have any tempo variation, and its tempo is 120bpm, which is the same as the project.
As the beat plays back, double-click the Tempo field, type in 135bpm and press Enter. You’ll hear that Logic switches to the new tempo, but unlike speeding up a tape or turntable, the beat’s pitch remains the same, because it’s being timestretched rather than resampled – see A Change of Pace on p20 for more on this.
Let’s slice out the first hi-hat. The hi-hats are the smaller events between the large kick drums that sit on each beat. Click the waveform just before the first hi-hat, then just before the second kick, as shown above. The vertical lines created on either side of the hi-hat show that it’s now separate to the rest of the beat.
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> Step by step 1. Basic beat-slicing in Logic Pro (continued)
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Set the left-click Tool menu back to the Pointer tool, then click the hi-hat slice and press Backspace to delete it. The gap we’ve created gives the beat a stop-start motion at the beginning, but if you listen carefully, you’ll hear the very start of the hi-hat before the gap. (Audio: Unwanted hat)
By default, Logic’s Snap mode is set to Smart, which means its resolution is dependent on the current zoom level. As we’re zoomed in pretty tight, we can drag the bottom right-hand edge of the waveform to the left slightly, getting rid of the start of the hi-hat without adversely affecting the kick. (Audio: Removed hat.wav)
Depending on where you a slice a loop, it might sound unnatural if it goes from a full sound to silence too quickly. Let’s demonstrate this. Shorten the first kick so that it ends between 1.1.1 and 1.1.2. You’ll notice that the sound ends abruptly, which gives it an unnatural feel. (Audio: No fade)
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Zoom in on the end of the first kick and you’ll see that the hi-hat does indeed start before the section we’ve cut. Because Logic’s Snap mode was active when we sliced the audio, it was cut exactly at 1.1.3, but the hat starts slightly before that. Thankfully, there’s an easy way to fix this.
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Sometimes when you slice a sample, you might get an audible click at its beginning or end. This is usually due to the sample starting or finishing at a ‘non-zero’ point in the waveform, and you can avoid it by activating your DAW’s snap to zero-crossing function. In Logic’s Edit menu, Snap Edits to Zero Crossing is active by default.
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Click the More arrow in the Region Inspector – Fade In and Fade Out parameters will appear. Drag up in the space to the right of the Fade Out parameter until it reads 10. Now when you play the sound back it’s still very short, but the smooth volume fade at the end stops it sounding so unnatural. (Audio: Short fade)
sampled beats < > Step by step 2. Layering and rearranging loops in Cubase
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Layering drum loops can be a great technique for making more complex, beefier rhythms. Create a new empty project in Cubase, and drag Kick.wav into the arrangement. This loop is a bit faster than the default Cubase project tempo of 120bpm, so we can either change the project tempo or tweak the loop to fit.
Double-click Kick.wav in the arrangement to open the sample editor, then click the AudioWarp tab to expand it. Activate Musical mode by clicking the musical note button. This automatically timestretches the loop, which now plays back in time with the metronome. Turn the metronome off by deactivating Click in the transport panel. (Audio: Timestretched kick)
In this mode, the audio is resampled rather than timestretched, so its pitch drops slightly but the transient of each kick is better preserved. Now let’s add another loop to complement the kick. Close the audio editor and drag Tops.wav into the space below Kick.wav. Activate Musical mode and change the algorithm to élastique Pro Tape again. (Audio: Kick and tops)
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Let’s make the loop fit our 120bpm project. In the ruler above the arrangement, drag over the bar with Kick.wav in it, then click the Cycle On/Off button in the transport panel to loop that region. If you play the loop back and activate the metronome, you’ll hear that the kick drum goes out of time towards the end of the bar.
With the metronome deactivated, it’s easier to hear that Cubase’s default timestretching mode has had an undesirable effect – if you listen closely you’ll hear a slight pitched ‘whoosh’ on each beat. Locate the Algorithm parameter at the top of the window, and change it to élastique»élastique Pro Tape. (Audio: Resampled kick)
Next, add Ghetto beat.wav below the previous two samples and repeat the same process. This loop has an extra kick at the end, which makes the rhythm a little messy. Select the Scissors tool and click midway through the Ghetto beat to slice it in two.
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> Step by step 2. Layering and rearranging loops in Cubase (continued)
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Delete the second half of the loop, then select the remaining half. Press Ctrl+D on PC or Cmd+D on Mac to duplicate this half of the beat. By replacing unwanted material like this, we can make beats with different rhythms work together. (Audio: Rearranged beat)
On playback, you’ll see the channel’s frequency content displayed in the analyser – there’s a big peak in the low end where the loop’s big, bassy kick drum sits. Let’s high-pass filter it out. Hover your mouse pointer over the lowest band’s 1 to make it a power button. Click it to activate the band.
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There’s still one problem with our beat: Ghetto beat.wav’s kick drum is interfering with the main kick. It doesn’t sound terrible, but there’s a way we can get a much clearer sound while retaining the Ghetto beat’s characteristic top end. Click the Ghetto beat track in the Track List, then expand the Equalizers tab in the Inspector.
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Now click the EQ shape on the right to bring up a list of available filter types. Select High Pass I, then drag the Frequency of the band up to 1.55kHz. This takes out the loop’s low end, helping our original kick sound clear in the mix. (Audio: EQed beat)
A change of pace Often, you’ll want to change the tempo or pitch of a loop to make it fit with other elements of a track. There are two ways to do this: resampling and granular processing. Resampling works much like speeding up or slowing down a tape machine or vinyl record player. The tempo and pitch are inextricably linked, so the slower the audio data is played back, the lower in pitch it becomes, and the faster it’s played back, the higher in pitch it rises. The advantage of this method is that it’s quick and easy for software to perform, and it usually maintains the transients and texture of the audio well. Frequently, though, it’s beneficial to be able to control the tempo and pitch of a sound independently, and this is where granular processing (often known in this context as ‘warping’) comes into play. By slicing the audio into thousands of tiny 20 / Computer Music special
sections and duplicating or removing them as necessary, it’s possible to make an audio clip much longer or shorter – a technique known as timestretching. And when combined with resampling, it can also be used to change the pitch of the audio – that’s pitchshifting. The catch is that this process is more likely to have an impact on the quality of the audio, which is why most DAWs and samplers offer a choice of granular processing or warping algorithms. Some algorithms will work better with beats, others with pitched ‘musical’ material or vocals, so it’s worth getting to know all of your software’s available algorithms to find out which are best suited to particular tasks. Another way in which DAWs and samplers can be used to change the tempo of loops is by slicing them into individual beats, which can then be played back faster or slower. This
technique preserves the pitch of the audio and leaves the loop’s transients unaffected, although it can sound unnatural if the loop features longer sounds such as ride cymbals. This slicing information can be stored in the Acidized WAV, Apple Loops (AIF) and REX (RX2) file formats, and most current software can work with all three, automatically adjusting imported audio in any of these formats to fit your project’s tempo. For the uninitiated, Propellerheads ReCycle (€229, available from www. propellerheads.se) is a venerable piece of software for slicing loops and exporting RX2 files. These days, though, most DAWs and samplers can slice loops into sections and create sampler patches and MIDI timing sequences automatically, so it’s worth investigating your existing software’s loopslicing capabilities to see what it’s capable of.
sampled beats < > Step by step 3. Applying swing to loops in Ableton Live
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Because not all loops have exactly the same groove (see Timing Is Everything on p9), you may need to tweak a loop’s timing to work with its accompanying material. There are a couple of ways to do this in Ableton Live. Drag Shuffle house.wav and Straight castanets.wav onto separate audio tracks in the first bar of a Live arrangement.
We can adjust the castanets’ timing by double-clicking the waveform to bring it up in the Clip View. Double-click the ruler above the third castanet to add a yellow warp marker. We can now adjust the timing of the second castanet without affecting the rest of the loop. Press Ctrl/Cmd+4 to deactivate Live’s Snap mode.
This is where Live’s Groove Extraction capability comes in handy. Double-click the warp markers you’ve created to delete them. Right-click House shuffle.wav and select Extract Groove(s). Live will take a few moments to analyse the audio. When it’s done, click the wavy button on the left of the interface to bring up the Groove Pool.
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Press Ctrl/Cmd+L to set up a loop around the samples. Drag down on the ruler over the arrangement to zoom in on the waveforms. Look at Shuffle house.wav. You’ll see that the closed hat of the first beat plays a bit after 1.1.2, but Straight castanets.wav has much more rigid timing, sitting perfectly on 1.1.3. (Audio: Unaligned beats)
You can now drag the castanets into exactly the right position. Changes that are made in the Clip View will be reflected in the waveforms on the arrangement – move the castanets to the right until they sit perfectly under the closed hi-hat. This technique works well for small jobs, but it would take quite a while to tweak the rest of the beat in this manner.
You’ll see House Shuffle in there – this is the groove we just created. Drag the groove onto Straight Castanets and its timing will automatically be adjusted to fit the groove. Finally, turn the clip’s Transpose parameter up to 3 so that it sits more comfortably with House shuffle.wav. (Audio: Aligned beats)
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> synthesised beats
Synthesised
beats
We all want to stand out from the crowd, and there’s no better way of carving out your own identity than by creating your own drum sounds from scratch The earliest drum machines were little more than preset analogue cheese machines, ticking off time in a series of thin clicks, beeps and bloops that bore no resemblance to actual drums whatsoever. Eventually, however, these potential-packed devices were rediscovered by a new generation of musicians who embraced the quirky, synthetic character of those sounds. And why not? Acoustic drums are ubiquitous to the point of drawing almost no attention, and their organic nature just doesn’t suit the majority of electronic and dance music; and 24 / Computer Music special
with all the power of modern software synthesisers at our disposal, it ought to be easy to craft unique, ear-catching sounds from the ground up. There are numerous drum machine plugins out there that draw purely upon synthesis to forge their beats. For the novice electronic musician, these instruments can seem arcane and even intimidating, but they needn’t be, as many of them tap into the same technologies that form the basis of your regular non-drumspecific synthesisers. Over the years the terminology has gained something of a
common language, and once you learn one, you can easily apply it to another. In this tutorial we’ll give you the lowdown on drum synths and how you can use them to craft your own sound. We’ll clue you in on various synthesis techniques, describing them in terms that anyone can understand. We’ll teach you how to exploit those techniques for specific types of sounds and take you step-by-step through the functions you’ll need to make your own kicks, snares, hi-hats and more. We’ll draw upon a number of instruments, but most of what you will learn can be applied to any drum synth.
synthesised beats <
Artificial intelligence: synthesis exposed Creating your own sounds with a drum synthesiser requires learning a little about one or more synthesis techniques. If you already know a bit about programming your own sounds on a standard ‘melodic’ synth, you already have a head start. However, if you’re new to synthesis, it’s bound to seem somewhat arcane at first. We’ll start, then, with the most common form of synthesis employed by drum machines: subtractive synthesis. This technique is most commonly associated with retro-styled analogue synths, but is also used in other forms of synthesis, even sample playback varieties. The idea is pretty simple: you start with an oscillator that generates a waveform. Using a filter, you subtract frequencies from that waveform until you achieve the desired tone. The filter frequency, pitch of the oscillator(s) and
“If you’re new to synthesis, it’s bound to seem somewhat arcane at first” overall volume might be shaped over time using an envelope generator. This envelope generator might consist of two or more adjustable parameters that enable you to, say, fade the sound or frequencies in or out. We’ll discuss this in more detail a little later on. An envelope generator is a modulator, and a modulator is any function that directly affects
(modulates) another. A typical tremolo is a good example. It consists of a common modulation source called an LFO (low-frequency oscillator) – unlike the oscillator described above, the waveform of an LFO oscillates below the audible range, hence the name. When applied to amplitude (volume), an LFO causes the volume to shift up and down, resulting in tremolo. If it’s applied to pitch, you get vibrato. There are many different types of modulator, including velocity level and pressure. You can use audio oscillators to modulate the pitch or amplitude of other audio oscillators, producing frequency modulation (FM), amplitude modulation (AM) and ring modulation (where only the sum and difference of the two inputs remain, without the input signals themselves). These often produce metallic, clangorous tones – very useful for drums and percussion.
> Step by step 1. It all starts with the oscillators
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Let’s begin at the beginning – with the oscillator(s) that generate the basic waveform(s) or sound. We’re using Sonic Charge’s Microtonic here (www.soniccharge.com), but these techniques will apply to many other machines, too – even keyboard synths. First, click the downward arrow at the top-left corner and choose Initialize Preset. This sets all the controls to their default starting points.
Now our sounds is a nice, woody ‘thok’, which we can transform into a kick drum. In the Oscillator section, push the Osc Freq slider all the way to the left to lower the pitch. Note that the sine waveform is selected (it looks like a snake). The others are triangle and sawtooth, which have more harmonics, meaning they sound richer. Try them.
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Make sure the 1 c button is highlighted. This is the drum we’ll edit. Trigger the C note from your MIDI keyboard. It sounds like a tiny, fuzzy sort of snare drum. Drums are often synthesised from both a pitched tone and a noise layer. Push the Mix slider in the left-hand section all the way to Osc. This gets rid of the noise.
Let’s use the triangle waveform. Microtonic allows us to modulate the pitch of our oscillator – currently, the selected Pitch Mod type is the amplitude envelope. More on envelopes later, but for now it’s enough to know that this one affects the pitch over time when you play a note. Try moving the Pitch Mod Amount knob to +30 or so to hear how this affects the sound.
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> synthesised beats > Step by step 2. Envelope generators
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As we’ve mentioned, envelope generators shape a sound over time. Drum machines usually have only a few envelope controls, so let’s check them out. We’ll continue with the Microtonic sound we started on the previous page. We’ve already used an envelope to modulate the pitch, but let’s take a closer look at the process. Crank up the Oscillator section’s Decay knob.
Different developers present their envelopes in different ways, and any given envelope might have a varying number of stages. Let’s look at Audio Damage Tattoo (www.audiodamage.com). Using the default Light House kit, select Snare 9 by clicking it in the column on the left. Play an E2 on your keyboard to trigger it. The display at the top will show its parameters.
Let’s take a look at a knob-based envelope generator. Rob Papen’s Punch (www.robpapen.com) is a good candidate for this one – the default startup kit is fine. In the Dynamic Select section, click the BD2 button to select that drum for editing. The top of the screen will reflect your selection. You can trigger the sound with the button, too.
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Trigger the sound. Hear how it now fades out over a longer period of time? That’s our decay increase in action, lengthening the tail – that is, the final stage – of the sound. The first stage is the attack, which controls how long it takes the sound to reach full volume. Turn the Attack control up halfway or so and listen to the effect.
The two windows at the top are graphical envelopes, meaning that their settings are visualised in the displays. Click the right-most little square in the Noise Amp Envelope and drag it to the left. Try the sound. You’ve just changed the decay of this envelope.
The Amp Envelope section in the middle-left of the GUI has three knobs labelled Attack, Hold and Decay. Hold does what the name implies, holding the sound at full volume for a period of time before the decay begins. Try it for yourself. You’ll probably need to shorten the Decay time to hear it.
synthesised beats < > Step by step 3. Pitch envelope for tom tom sounds
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Let’s adjust some envelopes to create that recognisable synthetic tom sound – our Microtonic SimpleKick patch is a good start. Push the Mix slider slightly to the right, increase the Osc Freq to C1 and push the Oscillator Decay to 1197ms. Sounds pretty good already!
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Now for some finishing touches. For a classic disco tom, we need to reduce the envelope’s Rate to around 890ms and Amount to around 20ms. Set the Noise Filter Freq to around 1300Hz for less fizz. Try switching the waveform to a sine wave for a more ‘realistic’ sound.
> Step by step 4. Filters+noise=hi-hats
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Let’s make a hi-hat, using filters to sculpt a complex waveform into the required sound. Call up LinPlug RMV (www.linplug.com) and select Pad 7 (a hi-hat sample). Change the Module at the top left to a Drum Synth. This replaces the sample with an electronic tone.
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The Reso(nance) control emphasises the frequencies around the cutoff point. Nudge it up to about 10 o’clock to make the sound more shrill. The Noise section’s envelope Decay is set pretty high – reduce it to around 8 o’clock for a shorter sound.
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There are two components to our synth: the Oscillator and the Noise section. Currently, the Mix between the two is all the way to the left (oscillator). Crank it fully clockwise for noise. There’s a low-pass filter in the Noise section. Use the cutoff to filter out the highs – set the Cut knob to 4 o’clock.
Activate the Filter section at the lower left and select HP24 mode. This will filter out some lows for a more metallic sound. Set the Filter Cutoff to 11 o’clock and the Env knob to around 2 o’clock. That’s a classic beatbox hi-hat. You can use the same patch as a cymbal by simply increasing the envelope Decay.
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> synthesised beats
Physical modelling Let’s take a break from subtractive synthesis to discuss physical modelling. This is a relatively modern technique that uses mathematical models of the behaviour of real-world acoustic and electric instruments. Physical modelling has the ability to introduce subtle changes based on performance, just like a ‘real’ instrument. It’s actually been around since 1971, but it didn’t become practical until computers became commonplace. Early hardware attempts weren’t terribly successful, as musicians discovered that they were, in fact, a little bit too much like acoustic instruments – meaning it took a lot of practice to make them sound good. However, we desktop producers are an intrepid lot and always clamouring for new sounds, and a few software developers have rekindled the promise of physical modelling, providing new and interesting instruments that
have a life and breath you simply won’t get from samples or analogue synths. Logic Pro users, for example, have a superb physical modelling instrument built into their DAW in the form of Sculpture, while Ableton Live users can avail themselves of Collision, a modelling instrument specifically designed for percussion. Applied Acoustics Systems have an entire product line based on physical modelling, including the mighty Tassman, a modular synth that allows you to mix physical modelling synthesis with old-fashioned analogue, and Chromaphone, a dedicated percussion instrument. Physical modelling breaks down the behaviour of acoustic and electric instruments into exciters and resonators. The resonator is the part of an instrument that vibrates (a drum skin, for example), while the exciter is the bit that sets that vibration into motion (a hand or a
“Modelling has the ability to introduce subtle changes based on performance” drumstick striking said skin). A drum’s shell or body is also a resonator. Depending on the instrument, you may be able to define things like the stiffness of the drum skin, the size of the shell or the material that each element is made from. This means not only the potential to recreate instruments but even the ability to create entirely new ones.
> Step by step 5. Physical modelling basics
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We’ve learned a little about analogue-style subtractive synthesis; now let’s take a brief detour into physical modelling. We’ll be using Image-Line’s Drumaxx (www.image-line.com) for this walkthrough, but most of what we do can be applied to any physical modelling synth. Open Drumaxx in your host. We’ll start with the default kit; click
Audition the sound. It’s a loud, noisy ‘thwack’. The Amplitude knob controls the force with which the mallet strikes the drum. There’s a lot of noise, though. That noise is used to add realism to the sound, emulating the sound of softer mallets and brushes. Reduce the Noise Level knob to around 34%.
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As you can hear, this pad triggers a bass drum. Let’s take a look at the synthesis section just below the drum pads. As we’ve learned, physical modelling synths use exciters and resonators to make their sounds. Drumaxx’s exciter is controlled by the Mallet section, in which there’s an Amplitude knob. Turn it all the way up.
Now let’s check out the Mallet section’s Decay function. You’ve already learned how decay works in a typical envelope generator, and this works in a similar way, affecting the decay time of the mallet hit. Longer decay times equal slower, boomier hits. Short times are more precise and sudden. Turn the Decay knob to around 44% and trigger the sound to hear the effect.
synthesised beats <
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On to the Membrane section. This is our resonator, or the part of the drum that’s excited into action by the mallet – the skin or head. It, too, has a Decay knob, which affects the decay time of the skin’s response. Turn it up to around 77% and trigger your sound. It now has a resonant, ringing tone.
We now have a very loud crash. As useful as that is, the high frequencies are overpowering, so lower the Cutoff knob to around 24%. This reduces the amount of high-frequency content, just as it did in the previous walkthrough.
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The Tension function is very important in a modelled sound, just as it is on an actual acoustic drum. Reduce the Tension to around 68% and trigger the sound. That’s a bigger, beefier tone, if still a little metallic. Now let’s have a play with the Size knob. We needn’t tell you what that does! Set it to around 30%.
Now let’s get really tricky. Go to the Velocity Modulation section on the right. Click the top slot and choose Mallet Decay from the menu. Set the slot’s knob to 65%. This will increase the Mallet Decay with harder strikes. You’ll likely need to reduce the Mallet’s Amplitude to around 72% as we have here. Don’t be afraid to experiment!
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> synthesised beats > Step by step 6. Putting it all together: classic kicks
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You’re now armed with a basic understanding of two very different methods of synthesising drum sounds, so let’s put that knowledge to work. For this walkthrough, we’re using FXPansion’s Tremor (www. fxpansion.com). Fire it up in your host DAW, right-click the Kick channel in the mixer section and select Reset to initialise the sound.
Start in the Oscillator section, reducing the Pitch to C1. Turn the Shape knob fully clockwise to select a triangle waveform and turn the Roll knob all the way down in the adjacent Harmonics section. This rolls off the upper harmonics and sounds much more like the familiar analogue triangle wave.
Next, set the Filter Cutoff to around 81.00Hz. This will all but kill the sound, but only temporarily. Assign Tremor’s Fast Envelope to the Cutoff by clicking FENV in the Voice Modulations Sources section, and move the arrow in the outer ring of the Cutoff knob to maximum for full modulation.
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Trigger the sound by hitting C2 on your MIDI keyboard. We now have a clanking, bell-like tone. Believe it or not, we’re going to transform that into a kick drum. Click the Synth button just above the Kick channel to open the synth editor for this channel. As you can see, there are many familiar parameters on display.
Next, find the Amp Env(elope) section. The Attack and Hold are fine at 0, but reduce the Decay to around 0.645s and the Curve to 31%. The Curve parameter affects how steep the Decay slope is – you’ll see how it changes in the display. OK, we’re getting closer to a kick now. Go to the Filter section and select LPF4 mode.
Click SRC in the Voice Modulation Sources section. Set the Fast Envelope’s Decay to 0.041s and Curve to 31%. Go to the Pre section and boost the Drive slider to around 13dB. Audition the sound. Use the dropdown menu in the Synth FX section to add a Channel Compressor and tweak the levels to taste for a big impact.
synthesised beats < > Step by step 7. Putting it all together: classic snares
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Let’s add a snare to our Tremor kit. Return to the Kit section and reset the Snare to initialise the sound, as we did with the Kick in the previous walkthrough. Click the Synth button to bring up the Snare # channel’s editor and increase the Oscillator section’s Pitch to F 4. That would make a good tubular bell, but it’s a terrible snare! We’ll fix that.
Audition the sound. You’ll note that it’s much brighter – you could almost use it for a hi-hat or cymbal with a bit of envelope shaping, so keep that in mind. In the Amp Envelope section, set the Decay to around 0.688s. Now, in the Filter section, increase the Rez (resonance) to about 12%.
Go back to the Mixer and reduce the Noise level until you can hear a good blend of noise and oscillator. The oscillator still sounds like a cowbell, so reduce the Space knob in the Membrane section until you get a slightly less metallic sound. Click SENV in Voice Modulation Sources and assign it to Oscillator Pitch with an amount of 98Hz.
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We can use noise as the basis for a classic drum machine-style snare. In Tremor’s Mixer, temporarily turn the Osc knob all the way down and the Noise knob all the way up. Now when you trigger the sound, you should hear a nice, noisy burst. Crank the Noise section’s Tone knob up to around 88Hz.
Our sound is really taking shape. Click the FENV button in the Voice Modulation Sources section, then drag the outer ring of the Osc knob in the Mixer section fully clockwise to push the mod amount all the way up. Click the SRC button in the Voice Modulation Sources section when you’re done.
Click SRC and play the sound. You should hear the Oscillator Pitch go down slightly as the sound plays out. Experiment with the Slow Envelope settings until you get a sound you like. Give the Pre section’s Drive a boost for more oomph if you like. We’ve routed the FENV to the Cutoff and added a little distortion and reverb to ours.
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Programming realistic
acoustic drums
No in-depth guide to the production of beats could claim to be complete without a tutorial on making your own realistic drum kit parts. Here we go, then
The arrival of the drum kit ROMpler (a sample playback instrument designed to recreate the real thing) forever changed the music-making landscape, bringing anyone with a few hundred quid to spare the ability to produce totally realistic drums entirely ‘in the box’. Sample-based instruments such as Toontrack’s Superior and FXpansion’s BFD are highly intricate but visually familiar, and are able to accurately recreate all the nuances of a real drum kit – or enough of them to produce convincing tracks, at least. While acoustic drum ROMplers usually include large libraries of pre-programmed
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patterns, tailoring them to your needs can be challenging. Here we’ll show you how it’s done, exploring each stage of the process in order to bestow upon you all the techniques required to program drum kit grooves of your own. Stage one is understanding the anatomy of both the kit and the player. Drumming is a highly physical process, and how the drums and cymbals are struck varies a great deal between drummers and musical styles. Not only that, but the obvious four-limb physical limitation has to be taken into consideration, too. After we’ve addressed those fundamentals we’ll look at how to program a basic beat,
including the techniques required to make it sound realistic and the variations you’ll need to work in through different sections of a track. Then it’s on to fills: these are used to punctuate intros, endings and section changes, and are often more dynamic than the main groove. We’ll then take things to the next level with a look at drumming rudiments and how they can help you to create more technically complex parts. Real drum kits can sound very unrefined, and often what you really want is punch combined with the subtleties of a real player. So, in our final section we’ll provide a series of tips specific to mixing real drum kit sounds.
programming realistic acoustic drums <
Anatomy of a drummer (and their drum kit) One of the most fascinating aspects of drumming is the almost open-ended nature of the kit itself. Essentially, a drum kit can be whatever you want it to be, from a small threepiece setup to a massive tom tom-laden monster with electronic elements thrown in for good measure. Thankfully for us, most drum grooves and patterns can be recreated on a basic kit with a core set of standardised drum and cymbal sounds. The former comprise a bass drum, a snare drum and two or three toms, while the cymbals will typically consist of a set of hi-hats, a ride cymbal and one or more crashes. These are sometimes enhanced with percussion in the form of a cowbell, tambourine or woodblock. Your drum ROMpler will be packed with sounds in all of these categories, providing a level of sound-selection flexibility that you’d struggle to
“One limitation you should always bear in mind is the physicality of the drummer” match even in the most well-equipped realworld recording studio. Each kit piece can be played in many ways in terms of not only volume, but also stick technique and even stick type. Your ROMpler will include many different articulations, and once you’ve got your basic pattern programmed, it’s these articulations that can
really help to make your drum parts sound more convincing and realistic. If you’re looking to program truly realistic drum parts, one limitation you should always bear in mind is the physicality of the drummer him/herself – we’re referring here to the ‘fourlimb limit’, or in other words, the obvious fact that a drummer can only play a maximum of four kit elements simultaneously. Not only that, but if you watch a drummer play a drum kit, it soon becomes apparent that their four limbs are assigned to specific roles, further limiting your flexibility. Quite simply, the kick drum and hi-hat foot pedals take up two of the drummer’s available limbs, leaving you two arms with which to play everything else. In this first walkthrough we’re going to take a quick tour of the drum kit, looking at the sounds available and how they’re played.
> Step by step 1. The drum kit: a guided tour
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Let’s take a look at a typical drum kit. One foot plays the kick (bass) drum and the other foot controls the openness of the hi-hats. That leaves the hands to play the snare, hi-hats, toms, ride cymbal and crash cymbals. In a groove, one hand plays the snare and the other the hats or ride, while in a fill, both hands play the toms and crashes.
Further common snare drum variants include the sidestick, where the tip of the stick rests on the drum head and the shaft strikes the rim. There are also stick variants such as brushes and rods, both of which provide a less punchy sound. These will have an obvious effect on the main snare backbeat, but will also influence the other drums and the cymbals.
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The sound of the snare drum is one of the most important aspects of any track. Your ROMpler will probably offer clean snare hits as well as rimshots, which strike the head and rim together for added punch. You might also get different snare articulations. To allow you to program natural-sounding parts, snares are typically more deeply sampled than other drums. (Audio: Step 2)
For the most part, the kick or bass drum provides solidity and an anchor for the whole groove. It might play on beats 1 and 3 for rock and pop, beat 3 only for reggae, or all four beats for dance music, to give three very general examples. The sound of the kick drum is affected by the type of beater used to strike it, the most common options being wood or felt – wood produces a harder, brighter tone and attack. Your ROMpler may well feature both.
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> Step by step 1. The drum kit: a guided tour (continued)
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The hi-hats are a pair of small cymbals held together on a stand by a pedal-operated pull-rod. The pedal controls how tight the two cymbals are, from clamped shut to fully open. Controlling this pressure while hitting the top cymbal can produce a variety of sounds. Hi-hats can also be played just by closing them with the foot pedal, for a less up-front sound that serves a different rhythmic purpose.
Most drum kits include at least one rack tom and one floor tom, although you can have many more if you wish. You can use a (usually floor) tom to beat out a rhythmic pattern along with the kick and snare (replacing the hi-hats), but more typically, you’ll be rolling around them from one to the next for fills.
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The ride cymbal is used as an alternative to the hi-hats, typically playing the same pattern (straight eighth-notes much of the time) but with a much more sustained sound. Playing articulations include the tip on the main body and the ‘shoulder’ (just below the tip) on the bell for accents. You can also use the body of the stick on the edge of the cymbal for big, gong-like tones.
Crash cymbals are used for accenting specific points within a pattern, and you’ll most often find them at the beginning of a bar and/or phrase. They’re hardly ever struck on their own – in the audio example, you’ll hear one crash with a kick and another on its own, highlighting the difference in impact. Crashes can also be choked at the end of a passage for a tight finish. (Audio: Step 8)
programming realistic acoustic drums <
Programming basic beats The canon of standard drum pattern ‘templates’ is so large and varied that we can’t hope to cover them all here. However, what we can do is present you with the fundamentals and encourage you to listen closely to the sort of music you want to create and learn the ropes by copying the patterns you hear. In general terms, most of the time the various kit elements are used in quite predictable ways. Thinking in terms of the quarter-notes in a bar of 4/4 time, for a straight rock or pop beat, the kick falls on beats 1 and 3, the snare falls on beats 2 and 4 (the ‘backbeat’), and the hi-hats or ride cymbal play all eighth- or 16th-notes (hi-hats only for the latter unless the tempo is low) in the bar. This foundation pattern is augmented with crash cymbals on the downbeat at the top of a section, ‘in-between’ notes on the kick drum and grace notes on the snare. When programming
“Remember to mute concurrent notes that would be impossible to play in real life” beats, remember to mute concurrent notes that would be impossible to play in real life: if you program a crash and snare hit on the same beat, for example, you should remove the hi-hat hit. In the following two pages, we’ll look at how you get from that basic pattern to something that sounds like it’s being performed by a real drummer. This is achieved via a combination of
velocity, timing and the use of articulations. As you’ll see, it’s impossible to overstate how important articulations can be, particularly with regard to feel and ‘humanity’. Also, a good drummer will be able to push and pull the timing of a groove, playing behind or ahead of the musical pulse. Replicating these nuances in all their detail can be time-consuming, but if you’re at least reasonably good at holding down a rhythm, you can always have a go at playing at least some of your drum part in on a MIDI keyboard – more on this on p36. Either way, it’s worth remembering that if anyone else is going to be overdubbing other instruments later, the drums need to be pretty tight without being robotic. Finally, we’ll look at how to modify the basic groove to create variations for each section of the track (verse, chorus, etc).
> Step by step 2. Programming the basic drum part
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Getting a basic kit pattern started is very easy. Here, we’re drawing kick drum hits on quarter-notes 1 and 3, and snares on quarternotes 2 and 4. If we copy that out through a four-bar section, believe it or not, that’s the basic rhythmic ‘skeleton’ of the vast majority of contemporary music. (Audio: Step 1)
Returning to the kick, we now add some variation in the form of an eighth-note hit before the second kick of each bar. We also add extra hits to the snare pattern at the end of every fourth bar, on eighthnotes 6 and 8. This second change creates a sense of repetition every fourth bar.
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The hi-hats ‘ride’ over the top of the kick and snare, and usually comprise straight eighth- or 16th-notes. The latter are played twohanded, with the snare hit replacing the hi-hat on the backbeat rather than being concurrent with it. With no velocity variation, the hi-hats sound robotic, but we’ll return to that in the next section.
Our final basic element is a crash cymbal, which we put on the downbeat of bar 1. However, we want this to happen every eight bars, so we need to repeat our four-bar section as well. So we now have the syncopated snare adding internal repetition every four bars and the crash marking every eight bars. It still sounds very basic, but we’ll finesse it in the next walkthrough.
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> programming realistic acoustic drums > Step by step 3. Humanising and creating section variations
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The most important element for tweaking to add feel to drum parts is the hi-hats. Drummers instinctively accent the hits that coincide with the kick and snare, and we can do this using velocity and/ or articulations. Here we’ve gone for the latter, choosing an even more open sound to go with the kick hits so that they’re accented slightly more. (Audio: Step 1)
Our next hi-hat variation is the gradual introduction of open hats over the last bar or two of a section. This is a good technique for signalling the change to a new section or building into a short fill. Notice that we’re not only shifting articulations but are also gradually increasing the velocity.
Moving on to song section variations, you’ll often want to switch from the hi-hats to the ride cymbal for the chorus. An easy way to do this is to simply copy the hi-hat part, then modify it to match the available articulations – this may well involve tweaking velocities, too. Finally, for tighter timing in the chorus, increase the quantise percentage on the accent beats to tighten up the groove.
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You can extend this concept with the ‘pea-soup’ hi-hat. This is an open or semi-open hi-hat hit that’s immediately choked by the next (closed) hit. Here we’re adding a pea-soup hat every other bar on the last eighth-note, playing a looser articulation. Note also how our ROMpler is programmed to automatically choke the hi-hat on the next hit. (Audio: Step 2)
A great way to add feel is to play the hi-hat or ride on your MIDI keyboard. Here we’ve recorded our ‘human feel’ hi-hats on one note, then converted the result into a quantisation template – a feature you’ll find in many DAWs. We then apply the template timing and velocity to the multi-note programmed part, thus retaining our carefully selected articulations.
A less common variation is to shift the hi-hat part to the floor tom. Here, once again, we’ve adjusted it to match the articulation and velocity. We can also repeat the snare variation every two bars. Finally, on every fourth bar we stop the toms on quarter-note 3, bringing both hands together to play a snare flam – see how the two notes are played closely together.
programming realistic acoustic drums < > Step by step 4. Programming fills
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Fills can be long or short, but ultimately they need to work well with the other instrumentation in the track. They typically mark the end of eight- or 16-bar sections, but be prepared to use subtle onebeat fills to mark the end of four- or even two-bar sections. Here we’re looking to use a one-bar fill to mark the end of eight bars.
Working onwards from the downbeat kick, we want to try a ‘pushed’ fill moving from the snare to the rack tom, then the floor tom, then back to the snare on beat 4. Thinking in 16th-notes, the kick falls on the 1, the snare falls on 3, the rack tom on 6 and the floor tom on 9, which is the third-quarter note.
The next step is to adjust the final kick, which acts as a sort of grace note before the final snare. Here we’re manually nudging it later, which helps to emphasise the final snare as it pulls everything back in time. Next, we can nudge the snare and toms slightly later to make the fill sound more laid-back.
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If you’re happy recording your fills in with your MIDI keyboard, that’s the way to go. If not, a good starting point is to think about which beats will continue through the fill from the main groove. For our one-bar fill, we’ve kept the downbeat kick and the snare on beat 4. Everything else is muted, and we now have a start and end point to work within. (Audio: Step 2)
Let’s fill the gaps between the snare and toms with extra kicks. Again, these have a syncopated feel – they fall on 16th-notes 5, 8, 10 and 12. That’s the basics of the fill done, but we can instantly improve it by adjusting the timing. Try keeping the starting kick and end snare hard-quantised and modifying events ‘inside’ the fill.
Now we add some snare ghost notes. These essentially fill in the available 16th-notes between the snare and toms in the fill. We can shift their timing a little later, much like the toms. Also, as they’re ghost notes, we keep the velocities lower and choose a softer articulation. Finally, we can increase the velocities of some of the main hits to emphasise the overall feel. (Audio: Step 6)
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> programming realistic acoustic drums
Rudiments: the building blocks of realistic drum parts It is completely possible to play the drums without ever studying drum rudiments at all, but the chances are that you’d be using at least some of them without realising it – and just like players of melodic instruments with their scales and arpeggios, good drummers will ensure that they work diligently on rudiments as part of their regular practice regime. For nondrummers looking to create realistic drum parts, rudiments can be an excellent source of rhythmic ideas, particularly bearing in mind that you don’t have to learn to actually play them – you simply need to apply the rhythms to the various kit elements. Rudiments are fundamental rhythmic patterns comprising specific sequences of left/ right stick/pedal hits, and essentially forming a library of playing techniques and ‘phrases’ that make up the ‘vocabulary’ of drumming. On their
own they may look like a series of dry technical exercises, but they’re actually used within songs to augment patterns or as the basis for complex fills and solos. Probably the simplest of all rudiments is the flam, which consists simply of two notes played very close together, the second louder than the first – for timing purposes, this is written as a grace note and a primary note. Then there are three types of roll: single-stroke, double-stroke and press (or ‘buzz’). With the first two, each hand plays one or two evenly spaced notes at a time, while a press roll involves controlled ‘pressing’ of the stick tips into the drum head to generate a very fast series of bounced hits that combine from hand to hand to create the classic circus-style drum roll. The third category is the drag, which combines a double grace note with a primary
note. And finally there’s the paradiddle, combining evenly spaced configurations of alternating single and double hits. Each of these four categories contains numerous variations and expansions on the headline rudiment (ratamacue, pataflafla, flamacue, etc), and any of them can be combined to form so-called ‘hybrid’ rudiments as well. The great thing about rudiments is that they can be played around the kit to great effect, but it’s still important to accent certain beats within the rudiment rather than just playing them completely straight, as this helps retain the overall pulse of the track. In the last walkthrough of this tutorial, we’re going to take two simple rudiments – the single paradiddle and the drag – and use them to create a tom fill over one bar.
> Step by step 5. Drum rudiments in action
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The basic paradiddle pattern consists of evenly spaced 16th-notes with the sticking pattern R L R R L R L L. We’ve programmed this on two MIDI notes so that you can see the sticking clearly. We could repeat the pattern twice to fill the bar, but for our fill, we stop on beat 4 to create a break before the next bar starts. (Step 1)
This sounds a bit too basic in its current form, so we also shift quarter-notes 2 and 4 onto the snare drum to accent those beats. To accent beats 1 and 3, we can add in the kick drum. Further accents are also added for the toms that play with the kick.
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Next we need to spread the paradiddle out across the toms. We’ll use just the floor tom and rack tom, leading with the floor tom. We simply shift each of our notes to the corresponding rack tom and floor tom notes.
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Finally, we stop on beat 4. We already have a snare falling on beat 4, so our final addition is to augment this with a drag. A drag starts with two grace notes, and we can set these very close together like a buzz, or shift them apart a bit for a more obvious effect.
programming realistic acoustic drums <
1. Think of the kit as one instrument A high-quality drum kit ROMpler will use numerous spot mic channels, so it’s easy to view them as a collection of unrelated specific sounds, a bit like a drum machine. However, kit drums are played as one instrument, and when mixing them it’s best to think of them as such. So, rather than focusing on the close mics when building your kit balance, start with the overheads or nearer room mics as your basic stereo canvas, then enhance them with the spot mics as necessary.
2. Let it bleed One of the most powerful aspects of the better ROMplers (such as BFD3, pictured on this page) is the inclusion of mic bleed and cross-resonance between drums, including sympathetic snare buzz. Being able to control the amount of this is a truly amazing thing, and far easier than dealing with a real kit. Rather than waste time trying to tidy up these sounds using traditional techniques, head straight to the settings of your ROMpler and control them accurately at the source.
3. Surgical EQ Don’t be afraid to EQ the close-mic channels aggressively to get the punch that you want. For snare body, look between 200 and 400Hz, and for kick thump get busy between 80 and 120Hz. Scooping out the low mids on the kick works well, too. For toms, try boosting and sweeping with a sharp peak EQ to track down the key frequencies. Finally, use a high-pass filter to remove any rumble
Most high-quality drum kit ROMplers feature some sort of system for controlling mic bleed between channels
and clear out unnecessary low frequencies on all channels.
4. Stereo image, phase and mono compatibility Overhead and room mics can be notoriously phasey, particularly with spaced mics, potentially causing elements that you want roughly in the middle (kicks and snares) to drift off centre. To address this, adjust the L/R balance of your overheads and room mics to get the correct balance, then bolster them with the close mics, keeping the snare and kick roughly central. Phase-invert the kick and snare close-mic channels to find the punchiest result, and always check the overall balance in mono.
5. Ambience timing shift Often you’ll find that room mics sound great but a little too ‘distant’, and any form of
processing applied to the recording, such as compression or EQ, only goes to make the problem more obvious. One useful mixing trick is to shift the timing of the room mic channels, nudging them earlier. Doing this on a ROMpler may require you to bounce the room mic channels as an audio track, then reimport it and shift it manually. How much to do this by depends on the room in question, but once shifted, remember to re check the phase coherence of the kick and snare, as described in tip 4.
6. Compress room mics The smoothest-sounding kit balance will usually come from the room mics, with the harshness of the cymbals and hats reduced and diffused by the room reflections. This makes the room mics ideal for some aggressive compression. For the classic compressed room sound, reach for a fast FET compressor. With a medium attack, fast release and 10dB or more of gain reduction you can bring up the ambience, creating an energetic sound that, even in small quantities, will add drive to the overall kit.
7. Reverb combining
EQing individual close-mic channels can make all the difference to the punch and clarity of your virtual kit
Nudge your room mic channels earlier in time a touch to tighten up the perceived ‘proximity’ of your ambience
While any drum kit ROMpler worth its salt will feature room mic channels, snare drums in particular can benefit from their own dedicated reverb – or even two reverbs. For maximum flexibility, set up one small and one medium-to-large reverb as auxiliary effects, and add small quantities of each to obtain a suitably smeared effect. If you find that you’re getting too much build-up in the low and low-mid frequencies, EQ the lows from the return. Computer Music special / 39
Programming
Percussion
Whether you’re crafting laid-back jazzy numbers or banging out hard-hitting dancefloor smashers, our guide will help you to infuse your beats with percussive groove. Shake it, baby! In many styles of music, a basic ‘kick, snare and hats’ drum beat is the backbone of the rhythm, but that on its own is often not enough to make your track groove. To really get things shuffling along nicely, you’ll need to layer up some percussion parts to add excitement, flavour and groove to your beat. Much like programming realistic drum kit parts, percussion is one of those areas of production that many computer musicians think they’re approaching ‘correctly’ but probably aren’t. Just like any other acoustic instrument, playing percussion involves a specific range of techniques and styles that require untold hours of training and practice to master. Obviously, as a MIDI programmer, you don’t actually need to be au fait with the physical specifics of heel-tip conga technique or the tambourine thumb
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roll, but if you’re looking to program authentic tracks, it helps to know what these things sound like. In this tutorial, we’ll tackle percussion from a number of angles. Before we get into the walkthroughs, we’ll take you on a whistlestop tour of the various instruments that make up the Afro-Cuban percussion family, which serves as the standard percussive palette in contemporary Western music, as well as a few purely African instruments. We’ll also give you an educational head start with some video recommendations that showcase some of the greatest percussionists in the world doing their astounding thing. Our walkthroughs begin with a guide to programming a layered percussion ensemble alongside a bass/drums/ keyboard groove using MIDI and samples,
demonstrating some standard rhythmic approaches to the instruments involved. Next, we’ll move on to spot percussion effects, then processing sampled loops in order to create larger-than-life ‘top lines’ to sit on top of a four-to-the-floor drum groove, before finishing up with a treatise on carving up REX files to make custom percussion loops, and a collection of programming tips. Phew! Good percussion parts can have a hugely beneficial effect on almost any track, elevating it both rhythmically and texturally. Even the addition of just a simple conga or shaker part can transform a dull rhythm track into a more complete-sounding, syncopated, ‘human’ groove, particularly if the main drums are overtly electronicsounding. With all that said, let’s hang about no longer – those bongos aren’t going to play themselves…
A quick guide to percussion Roughly speaking, there are two broad families of percussion that you’re likely to deal with. The first is orchestral percussion – timpani, snare drum, xylophone, etc – and the other is ‘ethnic’ percussion, which really covers everything else. There is quite a bit of crossover between these two worlds in terms of instrumentation, but in this feature we’re dealing exclusively with Latin, African and Afro-Caribbean percussion in the context of beat-driven music. Here, then, are some of the most ubiquitous instruments in our chosen category.
Congas
The cornerstone of the Cuban percussion family and a fixture in many forms of dance music – particularly house – congas generally come in sets of two or three (tumba, conga and quinto) and are played with the bare hands. An established repertoire of standard conga rhythms exists, based on the various styles of Latin dance music and serving as a great foundation for your own parts. When you’re ready to get into them, check out this page from the website of top session percussionist Pete Lockett: http://bit.ly/GItJRM.
Bongos
Another Afro-Cuban essential, the bongos are a pair of small wooden drums serving a similar role to the congas, although much higher pitched and less ‘weighty’ in their delivery. Bongos are generally played on their own or alongside a set of congas, the latter option giving the conguero an expansive range of pitches and tones to work with.
Timbales
A pair of single-headed metal drums on a stand, timbales are played with a pair of thin sticks and are used for backing riffs (including ‘cascara’, which involves striking the sides of the shells) and bright, loud, energetic soloing. In dance music, they tend to be called on as a high-impact spot effect. Timbales and cowbells/agogo bells go together particularly well, and most players will have one or two of the latter mounted on the timbale stand, combining the lot to create intricate, clattering rhythms.
Djembe
You’ll see this West African drum in the hands of buskers the world over, the reason being that it can produce both bass and treble notes, making it a sort of self-contained ‘one-drum percussion section’. The djembe can also fulfil a similar role to the congas, although it’s a lot louder and not as mellow-sounding as its Cuban counterpart.
Cowbell
A clapperless, square-horn-shaped metal bell struck with sticks, the cowbell (and/or a pair of agogo bells) is often found mounted above the timbales, but can also be played held in the hand. Although generally used in rock and pop
to rigidly nail the four main beats of the bar, in the Latin context, the cowbell plays the clave (see p44) or a pattern based around it.
Tambourine
A wooden or plastic ring with pairs of tiny cymbals (zils) mounted within it, the tambourine can be skinned or unskinned, hand-held or mounted on a drum kit or percussion rack. It boasts a variety of uses: it can be used to play a constant rhythm (similar to the hi-hats), for accents (doubling up the snare on the backbeat, perhaps) or as an effect (shaken, for that characteristic shivery sound).
Triangle
contents with the intention of providing a hi-hatlike percussion line qualifies as a shaker.
Claves
A pair of thick, short rosewood (usually) sticks, one of which is held with the fingertips of one hand over the ‘chamber’ made by the palm and fingers (which acts as a resonant space) and struck with the other. The result is a loud, cutting attack, and claves are so named because they’re traditionally used to tap out the ‘guide pattern’ – or ‘clave’ – in Latin dance music. See p44 for more on this.
Woodblocks
The butt of many a percussion-based gag, the triangle is actually one of the most useful ‘supplementary’ sounds available to the music producer. Whether used for one-shot accents or effects, or to fill out the high end with the kind of rhythm that only a triangle can deliver, it’s easy to program and is just the thing to bring a funky sheen to any track.
These days a woodblock is as likely to be made of plastic as it is wood, but either way, it’s simply a hollowed-out block with a narrow, slit-shaped opening that can be used either as a solitary instrument or in a set of two or more. Fulfilling a similar background role to the cowbell and agogo bells, the woodblock has quite a loud, cutting sound when struck with sticks, so soft beaters are sometimes used instead.
Shekere
Guiro
Another Latin staple of West African origin, the shekere is a gourd with an open flared tube at one end, wrapped in a cord net with a large number of beads threaded into it. It can be struck, thrown, shaken and ‘flicked’ (quickly pushing the beads around the gourd) to produce a wide range of tones. Striking the gourd with the heel of the hand gives a rounded, bassy thump; hitting it with the fingertips gives a high-pitched slap; and rapidly pushing the beads backwards and forwards generates a slithery ‘shhk’ sound. It’s one of the more technically involved percussion instruments, not to mention one of the most visually exciting – see a virtuoso in action at http://bit.ly/3rvuLo.
Another gourd, this time open at one end with a series of horizontal notches cut into one side. A stick is scraped rhythmically over these notches to create the characteristic and instantly recognisable sequences of short and long sounds essential to several Latin styles.
Agogos
A pair of connected metal bells held in one hand (unless mounted on a stand) and struck with a stick held in the other, agogos have a brighter, less weighty sound than the heavier cowbell, and are a mainstay of the go-go subgenre of funk (which may or may not have been named after them).
Cabasa
Talking drum
Shakers
Other
When a shekere would be overkill, the cabasa steps in to provide a more compact form of friction-based rhythm. The modern cabasa is a wide, short metal cylinder mounted on a wooden handle, with strings of metal beads wrapped around it. It can be shaken to make a rattling sound, or twisted with one hand while the beads are held in place with the other for a similar ‘shhk’ sound to that of the shekere, but brighter and higher in pitch. Like the shekere, a skilled player can do pretty amazing things with this seemingly one-dimensional instrument. While the shekere and cabasa have their soundgenerating beads on the outside, the loosely defined shaker family includes any sealed enclosure filled with beads, as descended from the seed-filled gourd made by that most venerable of percussion manufacturers, Mother Nature. Maracas, caxixi, egg shakers, rainsticks – anything that you shake to mobilise its rattly
An hourglass-shaped drum with heads at both ends connected by a series of cords that tighten when the centre of the drum, held under the arm, is squeezed, thus changing the tension of the heads and the pitch of the sound. Originally used to send messages from village to village in West Africa, the talking drum is played with a curved stick (held in the free-arm hand) and the fingers of the holding-arm hand, and is loud, attacking and incredibly expressive, capable of blasting out precision melodies and bends over a wide pitch range. It’s impossible to detail the full range of percussion instruments available in just one page, so we’d urge you to get online and investigate for yourself the likes of the berimbau, cuica, jawbone, castanets, cajon, vibraslap, mark tree, singing bowls and a huge array of weird and wonderful drums from all corners of the globe. Computer Music special / 41
> programming percussion
Perc’ing up The best way to get yourself fired up for some serious percussion programming is to feast your senses on some serious percussionists. Here are some utterly unmissable YouTube videos
bit.ly/xV7a0W
One of the greatest congueros of all time, Mongo Santamaria, leads his own band in a supercool rendition of his own jazz standard, Afro Blue, from 1984. Mongo takes his solo in the intro, but be sure to also check out Sal Santamaria’s sublime shekere solo at 4.40. Beautiful.
bit.ly/zcTHsb
Three percussion legends – Giovanni Hidalgo, Johnny Rodriguez and Orestes Vilato – pay tribute to the late, great Ray Barretto. Feel the push and pull of the clave and pay attention to how perfectly the trio weave their separate lines together without getting in each other’s way.
bit.ly/17iGPt
Whether leading his own band or contributing to other people’s, Ray Barretto’s style of conga playing was uniquely characterful. There’s not much of him on YouTube, but this number from 1975 ably demonstrates his incredible chops.
bit.ly/rMDWSC
No video, sadly, but don’t let that spoil the Afro Cuban freight train that is Dizzy Gillespie’s Manteca, featuring Chano Pozo on congas. Chano, who died a year after this recording was made, was the first of many Latin percussionists to work with Dizzy, who was largely responsible for Latin jazz taking off in the US.
> Step by step 1. Programming realistic live percussion
Tutorial
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Let’s start our percussive adventure with a bit of funky ‘live’ action. We throw together a quick 16-bar backing using the Apple Loops that come with Logic Pro: drums, bass and electric piano. It’s groovy but rhythmically sparse, lending itself perfectly to the addition of multilayered percussion. We load up a conga patch in the EXS24 sampler. (Audio: 1. Drums, bass, keys)
We overdub a fill at the end of each eight-bar section. For conga fills, think triplets, syncopation and playing slightly behind the beat before bursting into the next section. Audio files of each percussion line, solo and with the ‘band’, from here on in are in the Tutorial Files folder, in both quantised (to 16th-notes) and unquantised versions, as are the unquantised MIDI files. (Audio: 2. With congas)
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We record our conga part using a pad controller. We use a total of seven different samples: four open tones, one slap, one bend and one palm strike. The slap is used to provide the accent off the beat, and a conga player will fill the gaps between hits with ghost notes (very soft notes, much quieter than the others), so we do the same. We also send a bit of the signal to a reverb for a touch of ambience.
Next, an EXS24 timbales patch, with the ‘left hand’ playing alternating quarter-notes on the two drums and the right beating out a cascara rhythm (which, as we mentioned earlier, is played on the shell of the drum). Our sampler patch features fairly heavy panning between the two drums, which we rather like. Fills are also recorded at the end of each eight-bar section. (Audio: 3. With timbales)
programming percussion <
bit.ly/f4Zwpc
The fabulously eccentric Airto Moreira does weird things with his voice, and throws some incredible shapes with a whole armoury of Brazilian percussion.
bit.ly/w9Qigo
Sheila E might be best known as Prince’s drummer from back in the day, but she’s also a superb percussionist away from the kit. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, given that her dad, uncle, both brothers and various other Escovedo family members are all extremely big hitters on the US Latin music scene.
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We choose the cabasa rather than the shekere for our shaker part, since there’s already quite a lot of bottom end to our percussion and the cabasa is the higher pitched of the two. A simple shaker part pushes the groove along nicely and has the added benefit of providing a splashy accent on every other snare hit. (Audio: 4. With cabasa)
For a bit of 70s cop show vibe, the triangle is easy to program and adds extra top-end interest. We program a part in which the first two notes in each repeat are muted (the fingers are wrapped around the triangle to achieve this) and the third one is open (fingers removed to allow the triangle to ring freely) – simple but perfectly effective. (Audio: 6. With triangle)
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Our percussion mix is getting rather dense now, so finding space for the actual notes of our agogo pattern proves a bit tricky! Eventually we settle on a loping off-beat riff moving from one bell to the other, dropping the bells out entirely for the fills at the end of each eight-bar section. (Audio: 5. With agogos)
In nine tracks out of ten, the tambourine part will be a simple 16th-note shake pattern with accents on specific regular beats – usually 2 and 4. Use different samples for each ‘side’ of the shake to avoid the machine-gun effect – any decent tambourine sampler patch should cater for this. Our tambourine adds a layer of ‘crunch’, finishing our groove off nicely. (Audio: 7. With tambourine)
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> programming percussion > Step by step 2. Spot percussion
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So far we’ve had our percussion parts playing full-on grooves, but percussion is also extremely useful for spot effects, to smooth over transitions between song sections, or just for adding colour. The vibraslap has an instantly recognisable sound – we throw one in at the start of our track, halfway through and at the end.
A set of thin tubular bells of progressively decreasing length hanging from a horizontal crossbar, the mark tree is played by swiping a hand through it to make that scintillating, ethereal sound much loved by producers of 80s ballads. In our track, it makes a great accompaniment to the Doors-style electric piano section.
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Even odder than the vibraslap, you might recognise the sound of the flexatone from Scooby Doo and other such vintage cartoons, where it was often used to imply spooky goings-on. It can be employed for sustained vibrato effects or used as a one-shot, as we’ve done in our track at the start of bars 5 and 13.
The rainstick is a wooden tube lined with inward-pointing protrusions (cactus needles, traditionally) and filled with beads. When turned over it makes a sound not dissimilar to that of rain falling, through the action of the beads rattling over the spikes. Used in a similar way to the mark tree, ours is deployed right at the end of the track. (Audio: Spot percussion)
The power of clave The word ‘clave’ (which translates as ‘key’ in English) has two definitions in Afro-Cuban music: one is a percussion instrument (see p41), the other is a type of rhythm played by that instrument and others that’s essential to the whole genre. There are numerous clave rhythms, including son clave, rumba clave and 6/8 clave, each of which comprises a number of variations used in different Latin styles (son, rumba, guaracha, mambo, etc). Utterly intrinsic to Latin music, playing ‘in clave’ refers to the phrasing of rhythms in a very specific, formalised way. It’s difficult to understand this fully without a deep knowledge of the music, but one important aspect is the way the rhythm falls slightly out of the regular duple feel (that is, straight 44 / Computer Music special
‘twos and fours’ rhythms) and veers towards a triplet or 6/8 feel, creating a pleasing musical ambiguity. Unless you’re looking to be 100% authentic in your Latin percussion MIDI programming, you don’t have to adhere to the laws of clave at all – in fact, we’ve disregarded it almost completely in our walkthroughs here. If you’re in a learning mood, however, there are plenty of excellent books available on the topic, just a Google search away. Afro-Cuban music is a truly fascinating subject, in terms of both history and technique, and for those who are prepared to put in the time learning the basics, a whole new world of endlessly inspiring rhythmic possibilities awaits.
programming percussion < > Step by step 3. Creative percussion processing
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Slowing our agogo bells down to 70bpm and treating them to some ping-pong delay creates an ethereal, monastic-sounding pattern. Live’s timestretch algorithm introduces a weird ‘sucking’ effect to the dry signal, while the delays fill the stereo field. ‘Transient’-style algorithms are best for percussion, but it’s always worth trying others, of course. (Audio: Agogos delay)
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Percussion is a prime candidate for the extreme application of effects. Take our conga part, for example. It’s pretty groovy as it is, but adding an Auto Filter set to a 2-beat LFO cycle gives it even more rhythmic motion. A compressor is called for next in the chain, though, as the movement of the filter introduces some serious volume variation. (Audio: Conga filter)
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Automation situation When automating effects plugins on percussion tracks, it’s essential that any movements are kept in line with the rhythm being played, unless you’re after deliberately off-kilter timings. Equally, setting LFOs and delay times to sync with your DAW’s project tempo is usually the way to go. However, none of the above necessarily applies to single-hit spot percussion.
Live’s Beat Repeat is a glitch plug-in to be reckoned with, and it’s worth trying on all manner of material (non-Live users could substitute Smartelectronix Supatrigga or Livecut). We’re not sure what we’d use our processed triangle part for, but we’d imagine the adventurous electronica producer could get some mileage out of it. (Audio: Triangle Beat Repeat)
We reverse our cabasa part, and its more-or-less ‘symmetrical’ attack/decay envelope means it still sounds quite cabasa-ish when played backwards (but with percussion that has a ‘tail’, such as congas, the difference can be dramatic – try it!). We then go modulation mental, inserting chorus and tempo-synced flanger plug-ins. Much more interesting. (Audio: Cabasa modulated)
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To finish, we treat the timbales with Soft downsampling (good for introducing extra treble frequencies), modulated frequency shifting (unlike pitchshifting, this shifts low frequencies more than high ones, so it’s also great for retuning percussion) and a Filter Delay, which transforms our rather thin solo timbale part into an enthusiastic trio. (Audio: Timbales bonkers)
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> programming percussion > Step by step
If you want to take pre-made percussion loops and rearrange them to really make them your own, REX files give you all the slicemanipulating power you need. In Reason, we’ve made a sparse, dubby track to which we’re going to add some REX percussion loops. (Audio: 1. REX no perc)
Healthy options Reason’s Dr Octo Rex is an amazing REX file player – as you’d hope, given that Propellerhead created both the format and the instrument – but most DAWs can do similar things, laying the slices of a REX file out across the keyboard and creating a MIDI file to trigger them correctly. In fact, many of them can auto-slice regular WAVs and AIFs into their samplers, too, giving the same functionality as REX files.
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A solo djembe’s one thing (geddit?), but chopping up a fuller loop can yield even better results. We load another Loopmasters loop (from their Afro Latin library) into a new Dr Octo Rex Loop Player and hit the Copy Loop to Track button. It already sounds good, but we can make it even better… (Audio: With Afro Latin)
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Create a Dr Octo Rex Loop Player and load the Djembe 90 bpm REX file from the Factory Sound Bank. We want easy editing access to the triggering notes, so we hit the Copy Loop to Track button to sling the MIDI part onto the instrument’s sequencer track. We also insert an RV7000 reverb, to position our djembe better in the mix. (Audio: 2. With djembe)
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4. REX: The king of percussion
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Now we move the MIDI notes around in the sequencer, designing a new djembe pattern all our own. The result goes with the track much better than the original, particularly at the start of the bar, where it was clashing with the kick drum something rotten. We also reverse a couple of slices in Dr Octo Rex. (Audio: 3. With djembe edited)
The first thing we do is quantise the lot, so that our edits snap to the beat. Then we lose the big bass drum sound entirely, since it’s clashing with our kick. After that, again, it’s simply a case of playing around with the notes until we get the percussive interplay we’re after. (Audio: With Afro Latin edited)
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Percussion programming tips Quantise theory Should you quantise your percussion? The answer to that question depends on the sort of feel you’re trying to achieve and the groove of the rest of your track. Good percussion parts will usually have a high level of human feel, but a lot of that comes from dynamics and articulation, so don’t feel that quantising them will necessarily rob them of their soul. Try it and if it sounds cool, go with it. If it doesn’t, make whatever timing adjustments need to be made manually. Be careful when quantising slow-attack sounds like shakers or guiro that they don’t actually sound late when snapped to the beat. If they do, move them back a bit. Our Live percussion walkthrough track in the Tutorial Files folder sounds pretty loose au naturel (we were going for a live band feel) – maybe too loose for some tastes. Quantised, it sounds rhythmically ‘perfect’, of course, but does that mean it’s necessarily ‘better’? We’ll leave you to decide…
Know the limits When programming drum kit parts, you hopefully already know not to ever trigger more things at once than a drummer could physically play with their four limbs, and it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that the same rule applies with percussion. Obviously, a conguero can’t hit more than two congas at the same time, and you can’t strike and scrape a guiro simultaneously. Adhering to such limitations will make your parts more realistic and stop them becoming too dense.
Gunned down For maximum realism, make sure your sampler patches feature both left- and righthand strokes (where appropriate), and use them. The difference between them might be barely perceptible, but you’ll certainly hear it if you compare a run of alternating notes with a run of the same one repeated.
Keep it real While percussion parts in dance and electronic music will tend to be looped (whether audio clips or MIDI parts), in ‘live’ tracks, they should be properly performed all the way through. So, rather than recording eight bars of MIDI-triggered bongos and looping it, put in the effort to play the whole thing live from start to finish, punching in on any unacceptable mistakes afterwards if necessary. Even with rhythmically straightforward parts – a shaker, for example – approaching your percussion tracking like a proper recording session will make a real difference to the feel of the track.
Choking up If you’ve ever programmed a sampled drum kit, you’re probably aware of mute/choke The snare in your drum kit should have the backbeat ably nailed, so don’t step on its toes with your percussion parts
Many ROMplers feature separate left- and right-hand strokes, programmable on separate MIDI notes, as shown
groups, whereby certain sounds are set up to immediately kill other sounds when triggered – closed hi-hats curtailing open ones, for example. Mute/choke groups are also used for percussion: muted triangle interrupting open triangle, short cabasa rub defeating long cabasa rub, etc. As a rule, if it’s not physically possible for two specific sounds to happen simultaneously, one always needs to mute/choke the other.
Exercise restraint Keep your individual percussion layers simple. With such a broad range of sonic flavours and colours in the percussion family, once just a few members of it are brought together, the result is usually a surprisingly dense wall of sound. Always consider the interplay between your different drums, shakers and whatnot – rhythmically, they should lock together and move around each
other – as if your virtual players have been rehearsing for weeks – rather than clashing, with everything hitting at the same time.
Beats working Avoid the temptation to place emphasis on the backbeat with your percussion – that’s the job of the snare drum. While certain percussion instruments (tambourine or cabasa, for example) make a good accompaniment to the snare, generally you want your perc working around the main beat rather than sitting on top of it.
In the place All members of your percussion ensemble should exist in the same virtual space, so when applying reverb, send all your grooving percussion parts to the same plug-in – using different reverbs on each instrument will mess up the sense of cohesion (although that can at times be an effective technique). All of the parts in our ‘live’ project are sending to the same reverb at varying levels. For percussion spot effects, however, tailor the reverb to each individual sound according to its own specific needs.
Panning for gold When it comes to panning the percussion section, go for a noticeable spread, but nothing too extreme. With the exception of the timbales, our parts cover a fairly narrow panorama – just enough to give a sense of width without distracting attention from the drums, bass and keys. Computer Music special / 47
Cinematic
beats
Enormous drum and percussion sounds are the order of the day as we turn our attention to producing blockbuster beats suitable for a Hollywood epic Larger-than-life, ‘cinematic’ beats have become such a mainstay of soundtracks, TV idents and advertising that they’re almost part of the contemporary media wallpaper. Take a quick surf through Saturday night TV or any number of the latest movie blockbusters and you’ll be bombarded with huge, epic percussion sounds. Listen a little closer and you’ll hear that these sounds, although rooted in real instruments, can also sound ‘otherworldly’, which only adds to their mystery and overall epic feel. To get straight to the point of this tutorial, achieving these cinematic sounds is primarily a case of careful sound selection and appropriate effects processing. Our first step, then, is to put together a set of core sounds that we know will deliver. We’ll cherry-pick from ‘world’ and orchestral percussion to get a good sonic spread, covering the thunderous lows and sparkling highs that we need to create the required impact. We can also find plenty of percussive greatness in everyday sounds and objects. To that end, we’ll be looking at more unusual sources and ‘found’ sounds, too, as we include the kitchen sink (almost) in our quest to push the boundaries of percussion. With our sound set sorted, we’ll guide you through some programming basics in order to help you get the patterns you’re used to hearing. We’ll then move on to look at processing the sounds in context using EQ, reverb, exciters and stereo enhancement. Finally, it’s worth saying that if you’d rather just go for some high-quality ready-made sounds, there are some truly excellent sample libraries out there – Quantum Leap Stormdrum 3 and Heavyocity Damage are two particularly good examples – that work well-recorded source material into mix-ready epic sounds. For raw core sounds that you can process yourself, it’s also worth checking out Project Sam’s True Strike series, Vir2 World Impact and Native Instruments’ West Africa Kontakt library, among many others. Right, let’s make some noise!
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cinematic beats <
Building a sound set Without wanting to lead you down a certain path, when you’re trying to create massive, cinematic beats, there’s a certain core sample set that you need to get together. That’s not to say that you can’t introduce your own sounds or more unusual ones (indeed, we’ll look at both shortly), but we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel here, and certain sounds fit well with – and are expected to be heard in – cinematic scores and music influenced by them. For the sake of simplicity, and to reinforce the different roles these sounds play, we’ll divide this core set into ‘drums’ and ‘metals’. Drums includes everything from the humble drum kit rack tom, orchestral snare and timpani to oversized orchestral bass drums, African djembe, Middle Eastern darbuka, Indian tablas and Japanese taiko (typically, the large wadaiko drum). Of course, the complete list is way longer
“Focus on tone and try to find variations of playing style in the same sample set” than we can cover in its entirety, but the main thing to appreciate is that drum sounds vary from deep and thunderous (taiko and bass drum) to high-pitched and ringy (tabla and djembe), and some (tabla again) are capable of generating a broad range of sounds on their own. This versatility can be further enhanced by using different types of sticks or beaters.
When we talk about metals, the array of possible options can seem even more vast than that of drums. Once again, although there is general consistency in terms of instrument types, a Chinese cymbal and a Turkish (Western) cymbal, for example, sound very different. What’s more, playing style has a huge influence, too – think of the difference between a crash cymbal struck with the shank of a stick and a crescendo roll played with beaters on the same cymbal. Similarly, damping and choking metals can influence their sound and range of usage. To get started, you need to hunt down goodquality raw sounds. These may be dry and ‘nonepic’, but focus on tone and try to find variations of playing style in the same sample set. Your goal, ultimately, is to build a suitable and appropriate (but not unadventurous!) sound set for the music you’re working on.
> Step by step 1. Getting the core sounds together
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Although the temptation when building cinematic, soundtrackstyle beats is to search for interesting ethnic sounds, the humble tom tom is a brilliant option. Here, we’re picking some sounds from a drum kit instrument (BFD2), including a couple of sets of matching toms. We can also use BFD’s controls to adjust their pitches and envelopes. (Audio: Step 1a and 1b)
For musical energy and a sense of urgency, tablas are ideal, but they’re capable of so many tones that it can be hard to know where to start. Here, our sample set comprises 16 sounds, divided into short slaps, choked thumps and deeper, sustained sounds. We map these out across our sampler, so that we can pick and choose from them when programming.
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Big taiko drums are perfect for thunderous sounds, but are often recorded with ambience, making each sample set sound very particular. We collect together samples of hits made on the centre and rim of the drum, plus a proper rimshot and a flam. This gives us the programming flexibility we want but with consistency, as our hits all come from the same sample set.
Marching band snare drums cut through pretty much anything, and their clicky sound is great for accents or ‘regimented’ musical sections. To make the most of them, seek out a sample set with a range of articulations, such as flams and rolls. You could program these yourself, but they often sound much better when sampled ‘as played’.
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> Step by step 1. Getting the core sounds together (continued)
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Gongs produce a very deep and powerful sound, and when rolled they can also give a glorious shimmering effect. Here we have three basic sounds: a deep one produced with a soft beater, a harder one with a stick, and one with pitchbend in it. (Audio: Step 5)
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Traditional cymbals from East Asia offer a particularly interesting bending sound that instantly evokes an exotic atmosphere. We collect together a selection including tuned and bowed gongs – the latter are particularly good for haunting ambiences.
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For crescendos, it’s good to have a selection of regular suspended cymbal swells. Here we have two sets: one played with soft beaters, the other a China-type cymbal played with hard beaters. The sample sets include various lengths of crescendo rolls, as well as both choked and sustained endings – these will all prove useful at the programming stage.
Our final sound is an orchestral tambourine, which has far more character than the plastic ‘rock’ version. For this we head back to the percussion section in BFD2, which contains a great wooden tambourine with multiple articulations, including muted hit, rim, thumb roll and single shake. Lots of textures to play with!
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Selecting alternative sounds While classical orchestral and ethnic sounds are great, to create something truly original you’ll probably want to throw the sound selection net a little wider. This could involve simply searching for other regular sounds and using them percussively, possibly by editing them to make them shorter or repitching them – but there’s no need to stop there. When it comes to capturing percussion sounds, the whole world is your oyster. In movie production, sound effects are created in a controlled studio environment – a process that’s known as ‘foley’. The equipment used for this usually bears little relationship to the sounds that it generates, and in fact, we’ve become so accustomed to the larger-than-life foley sounds we hear in movies that the sounds of real life often seem somewhat dull and mundane in comparison.
“For percussion samples, any object that you can hit or shake is fair game” For percussion samples, any object that you can hit or shake is fair game, although recording it may not be as easy a task as you’d expect. Close miking often sounds lifeless, while ambient miking can easily become too ambient, so be prepared for quite a bit of trial and error. Try stamping flamenco-style on a wooden floor or board (hard shoe heels will be particularly
effective), slamming doors or using unusual items as beaters. A telephone directory slammed down on a table (or the closed lid of a piano!) can produce a pretty usable thump, as can whacking the bottom of a plastic tub – a laundry bin, for example. This ‘found sounds’ approach can be particularly fruitful in your kitchen, which will be full of appliances, metal hardware and hard surfaces that can be used to produce edgy sounds. With some judicious editing, layering and repitching, you can render these totally unrecognisable from their sources, turning them into unusual percussive tones. Possibilities include appliance doors (microwave, fridge, washing machine), switches on kettles, toasters and so on, and – for industrial metals – the evereffective scrape of a grill pan being moved in and out of the cooker.
> Step by step 2. Home-made and found sounds
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Our first sound combines foot stamps and a large book whacked on a cupboard. The stamping is hard and percussive, while the book whack is fat and heavy. We pick a few of the stamps and a couple of the thumps, and offset the timing slightly, particularly for the stamps. A bit of careful balancing and we have a slightly flammed attack with a solid thump. (Audio: Step 1)
If you want a musical accent that really cuts through, it’s typically done with some kind of cymbal or white noise effect. However, a good found sound alternative is breaking glass, which can also impart an urban or desolate feel. Here we have three samples, layered for energy and power.
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Recording a knife slicing through something on a chopping board (a carrot, in our case) can sound great. For a percussive sound we need a tight one-shot effect, so we’re editing the tail of our recording. However, we keep the front slicing effect, which sounds a bit like a reverse snare. We’ll need to bear this in mind for timing purposes later.
Metal objects usually produce a ringing sound with a quick decay. Striking a fire extinguisher gets us a ringing tone, which we can pitch down to create a darker effect. We use a varispeed-type pitchshift, so that the sound becomes longer as we pitch it down.
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> cinematic beats > Step by step 3. Programming cinematic beats
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Once you have your core sounds sorted, group them together by type and load them into your sampler. This is far more flexible than using raw audio on a track, particularly for pitch or velocity variations or amplitude envelope tweaking. You can always bounce the parts back out to audio for final processing later should you feel the need.
While we might like the loose feel of our played-in part, the beats need to lock in with other instrumentation in the track. Two options are to not quantise fully or use swing quantise. However, our approach is to perfectly quantise the main downbeats and then retain some natural timing within other parts of the pattern.
We only add drags to certain snares – these are the accented notes that help mark out the time of the overall part. Elsewhere, we can use the same ‘doubling up’ idea to accent other notes. Here we’re also adding a gong to the downbeat of every eight bars.
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Velocity is a vital consideration in the production of dynamic beats. We program our basic tom and taiko pattern, and set our sampler to be velocity-sensitive. By playing the part on a keyboard, we get a true dynamic feel. Then we simply tweak the velocities to taste, accenting significant beats (such as downbeats).
Percussionists and drummers often play ghost notes to fill the gaps between the main beats, as well as grace notes just before beats. The most well-known implementations of grace notes are the flam and the drag – single and double grace notes, respectively, before the main hit. We program flams on our toms and drags on some of our snares. (Audio: Step 4)
Cinematic beats tend to range into both the low and high extremes of the frequency spectrum, leaving the midrange clear for other instruments and dialogue. It’s worth bearing this in mind at the sound selection stage. We complete our track with some carefully chosen high-frequency sounds, thus leaving space in the midrange.
cinematic beats < > Step by step 4. Processing for bigger sounds
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With our parts programmed, the final stage is to make them sound as epic as possible without losing focus and swamping them in effects. We start with a little EQ sweetening to help bring out the crack on our toms. We use a gentle shelving EQ at 4.7kHz, boosting heavily by 10dB. (Audio: Step 1)
Having said that, reverb is the best tool for adding scale to any sound, and we can apply it to specific sounds for specific effects. We insert a gated convolution reverb across the taiko, adjusting the volume envelope tail to taste. We also set up a general purpose convolution reverb (around 3s long) on an auxiliary, again tailoring the volume envelope to keep things tidy.
Sometimes a sound will need a little help in the top or bottom end, but EQ alone won’t cut it. This is the time to try a harmonic exciter. Used sparingly, these add a processed sheen that’s ideal for cinematic beats. We use both low- and high-frequency harmonic exciters as auxiliaries rather than inserts.
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To add space and scale to a sound without using a regular reverb, we can apply short delays. We set up a stereo delay on an auxiliary, with the two delay channels hard panned. Delay settings of 30ms and 60ms with no feedback are ideal, and we filter the low frequencies from the wet signal to avoid low-end clutter.
Reverb can also add too much mid- and low-frequency build-up, or sound too bright, so it usually needs tailoring with EQ. On our auxiliary reverb we use a bell-shaped EQ cut to scoop out some of the low mid-range at around 450Hz, and a very gentle shelving EQ cut at around 7.5kHz to soften the highs.
Our final process is to use a stereo tool to keep the low frequencies mono and spread the higher frequencies. Our plugin simply uses a filter to make the frequencies below a certain point mono, and allows us to rebalance the mid and sides aspects of the stereo signal. We can use this on individual sounds, sub-groups or the main output.
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Mixing beats Put these essential mixing techniques to work and get your beats sounding their best
Choosing/making suitable sounds and programming the right rhythms for the genre you’re working in are fundamental to creating great drum tracks, but no matter how impressive your sequencing skills, poorly mixed beats will always fail to satisfy. This can be frustrating for the less technically inclined musician or producer, but getting big, clear-sounding drum mixes isn’t as complicated as you might imagine. The golden rule is to give each element its own space in the mix. This can be done by manipulating frequency (with the help of equalisers or filters), stereo panorama (using mid/side utilities, reverb and auto-panner 54 / Computer Music special
effects, amongst other things) or volume (via sidechain compression, gating and specialised dynamics processors such as Logic’s Enveloper or Cubase’s Envelope Shaper). Getting your drums sounding right is of the utmost importance when making dance music, and in the following walkthroughs we’ll show you how these techniques can be used to transform some very raw drum tracks into professional-sounding, club-ready beats. Of course, there’s no one-size-fits-all-genres approach to mixing, so we’ll cover three different flavours of mixdown: a full-on drum ’n’ bass banger, a more chilled-out dubstep beat and a stripped-back minimal house groove.
We’ll use a number of DAWs for these walkthroughs, but the techniques we’ll be describing are universal and equally applicable no matter what software you use – in fact, all of the plugins involved are from each DAW’s stock effects library. To whet your appetite with a couple of examples, we’ll show you how a common-or-garden compressor can be used to enhance a drum track’s transients, and how modulation effects can be used to ‘stereoise’ mono signals. Getting to grips with good beat mixing technique can help inform your drum programming too, so once you’ve followed these guides you’ll be on course to make your best beats ever!
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> Step by step 1. Mixing a full-on DnB beat in Ableton Live
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Begin by setting the project tempo to 174bpm and dragging Kick. wav, Snare.wav, Closed hat.wav, Ride.wav, Crash.wav and Angry break.wav onto separate audio tracks. Set up a cycle loop around the bar containing the parts, and turn all of them down to -6dB so that they don’t clip the master.
Drop the level of the snare track down to -13dB. We can see from the ‘uneven’ level meters on the kick and snare tracks that both are in stereo. We want the kick and snare to sit at the dead centre of the mix, so drag Live’s Utility effect onto the kick track and set its Width parameter to 0%.
Do the same on the snare track, but this time set the low-cut filter to 130Hz. The snare could also do with some more high-end crack – we could layer it up with another sound, but using a high-shelf EQ to boost 2dB at 4kHz works too. (Audio: EQed kick and snare)
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In their raw form, these elements sound like a big mess! The easiest way to get a handle on what we’re working with is to mute everything apart from the kick and snare. When we do this, we can hear that the snare is way too loud for the kick.
Do the same on the snare track. Next, add an EQ Eight to the kick track. Set the first band to 12dB low-cut mode, and bring up the Freq knob until you’ve removed the excess weight from the low end. A setting of about 80Hz gives us a lighter, less stompy sound that won’t interfere with a bassline as much.
Unmute the closed hi-hat track and add another EQ Eight. Use a 12dB low-cut band at 1.6kHz to take out the messy lows. The top end of the hi-hat is a little harsh, so use a bell shape to take off 2dB at 10kHz, and a 12dB high cut to take out everything above 18kHz.
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> mixing beats > Step by step 1. Mixing a full-on DnB beat in Ableton Live (continued)
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The hi-hat is a bit too loud, so turn it down to -10dB. Next, unmute the ride channel. This is clearly way, way too loud, so turn it down to -24dB. Add an EQ Eight, and use a 12dB low-cut filter set to 2.9kHz to tame its lows. This lets the ride’s mid character through, but stops it from clogging up the mix so much.
This spreads the ride across the stereo panorama, but the default settings are far too extreme for our purposes. Turn the Feedback down to 0.55, then set the Amount to 45% and Dry/Wet to 60%. This stops the Flanger effect from being so obvious, but still provides the stereo feel we’re after. (Audio: Stereo ride)
The addition of reverb makes the snare – and indeed the whole beat – start to sound a lot more natural and polished. Live’s default reverb send settings aren’t perfect for this sound, so bring up the Reverb effect on the Send A channel and set the Decay Time to 2.25s.
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We can see from the ride channel’s level meter that the part is in mono. Earlier, we put our fundamental sounds – the kick and snare – firmly in the middle of the mix. Less solid sounds like rides can be moved to the side signal to give the sounds in the middle more room to breathe. Add Live’s Flanger effect to the ride channel.
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The beat is starting to take shape, but it still lacks character. A good way to give a DnB beat a more organic sound is to add a breakbeat. There’s one among our tracks, but let’s see how far we can take our one-shot sounds before we resort to using it. Let’s add some snare to the reverb – turn the Send A level on the snare track up to -10dB.
This gets the reverb closer to the sound we’re after, but the tail is too long. Add a Gate after the Reverb and set its Threshold to -45dB. Because this parameter is volume-dependent, adjusting the send level will change how it responds. Therefore, the most practical way to control the level of the reverb now is to use a Utility effect.
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Add a Utility after the Gate and set its Gain to -5dB, then use an EQ Eight to low-cut the signal at 2.5kHz. Now, let’s simulate an overhead mic to get a more cohesive, organic sound for the whole kit. Add all of the tracks apart from Angry Break to a group. Delete the default Simple Delay effect on the Send B track, and add Overdrive, Reverb and EQ Eight effects.
Unsolo the send. Now we’ve got a decent sound out of our oneshots, let’s try adding the break to the mix. Angry Break is very loud, so turn it down to -20dB before unmuting it. The break has lots of rumbling lows, so use EQ Eight to low-cut it at 220Hz. We can get a cleaner sound if we sidechain the break with the kick and snare.
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Set the Overdrive Drive to 87%, the Reverb Decay Time to 410ms and the Dry/Wet to 100%, and use the EQ Eight to low-cut at 1.5kHz. Turn the drum group’s Send B level up to -18dB. Solo the Send B return channel to take a listen to what this adds – it’s just a smeared, dirty reverb with no lows, but it helps the drums sound more authentic. (Audio: Overhead simulation)
Add a Compressor to the Angry Break channel, and set its sidechain input to the kick channel. Turn the Threshold down to -19.5dB and set the Release time to 12ms. Duplicate the effect and set the new instance’s Source to the snare track. Set the Threshold to -1dB and the Ratio to inf:1. (Audio: DnB beat)
Making the most of mid/side technique In this walkthrough, we’ve used the technique of placing the kick and snare dead centre in the mix by reducing their stereo width, and having the ride sit out on the edges of the stereo panorama by running it through a flanger. We call this kind of trickery mid/side processing, and understanding it is pretty much essential for getting contemporary-sounding drum mixes. How does mid/side work? Usually, we think about a stereo signal in terms of left and right channels. We can ‘encode’ both channels into a mid signal (the information that’s present in both the left and right channels, and thus what you hear at the centre of the mix) and a sides signal (the difference between the left and right channels, and what you hear at the very edges of the stereo panorama). In mathematical terms, we can express this as
Mid=Left+Right, and Side=Left-Right, but a more practical way to get your head round it is to download Voxengo’s excellent freeware mid/side encoder MSED (www.voxengo. com). Create an audio track in your DAW, put a piece of music that you think has a good mixdown on it, add MSED as an insert effect, and try muting the sides signal. The sound will go into mono. Then unmute the sides signal and mute the mid signal – you’ll hear that the mono signal disappears, leaving just the sides. The advantage of dividing drum sounds between the mid and sides signals is that it gives us more headroom to work with. When we use flanging to make the ride stereo, it reduces its presence in the mid signal, making our kick and snare both sound clearer and thus allowing us to turn them up.
Voxengo MSED is a fantastic freeware plugin for exploring the mid/side technique
By studying the mid/side profiles of greatsounding mixes with MSED (or other width control effects such as Live’s Utility), you can get clues as to how to use the mid/side technique in your own tracks which should help you to produce bigger and bettersounding drum tracks and mixdowns. Computer Music special / 57
> mixing beats > Step by step 2. Mixing a chilled dubstep beat in Logic
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Create a new project, set its tempo to 140bpm and put Kick.wav, Snare.wav, Rim shot.wav and Hats.wav on audio tracks, turning each one down to -6dB to prevent clipping. Set up a loop around them. These sounds are pretty upfront, but with some processing we can make them sound more chilled while still retaining their solidity.
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Set one of the bell bands’ Q parameters to 0.10, and use it to take out 1.5dB at 9.6kHz. This smooths the high end out a little. Activate the low-cut filter and bring it up to 500Hz to ensure that nothing slips through below the hi-hat’s fundamental frequency.
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Next, add the Ensemble effect from the Modulation folder. This chorus-style effect gives the hats a more natural sound and some stereo width, but the effect is quite strong at the default setting, so turn the Mix fader down to 10% to ease it off a little.
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Let’s start with the hi-hats, which are very loud and bright. Activate the Channel EQ on the hats channel and click the Analyzer button to see what we’re working with. There’s too much energy in the highs, so activate the high-cut filter and set it to 11.2kHz to get rid of them.
After the Channel EQ, add an Enveloper effect from the Dynamics section. Bring the Gain fader on the right-hand side of the plugin all the way down to -100% to tidy up the hi-hat’s tail. This tightens up the beat and will make it easier to add other elements when you’ve finished working on the drums.
Another useful effect for giving hi-hats a natural feel is delay. Add the Stereo Delay effect from the Delay folder. The default setting’s synced delays give the hats a funkier feel, but again, the effect is a little too intense, so turn the Left and Right Output Mix faders down to 10%. (Audio: Hat delay)
mixing beats <
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Now turn your attention to the kick channel. The kick is good and weighty, but it’s unlikely we’ll need all that beef in our final mix. To make it less booming, use a Channel EQ on the kick track to apply a low cut at 65Hz. This helps makes the beat feel skippier and more flowing. Turn the kick track down to -8dB. (Audio: EQed kick)
Conveniently, the default reverb is appropriate for the kind of sound we’re after, and the reverb’s Dry level is set to 0% by default. This means we can begin to dial in the effect on the rimshot channel without touching Space Designer’s interface at all. Set the Bus 1 level on the rimshot track to -10dB. (Audio: Send reverb)
Set the send amount to 0dB, and do the same on the snare channel. Set Aux 2’s Output to No Out. This silences the channel, but we can still use it as a sidechain input source. Now add a Compressor effect from the Dynamics folder on Aux 1, placing it after the Space Designer.
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A big part of the dubstep sound is the big, reverbed snare. In Logic’s mixer, set the Sends slot on the rimshot track to Bus»Bus 1. This automatically creates a bus channel called Aux 1 for us. Add the Space Designer effect from the Reverb folder as an insert on Aux 1.
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This sounds decent enough, but the reverb has the undesirable side effect of clogging up the mix. We can solve this problem with a little sidechain compression. First, set up a buss to serve as a dedicated sidechain input channel. Set the kick channel’s Send routing to Bus»Bus 2.
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Set the Compressor’s Side Chain input to Bus 2. When the beat plays, you’ll see the Gain Reduction meter bounce along with the kick and snare. Turn Auto Gain mode Off, and lower the Compressor Threshold fader down to -32dB. (Audio: Sidechained reverb)
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> mixing beats > Step by step 2. Mixing a chilled dubstep beat in Logic (continued)
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The rimshot is dominating the mix a little, so turn it down to -9dB. Let’s make the snare more obvious in the mix with some transient tweaking. Add a Compressor on the snare channel. We’re going to use this effect to make the snare’s dynamics more pronounced. Turn the Attack up to 170ms.
You can see that the level peaks slightly lower now. Turn the Compressor Gain up to 1dB to get a level that’s roughly on par with the perceived volume of the sound before we compressed it. The peak level is very slightly higher, but this doesn’t matter too much as the snare’s now-louder attack only peaks at this higher level for a short amount of time, and won’t be affected too negatively by a master limiter, clipper or saturator.
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This is a long Attack time, which means that the transients at the very start of the snare will be unaffected by the compression. However, the later part of the sound will be reduced in volume, making the transients sound relatively louder. Set the Auto Gain mode to Off, and turn the Compressor Threshold down to -28dB.
Solo the snare track and toggle the Compressor’s power button on and off to compare the original and processed sounds. It’s a matter of personal taste as to whether the increase in peak level is worth the trade-off in headroom to get a punchier-sounding attack. (Audio: Snare attack.wav)
Cutting loose As you’ll have noticed from these walkthroughs, equalisation is a vital tool when is comes to mixing drums – and anything else, for that matter! This is especially true of low-cut/high-pass filtering: when used on kicks and snares it can help a beat flow smoothly and sound more open, and applied to hi-hats and rides, it makes everything sound cleaner and tighter. In our examples, we’ve used low-cut frequencies that sound right when the beats are played by themselves. It’s important to bear in mind that beats have to work alongside the other elements of a track, too, so the frequency at which you low-cut your kick will likely depend to some extent on the frequency content and rhythm of the track’s bassline. For instance, if your track has an offbeat bassline that never plays at the same 60 / Computer Music special
“Equalisation is a vital tool when is comes to mixing drums – and anything else” time as the kick, you can probably get away with leaving more bass in the kick – indeed, the bassline might sound too bassy if you take too much weight out of the kick! On the other hand, if you have a bassline that plays a lot of higher notes, you’ll likely find that it strays into the kick’s frequency range, and that a combination of low-cut EQ and sidechain compression are necessary.
If you’re having trouble balancing elements of a track – be they kick and bass, ride and pad, or any other combination – it can often help to solo the offending elements in order to get a clearer idea of what’s happening. A spectral analyser such as Voxengo’s freeware SPAN can come in handy as well, giving you a better idea of which frequencies are overlapping. When using low-cut filters, try to exercise restraint and only cut when a sound really benefits from it. Overused, this kind of processing can take too much weight out of your drums and leave your beats sounding brittle and tinny. If you find that you’re having a problem mixing your drums, try bypassing the EQs, filters and dynamics processors you’ve applied to ensure that you haven’t over-cooked any of them.
mixing beats < > Step by step 3. Mixing a minimal house beat in Cubase
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Drag 909 kick.wav, 626 clap.wav, 808 clave.wav, 808 open hat. wav, 606 open hat.wav and 808 tom.wav onto separate audio tracks in Cubase, and set up a loop around the bar they’re in. The most obvious problem with this material is that the 606 open hi-hat is very long and lazy-sounding, and doesn’t fit with the minimal vibe we want.
Now that we’ve tidied up the hats, it’s clear that the 808 tom needs tightening up as well! Add an EnvelopeShaper to its channel and turn its Release down to -20. The tom’s low end is interfering with the kick a little, so add a Studio EQ from the EQ folder and use a low shelf to take off 7dB at 100Hz. (Audio: Shaped envelopes)
With the original reverb dealt with, we can now add our own. Create an FX Channel track and put REVerance, from the Reverb folder, onto it. Select the Catacombe preset, then activate a send routing to the reverb on the 626 clap channel. The character of the sound is right, but it’s a bit big for our needs.
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Add an EnvelopeShaper from the Dynamics folder as an insert effect, and turn the Release knob down to -20. The hi-hat is too loud, so turn the Output knob down to -4dB while you’re at it. The 808 open hi-hat needs tightening up, so add an EnvelopeShaper to its track as well – set its Release to -13.0 and Output to -4dB.
The handclap sample we’ve used has a little bit of a reverb tail on it, which we can get rid of using a gate. Add Cubase’s Gate effect from the Dynamics folder and set the Threshold at -35dB. This completely cuts out the reverb tail while leaving the body of the sound intact.
Turn REVerance’s Size parameter down to 30. The reverb also has a heavy pre-delay on it; get rid of this by turning the Pre-delay down to 10. This reverb can help us make the rest of the beat sound less dry, so let’s use it on some of the other tracks. Apply it to the tom and both hi-hat channels also. (Audio: Reverb)
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> mixing beats > Step by step 3. Mixing a minimal house beat in Cubase (continued)
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Our beat now has a more minimal feel, but it’s pretty quiet. Let’s boost its volume and enhance its character with some buss processing. Add a Group Channel track, route all the audio tracks to it, and put a VintageCompressor from the Dynamics folder on it as an insert effect.
Thankfully, we can remedy this using the EnvelopeShaper. Add it to the 909 kick track and turn the Release up to 4.0. We can also make the transient a little bit more punchy by turning the Attack parameter up to 2.2. Put a SoftClipper from the Distortion folder after the EnvelopeShaper.
Add Pitch Correct from the Pitch Shift folder at the very start of the kick’s insert chain, and turn the Transpose parameter in the Correction section down to -2.0 semitones. Turn Formant Preservation off to avoid any extra unnecessary processing. This puts the kick at the right pitch without messing up its transients or low end too much. (Audio: Tuned kick)
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Turn the Input knob up to 8 and the Release time down so that it’s at about 8 o’clock. This gives the beat a more upfront feel, but without driving it too hard and pushing it into techno territory. At this stage, though, it becomes clear that the kick drum is a little lacking – it’s very short and the low end is suffering as a result.
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Set the SoftClipper’s input to 4.7dB. This sacrifices some of the kick’s dynamic range for loudness, but the kick was very dynamic, so this is a worthwhile tradeoff. Let’s try lowering the pitch of the kick to get a bigger sound. If we were working on this track from scratch we could simply adjust the pitch of the sample, synth or drum machine instrument that it’s played from, but as we’re using bounced tracks, we’ll have to fix it in the mix.
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Duplicate the bar-long beat seven times to create an eight-bar section, then add RoomWorks from the Reverb folder as an insert on the 808 clave track. Set the Reverb Time to 3.12s and automate the Mix parameter to morph the clave from a wet background sound to a dry foreground one. (Audio: Reverb automation)
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Make beats with It’s a self-contained production powerhouse, but Maschine can also emulate some of the greatest grooveboxes in history. Recapture the retro sound of 80s and 90s digital hardware with our guide If the MPC invented the whole 16-pad sampling drum machine concept, Native Instruments can be credited with dragging it kicking and screaming into the virtual studio. Years before Akai finally got into the hybrid groovebox game, NI spotted a huge gap in the market and exploited it skilfully with a combination of excellent production software and a powerful dedicated hardware controller. Now, at version 2, Maschine is an all-singing, all-dancing behemoth with a huge range of onboard effects and sound generators, as well as loop slicing, mixing and arranging capabilities and a vast sound library catering to every kind of electronic 64 / Computer Music special
music under the sun. Whether running as a plugin in the studio or a standalone instrument onstage, it’s quite simply one of the most versatile digital instruments of the modern age. Of course, with all that power and its ever-expanding feature set, it can be easy to forget that Maschine is also one of the best beat-making tools known to man, encouraging a speedy, hands-on workflow like the synthesising and sampling drum machines of old. In this tutorial, we’re going to look at using Maschine to create vintage-style drums loops – that is, using it as a drum machine (or machines) and sampler, rather than as the centre of a more
extensive production setup. This isn’t to say that it can’t (or shouldn’t) be used as the latter, of course, but as this is a special entirely dedicated to beats, they’re going to be our clear focus. So, whether you’re making future 2-step, deep house, hip-hop, breaks, pop or indie R&B, Maschine can offer a significant retro-injection to your productions, but with the extreme convenience of modern virtual production. Oh, and in all of the walkthroughs, we’re going to be assuming that you already know how to actually use Maschine at a basic level – if you find yourself unclear on how to perform a particular action, you can always head on up to the application’s Help menu.
make beats with maschine <
Make it personal Maschine takes its inspiration from vintage classics such as the Akai MPC60 and – to a lesser extent – E-mu SP-1200, early drum machines including Roland’s TR-909 and TR-808, and even Roger Linn’s classic drum machines. These machines brought about a revolution in music production, driven not just by their sounds but by their workflow. By taking features and functional concepts from these classic machines, Maschine enables us to rediscover the greatness of the early digital hardware age but with all the modern advantages that software provides. One of the things that lent such distinctive character to early sample-driven productions is that sampling drum machines required their samples to be recorded manually. There were sample CDs available, but these were minuscule compared to the enormous libraries we have
“Maschine enables us to rediscover the greatness of the early digital hardware age” access to now, so most samples were recorded rather than pre-produced. Today, people tend to gravitate towards the same core sounds – the best ones in any given library. Listen to much of the electronic music out there: the repetition of samples is readily apparent, and in many cases it’s easy to tell exactly which sample library has been used on a given track (or tracks).
So how can you avoid sounding like everybody else? Put yourself in a vintage mindset! Combine key classic drum machine samples with your own recorded percussion sounds, just as the early samplists used to. These can be recorded off vinyl or tape, lifted from MP3 or CDs, or, of course, entirely generated from scratch. Indeed, making your own samples not only avoids any risk of copyright infringement but also guarantees a distinctive and unique sound. Such sounds could be vocals, finger-clicks, saucepans, bottle tops – anything you like. You don’t even need a great microphone, as the samples don’t have to be beautifully recorded for our beat production purposes. Mobile phones, large ear-cup headphones plugged into a microphone jack socket, your laptop’s built-in mic – any of these will do the job.
> Step by step 1. Creating your own percussion sounds
Tutorial
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We’re using our Macbook Pro’s built-in mic, so first we plug in some headphones, select internal inputs and outputs, open a new group, hit Sample, choose Detect mode and set the Threshold to -14dB so that sampling will happen automatically when we make a loud enough noise (this level will vary depending on your mic sensitivity).
We engage the metronome, select a tempo of 122bpm, don our headphones, hit Record, then tap in a funky and syncopated beat over four bars. We auto-slice our recorded loop with Detect set to full sensitivity and Quantise set to 1/16. We then record in two finger clicks on each second and fourth beat.
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We start by recording a few finger clicks. It’s important to capture at least two, as they always sound better when you layer more than one. We assign these to a couple of drum pads and set the Trigger modes to ADR rather than One-Shot, enabling us to control how much of the natural room ambience is present.
Sampled vocal stabs can almost have the same impact as drums when building a classic-style electronic drum groove, so we plug in a microphone (phone/laptop mics aren’t great for capturing bass, and this vocal stab needs solid low end for maximum effect), record the word “bounce” and place it on the first beat of each bar. We tune it down five semitones for effect. (Audio: Keys, fingers, vox)
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> make beats with maschine > Step by step 2. Bring on the drums
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It’s time to introduce a classic drum machine vibe. We start with Maschine’s 909 kit and play in a straight four-to-the-floor kick pattern, some claps, and some snares on the fourth 16th-note of alternate bars. We then load another 909 and play some offbeat closed hi-hats and skippy rimshots. Using two 909 groups emulates the effect of sub-grouping different outputs on a hardware unit.
Next, we need to thin out our pattern and check for clashing hits. This is best done before any major processing and EQ, as if it works raw, it’ll certainly work when processed. We remove a few small hits here and there – in particular, a cowbell sound from our 808 preset pattern that doesn’t fit. It’s a good idea to mute different parts here to hear how individual groups work together.
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We load up an 808 kit and leave the initial preset pattern in place, as it fits nicely over our existing groove. This was sort of the late 80s equivalent of trying out sampled loops from a sample collection over your basic groove. This layering of recorded samples and preset patterns features on countless early dance classics.
Now to tune our percussion, which means getting the 909 kick, “bounce” sample and 808 congas playing nicely together. It’s important not to ruin the vibe, so we pick the most important parts – the kick and vocal. We shift the kick half a semitone up to fit the vocal pitch better, then we simply tune up the remaining clashing 808 conga until it fits.
Drum and percussion tuning One of the most neglected aspects of music production is the tuning of percussion, and one of the main reasons it’s so easy to overlook is that the effects of it can be very subtle, often manifesting themselves only at the mixdown stage. We’ve known producers who have struggled with a mixdown for hours – or even days – only for a skilled mix engineer to take a listen and immediately point out the obvious: that the kick drum is clashing with the bassline, or that the hi-hats and claps are interfering with the synths or vocals. And although tuning is easy to miss (even for seasoned professionals), it can have a profound effect on the overall mix – for example, even if your kick and bass aren’t clashing noticeably on their own, the cumulative effect of all those slight tuning mismatches can be significant. 66 / Computer Music special
So how do we go about tuning drums and percussion? Some drum synths (several of Maschine’s included) actually tell you the note name of the pitch being generated, making tuning easy to check, and there’s always the option of using a tuning plugin. But we find that drums – particularly with reverb and other additive processing applied – can throw out some tricky harmonics, so often the strict tuning of a drum sample isn’t actually the thing to focus on. And of course, sometimes the effect of one drum sound can be ruined by over-tweaking. Generally speaking, though, if you get the tuning right at the start and keep tweaking it as your go along, it’ll pay dividends as the track progresses. This is preferable also because it’s human nature that once we hear something enough times, it can sound
‘wrong’ to our ears when it’s changed, even if it sounds better to everybody else. In drum tuning terms, this means that while we might need to tune, say, a clave or conga to match our kick drum, if we hear it too many times at the wrong tuning, we could get so used to it that we don’t realise it needs tuning – the right tuning will actually sound less effective to us. If you do find that this has happened, you’ll need to grit your teeth and go with the properly tuned version, but don’t worry – we promise that after an hour you won’t remember what it sounded like before! It’s also worth noting that while one or two of the greatest house tracks of all time didn’t feature rigidly tuned drums, you’ll not find many classics with obviously out-of-tune percussion – the best practitioners of the art naturally tend to tune their drums.
make beats with maschine <
On a roll Few functions in music production are as revered as ‘note repeat’. Though primarily associated with the MPC range of sampling drum machines, the feature was originally implemented by Roger Linn for his Linn 9000 drum machine (the successor to the classic LinnDrum) and was included on every machine he built subsequently. It was designed as a way to add dynamic rolls to beats (as opposed to playing them at fixed velocity) with far greater timing accuracy than most live players could hope to achieve. The idea is simple: with note repeat engaged, pressing a pad will generate a string of note events on every ‘grid line’ of the current quantise setting (every 32nd-note, every 16th-note, every eighth-note and so on) – and, critically, these events will be at a velocity level determined by how much pressure is applied to
“Maschine facilitates up to four manaully assigned quantise value buttons” the pad at the time. With note repeat, dynamic and evolving rolls can be played so easily that they can even be performed live on stage with total confidence. Classic house tracks used these fills extensively, usually with claps or snares, but also with hats and even kick drums. There’s much more to note repeat than just drum rolls, though. As we’ve previously
mentioned, it can be very effective for live groove-building or even total live play – if you’re confident and dextrous enough. Maschine facilitates up to four manually assigned quantise value buttons, so you can, for example, jump between quarter-, eighth-, 16th- and 32nd-note values to enhance your rolls, or vary the quantise according to the part being played. You can even set triplet values. Maschine isn’t perfect, however: one downside to its note repeat function is that, rather inexplicably, its swing function is not applied to repeated notes. With swing a key part of so much electronic music, this is a baffling oversight that we hope to see rectified at some point. The only solution right now is to record rolls in and then add swing afterwards, but that’s far from ideal. Still, note repeat remains a glorious feature, so let’s take a closer look…
> Step by step 3. Using note repeat
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We start by calling up Maschine 2’s fantastic new Snare Drumsynth and tweaking the sound for a vintage drum machine vibe. Using 16th-note quantise, we play our main groove and jam away over the top, firing off little bursts of snare roll. Velocity variations are key, and leaving the first 16th-note of each beat free really adds funk.
The kick drum needs a little more excitement on each fourth bar, so we select the 16th-note setting and add four fast kicks at the end, starting from beat 4 of bar 4. The key – as is often the case with note repeat – is to vary the amount of pressure on the pad to alter the velocity. This imparts a nice groove to the otherwise rigid kick.
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Next, the vocal, and we use the 32nd-note quantise value to add a fast roll at the end of every fourth bar. Solo’d, the effect is quite pronounced, but with our other loops in the mix it provides a subtle feed into the next four-bar loop. We manually draw in the maximum velocity value for the first 32nd-note (on beat 4 of bar 4), as this makes the roll more effective.
While Maschine doesn’t allow live auditioning of Swing values when playing note repeats, it does allow it once they’re recorded as note events, so now we can try applying swing to our project. This can be modulated over the course of the track, or your might simply pick a value you like and stick with it. We find that an extreme value of 41% works a treat on our groove. (Audio: Full beat (pre-processing) 41% swing)
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> make beats with maschine
All part of the process Our overall approach so far has been to recreate the effect of using multiple drum machines and a sampler, so it’s important to stick with this theme as we get into the processing stage. Our selection of sound sets should sound different, just as a set of separate instruments would when routed individually into a mixer. One of the easiest ways to keep things sounding distinct is to use Maschine’s built-in vintage sampler emulation algorithms – it’s always worth trying different sampler modes for each sound. MPC60 engine mode is excellent for adding character and leaving space in the mix, but don’t use it for all your sounds or groups. Ideally, you should use a different mode for each of the main groups. Another effective ‘mix separator’ is the use of subtle chorus, reverb and saturation effects on individual groups, again so that just like a set of
“It’s always worth trying different sampler modes for each sound” hardware instruments, they each have their own distinct sound. Or you can try applying compression to each group. In the next walkthrough we’re going to look at some key selected processes, but in fact we’ve applied a fair amount of subtle processing both to individual sounds and – more importantly – to groups, so be sure to open up
the full project in the Tutorial Files folder and have a look at what we’ve added and where. Also, note that we’ve panned a number of our sounds. Most classic drum machines and samplers had panning facilities for individual drum sounds (indeed, many drum machines and sampled libraries of classic drum machines have some sounds panned by default). The usual panning rules apply: you generally want bass-heavy sounds reasonably central, with the kick absolutely central, and when sitting between your monitors, neither side should feel louder than the other over the course of a loop. Finally, you can consider using sidechaining, but we haven’t bothered here as we find that the effect of the various parts triggering the group and master compressors generates its own ducking effect, particularly with a Maximizer applied last in the master effects chain.
> Step by step 4. Processing beats
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Drum sounds almost always benefit from some compression, and Maschine 2 comes with an excellent emulation of the classic SSL buss compressor. We use slow Attack and fast Release times on the majority of our samples and groups to really get them punching through. In each case we lower the Threshold until just before the punchiness becomes clicking or, with groups, muddiness.
We use EQ to add a touch of brightness to our claps, hi-hats, 808 and rattle. A boost at around 11-12kHz does the trick, but we also roll off the highs from 20kHz so as to avoid harshness and keep some space. Some low roll-off on all channels also helps to make space – we even roll off the kick a little at around 20Hz.
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Additive effects next, and one of our favourite Maschine tools here is Chorus on any unnaturally dry sounds, such as our hi-hats, finger clicks and vocal stabs. Reverb follows on a few sounds (finger clicks, claps and snares), and in some cases we add a little gating to leave space for the next sound. Finally, lo-fi and saturator effects add character and soften the brightening effect of additive plugs.
We turn to filtering last, and we want to add high- and low-pass filtering to many of the samples, as the combination of subtle resonance around the cutoff points and sharper topping and tailing will really help them pop out of the mix – even more than we could achieve with EQ. Our 808 part in particular benefits from this. And that’s our beat! (Audio: Full beat.wav)
make beats with maschine <
Resampling Veteran electronic producers love to talk about why vintage samplers sounded so great. There’s an almost mythical quality to them – they boasted better timing, had unmatched grooves, were unfailingly loyal and would never leave you for a younger, more attractive producer. But beyond all this hero-worship, it’s easy to overlook one of the most obvious advantages of vintage samplers: they were used to sample sounds from the outside world, rather than just playing back prefab sounds. There are a couple of contributing factors to this vintage sound, and thus a couple of techniques you can use to replicate it. The more technical one relies on the fact that early samplers not only operated at lower sample rates and bit depths, but also had very limited sampling time. One of the tricks hip-hop producers would use to increase the available
“It’s not just about the virtual recreation of the original hardware sound” sampling time would be to record their samples – which were almost invariably lifted from 33rpm vinyl records – at 45rpm. The higher speed meant that more of the music could be sampled into less sample memory. It could then be slowed back down in the sampler, which, at those lower sample rates and bit depths, generated a characteristic colouration.
You can recreate this by making and processing a drum loop, bouncing it to audio, playing it back in a sampler at high speed (play it seven semitones higher than the root note to replicate the speeding up of 33rpm to 45rpm), recording that at a lower sample rate and bit depth, then mapping the resulting loop to C4, playing it back the same number of semitones down. Bear in mind, though, that vintage loops are lifted from completed and processed tracks, and when you slice and resequence them you hear the sounds of ambience being cut short, snare reverb tails overlapping hi-hats and so on. So it’s not just about the virtual recreation of the original hardware sound – those chopped loops are a big part of the overall effect. Sometimes, though, it’s just about treating your loop like – well, a loop. And that brings us to our second technique…
> Step by step 5. Resampling, slicing and rearranging loops
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First we start a new project and load the audio file from the previous walkthrough: Full beat.wav. We then use the auto-slicing function set to eighth-notes, remembering to set the tempo to 122bpm, just like the original. We then apply this slicing and set a loop length of 4 bars so that our part is sliced but playing back exactly the same as our original. We also set the sampler mode to MPC60.
With Note Repeat engaged, we play the main loop and add stuttering hits over the top of it, creating more fills and energy and – thanks to the looser slices (those containing more than one hit, layered hits and reverb harmonics) – a fuller, richer overall quality. With these parts recorded, we dial in some shuffle (about 40%) and tweak the envelope for a more gated and subtly stuttering feel.
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We audition the slices to ascertain which ones have good, clear attacks. We’re also on the lookout for those that feature parts of other beats from the original loops, as these will give an interesting effect to the pattern when played on top of the main loop. One-shot trigger mode should also be switched to ADR (or ADSR) for more ‘gated’, punchier playback.
Finally, we open the sample editor and select the Zone tab – from here, we can tweak individual slices. We apply a very subtle amount of panning to the repeated vocal stab and manually shorten the playback length until it’s a little clearer without a noticeable gap. Now we have a much more dynamic and energetic backbeat. (Audio: Re-sliced loop.wav)
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Make beats with MPC Software Akai’s MPC hardware has been shaping beats for a quarter of a century, and now its Software version promises to do the same for years to come. Welcome to the new old school Way back in 1988, Akai released the MPC60. Modest by today’s audio standards, it offered 12-bit sampling at 40KHz, but its interface and design were to transform beat-making forever, introducing the world to the concept of a 4x4 grid of drum pads and sample-based grooveboxes. Designed by music tech legend Roger Linn after the folding of his own company, the MPC60 not only ushered in an entirely new era in hip-hop but also created the template for many of today’s self-contained production platforms. NI’s Maschine, for example, would simply not have come into existence without it. Fast forward 26 years and Akai are still very much in the game, with a new generation of 70 / Computer Music special
MPCs. Now a range of software/hardware hybrids, they’re all based on the same core setup of 16 assignable pads, automatic quantisation, note repeat and swing quantise features as their forebears. And it really works – at least half of all classic hip-hop records owe their chopped, syncopated grooves to this most elegant and simple of interfaces. The design makes it very hard not to be funky, while at the same time encouraging spontaneous creation, humanised interaction and – crucially – groove. If it’s so easy to use, then, why bother putting together a tutorial on it? Quite simply, because in these days of all-singing, all-dancing DAWs, it can sometimes be hard to take a creative step back to a simpler time without ending up
sounding too retro. And with the rise of deep house, the resurgence of garage and other such modern twists on the dance styles of yesteryear, it can be tricky to work out how best to incorporate and combine these methods with our modern DAW environment. It’s well worth getting to the heart of what makes the MPC so great and why the latest versions of it offer so much more than just that classic swing algorithm, now replicated in so many DAWs. In these walkthroughs, in which we’re assuming a certain level of familiarity with the operation of the MPC, we’ll be looking at a variety of creative approaches that will hopefully inspire you to use yours in new and different ways.
make beats with mpc software <
MPC Software as a creative tool If you’re using MPC Studio or MPC Renaissance, you have the option of running multiple tracks and processing up to 128 channels (far more than you’re likely to need for the kind of genres you’ll be making with an MPC!) and so can effectively create, arrange and process your entire project within the MPC software. So the obvious question is: why would you ever want to do anything different? One of the main advantages to producing loops and ideas in your MPC, then mixing and finalising them in a DAW, is that you separate two important processes: idea creation and track completion. As long as you have the option of endlessly tweaking an idea, the urge will be there to do so – and in our experience, endless tweaking is invariably to the detriment of the core idea. So creating your beats and grooves in MPC Software and then mixing and arranging
“Be open to different methods – try them and figure out which best suit you” them in your DAW as bounced loops helps you focus on the pure grooves and treat the MPC as what it is – a musical instrument and an inspirational creative tool. Another good reason for using your MPC as a plugin, rather than making your entire track with it, is that dealing with longer live recordings (vocals, guitar parts, etc) is far easier when
you’re using the more advanced audio editing facilities of a DAW. MPC Elements users have no such decisions to make, however, as the software only supports one channel, so in order to use multiple pad banks, as well as VST plugins across multiple groups and on the main output, you have to run multiple instances of it as plugins in your DAW. Fortunately, you can mute and solo multiple instances within a project using buttons on the hardware, which is an immense help when it comes to keeping track of things. Remember, there’s no right or wrong way to do anything in music production, but there are more or less productive and creative ways to work, and these will vary depending on your style and process. Just be open to different methods – try them and figure out which best suit you. Right, let’s get started!
> Step by step 1. Building a groove
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The first step is to launch your DAW (we’re using Ableton Live, but any will do), create nine or ten channels and add an instance of MPC Elements to each. Layering percussion tracks is addictive with any MPC, but if you find yourself using more than nine or ten individual percussive parts in a single loop, you’re almost certainly overdoing it.
Add a four-to-the-floor kick next, on another channel and using a different kit (using just one kit for an entire groove often causes it to sound like a ‘preset’ pattern). Select Kick 9 from Elements of House/All Kicks and play the kicks in live with the default autoquantise and Full Level engaged (to ensure that the velocities are all at 127). Playing rather than drawing keeps the vibe.
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With an MPC it can be more interesting to start with a strong snare or percussion pattern rather than a kick. Load the Bloody House Kit (found in the Elements of House sound bank), leave the quantise set to the default 16th-note 50% Swing, engage Record on the MPC hardware, hit Play in Live and tap out the part shown above on Snare 6 and FX 30. We’ve called ours Crash Perks. (Audio: Crash_perks)
MPCs are justly famed for their awesome groove quantise, but there’s more to making a funky groove than applying identical swing to all elements; at faster tempos and with busier patterns, this will make for a cool but noticeably unnatural vibe. For a more natural feel, use a combination of swing values, no swing or even no autoquantisation at all. Just remember that some parts (4/4 kicks, for example) generally need to be bang on the beat.
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> make beats with mpc software
The sound of the MPC In this tutorial we’re dealing with the patterns and general vibe that the MPC encourages, but one of the defining characteristics of old gear is the sound imparted by the hardware itself, which can have a noticeable impact on the resulting groove. If all your sounds are big, bright and brash, much of the vintage grit will be lost. It’s a bit like over-limiting a drum loop: harsher and louder sounds tend to overload the ear (or mixer channel!), which can squash the life out of the groove. These days we tend to differentiate between the sound of ‘digital’ and the sound of ‘analogue’, but in fact, vintage digital equipment should also be included in the latter category. In the case of vintage samplers, this quality is a function of the type of sampling chip and its sample rate, the
digital-to-analogue converters and the physical outputs being used. So, if you’re keen to emulate not just the style but also the sonic character of those original MPC grooves (which subtly affects the overall feel), you need to appreciate what the original hardware did to the sound. The first thing to do is note the sample rate of the hardware you want to emulate. The original MPC60, for example, featured 16-bit converters but only 12-bit sample storage and playback at 40kHz, so for accurate emulation you’ll need to use a plugin to reduce the bit depth and sample rate. You could use the built-in MPC Re-Sampler effect, but certain third-party plugins will be more authentic (D16’s Decimort is one of the best out there and comes complete with convincing
emulations of the MPC60 and that other iconic hip-hop sampler, the E-MU SP1200). The later ‘classic’ MPC models (the MPC3000 and MPC2000) both operated at 16-bit 44.1kHz (CD quality), so there’s no downsampling required for those. The other thing you need to consider is that old analogue circuits of any type tend to be slightly less ‘shiny’ than their modern counterparts; a high-cut roll-off around 12-14kHz will help to recreate this effect, as will a tiny amount of analogue saturation. It’s worth noting that none of these techniques will absolutely nail the sound of the original hardware – to achieve that you’ll need to upgrade to the full MPC Renaissance, which offers true modeling of the original hardware sound.
> Step by step 1. Building a groove (continued)
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OK, here comes the funk! Load All Kicks into a new plugin, engage Record and fill in the gaps between the 4/4 kicks using another, lighter kick (Kick 4). It might take a few goes, so each time you run through it and aren’t happy with the result, simply hit Undo. Try leaving these kicks on straight 16ths too. (Audio: Kicks_n_crash)
Time for a bit of natural rhythm and pace – the MPC’s famed Note Repeat is just the ticket here. Start by finding a quality bank of percussion sounds (ideally two to four good ones). Our weapon of choice is 2stepRiddim from Elements of UK Dance, as we’re looking for elements that hang together and sound like a cohesive loop.
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Working in a rough bassline can help to shape a drum groove – and if you decide to keep it you can switch it over to a synth plugin or export the pattern as a MIDI file. Call up AnalogueDigitalBass1.wav from Elements of UK Dance and engage 16 Level, enabling pitched play of the sample. Add some swing (around 59-61 is ideal) and play in a simple riff. (Audio: Add_bass)
Engage Note Repeat, add a little swing (1-2% away from the bass part’s swing) and record in some live play using your chosen pads/ drums. Use one hit as the main focus (playing on about half of the 16th-notes) and alternate sporadically with the other chosen pads, creating skip and groove. Do this until you have a groove you like. (Audio: Garage_grooves)
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Note Repeat works particularly well on hi-hats too, so on a new channel, load another Bloody House Kit and use Hi Hat 9 to create a fast 16th-note pattern. When using multiple pads you naturally lift, tap and re-trigger, generating gaps and different velocities, so when playing just one pad/drum be sure to get a similar groove by tapping and holding the pad rhythmically. (Audio: Hatz)
All that’s missing now are some simple offbeat hi-hats and a backbeat snare (we use Elements of UK Dance/All Hats/Hat 7 and Elements of UK Dance/All Snares/Snare 21). You could draw these in, but, as with the 4/4 kicks, tapping them manually keeps the vibe and allows more natural variation in velocity (don’t engage Full Level).
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Try muting elements as you go along – the old adage, “it’s not what you put in but what you leave out” always applies. A part might sound great on its own, but is it helping the groove as a whole? Be ruthless: if something sounds good on its own but isn’t enhancing the overall groove, save it as a new sequence for future reference, then delete it from your current project.
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Time to review the sequence in order to find parts that need manual tweaking. This can be done using your hardware’s Delete function, but it’s the one thing we usually find easier using the onscreen editor. Go through and remove notes as needed (our fast Rattle Perks, for example) to simplify the pattern and let the groove breathe. (Audio: Last perks)
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> make beats with mpc software
Processing and editing The original MPCs offered multiple audio outputs, so many original MPC tracks involved processing of individual pads/sounds – although by no means all of them. Where those early MPC producers worked with recognisable sampled loops from classic records, individual processing would often have taken away from the desired effect, so such sounds would all be sent to a mixer through a single output and processed as one. How does this translate to the modern hardware/software situation? One thing we’ve noticed is that whereas the original MPCs were largely playing back manually recorded samples, in these days of endless sample libraries, the temptation to use supplied presets or pre-made samples can be all too strong, and these sounds often have a degree of homogenisation – they’re bright, they’re normalised and they’ve been processed
“Vocal snippets pitched down are great for adding sonic and musical interest” to make them sound upfront and appealing to the browsing producer. Much of the time this is a good thing, but sometimes it means that loops made with them lack the character you get by recording your own samples. One way to mitigate the homogenisation effect is to vary the sources of your samples (as we have by using different banks). You can also
try recording your own samples: vocal snippets pitched down are great for adding sonic and musical interest, as are manually recorded handclaps and the sounds of real-world objects like keys or cans being shaken or tapped. Another way create the space and separation so crucial to good grooves is to apply small amounts of processing to individual pads and channels. This should be done to a few elements that need to stand apart from the overall groove. MPC Studio and Renaissance owners have the luxury of doing this with external plugins across multiple channels within the standalone software, while MPC Elements users can only apply this to one channel per plugin instance, or each pad in standalone mode. Still, there’s a surprising amount of mileage to be had just using some simple layering of sounds, parallel processing and Akai’s own built-in effects.
> Step by step 2. Final touches
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We want to make our bass really stand out, so we create an identical copy, cut the low frequencies and add some chorus. We then make two identical copies of this layer, which makes for a very different effect than simply turning the volume up. Some samples will phase with this technique and others won’t, but it’s always interesting to try. MPC Software often generates interesting results this way.
It’s tempting to edit samples as you go along, but when working with an MPC we always do this after recording our basic pattern. The MPC is all about fast and spontaneous creation – that’s when it really shines and is what sets it apart. Every time you stop to mess with a sound, you put a barrier between yourself and the creative momentum, so concentrate first on getting the groove down and only then worry about tweaking and processing sounds.
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Create one more bass layer and add Akai’s Small Reverb plugin set to 100% Wet. Tweak the new layer to taste to generate a parallel processed layer that can be brought in and out of the arrangement. Do the same for the snare, giving it more character and therefore more separation within the overall loop. (Audio: Layered_processed_bass, Layered_processed_snare)
The groove complete, save the entire project and make any further edits that might be required. With all the parts ready to go, bounce the individual loops, making them available as audio parts in your DAW. Likewise, when working with the standalone version, bounce the individual channels and import them into your DAW – or, of course, simply go ahead and sequence them within the MPC software. (Audio: Full_groove_with_crash, Full_groove_w_out_crash)
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Build a sample kit with
We show you how to build and edit a monster kit with Vengeance’s awesome drum sampler plugin
Real drums and drum synthesis are both great for providing a core palette of sounds with which to power your beats, but for maximum manipulation and cutting-edge sonics, you need a sampler. Sampling enables you to really take things to the next level, tailoring your tones by editing, layering, pitching and processing them in ways that other techniques simply can’t. While there are numerous powerful software drum samplers on the market, Vengeance’s VPS (Vengeance Producer Suite) Phalanx is without doubt one of the very best for club, electronic 76 / Computer Music special
and urban beats, offering not only an amazing set of sample manipulation tools but also a superb library of core sounds ready for use ‘as is’ but amenable to serious reshaping. Obviously, a lot of what we do in this tutorial will be very specific to Phalanx itself, but even if you’re not an owner of said instrument, some of the core concepts presented here will be transferable to any well-equipped sampler – simply substitute the Phalanx library sounds for regular drum machine samples. Having said that, there is a demo version of Phalanx, which we’d urge you to download.
We’ll kick off with a look at how Phalanx works and its two top-level operating modes: Multitrack and DrumKit. Then we’ll show you how to navigate its sample pads and various visual ‘devices’, including the envelopes and their integrated waveform display. Two key aspects of building any sampled drum kit are editing and processing, so we’ll then check out the various adjustable parameters and effects that Phalanx has to offer. Finally, we’ll inject some movement using Phalanx’s many controllable effects and its modulation matrix.
build a sample kit with phalanx <
Architecture and workflow When it comes to raw sampling power, there are plenty of samplers available that can run rings around Phalanx – but that doesn’t concern us here. Whatever its shortcomings in other areas, Phalanx is of particular interest for us in this Special because its architecture and workflow are designed specifically for working with and processing beats. Phalanx is built around 16 sample pads with hardwired channel parameters and effects. Each pad can host two samples, A and B, which are blended using a crossfader. Each sample gets its own set of channel parameters, including highand low-pass filters, Lo-fi and Spike effects, and Retrigger. There are also looping controls for each sample, and the unusual Scratch feature, which lets you scrub forwards and backwards through the sample like a hip-hop DJ using an old-school turntable.
> Step by step
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“Phalanx is built around 16 sample pads with hardwired channel parameters” Phalanx can be operated in two modes, Multitrack and DrumKit; for the most part, we’re going to be using the latter. Multitrack is a typical multitimbral setup, whereby each pad has a central root note and lets you trigger its samples pitched up and down the keyboard. Each of Phalanx’s 16 sample pads can be assigned its own MIDI channel, or share a MIDI
channel with any number of other pads. So, in theory you could create a 16-layer instrument with full keyspan, all playable on one MIDI channel; or a 16-part multitimbral patch, with every one of its 16 sounds on a separate MIDI channel; or a combination of both. DrumKit mode, on the other hand, assigns individual samples to individual notes in your more typical drum machine fashion. You can assign all sounds to one MIDI channel or each sound to its own. Finally, you can use both modes at the same time – but watch out for overlapping MIDI channels. The Phalanx sound library includes banks of single sounds and pre-mapped patches, and a simple drag-and-drop system for loading them into the instrument. There are also pad presets which bundle sample and processing data together under one patch.
1. Multitrack and DrumKit modes
To get started with Phalanx, load up a couple of presets. In the green Factory Banks folder you’ll find a range of Phalanxbank patches categorised Bank or DrumKit. Load a Bank preset and you’ll see that it places each sample pad on its own MIDI channel. Load a DrumKit preset and each pad gets its own note but all on the same MIDI channel. You can mix and match modes within an overall preset.
Phalanx includes a few GUI customisation options, including resizing the whole window. The most important one, though, is the Full/Slim option. In Slim mode, all 16 pads fit in the plugin window and are unfolded individually for editing. You can expand the Pad Slots to reveal the parameter customisation panel at the bottom, and colourcode Pad Slots for added clarity.
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To start from scratch, choose the Initialise Plugin option from the Memory button. Click the MIDI tab and, on the left-hand side, select the Kit button at the top of the list to switch all pads to DrumKit mode. Switch all the output assignment tabs to Output 1. Now start building by dragging samples onto the pads.
Every sample pad has its own Amp, Filter, Pitch and additional Mod Envelope. They’re very powerful indeed, with straight line and curved options between breakpoints, a waveform display that updates to reflect the effect that the envelope is having on the sound, and a real-time playback tracer.
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> build a sample kit with phalanx > Step by step 2. Effects and processing
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The ability to mix pairs of samples on each pad is one of Phalanx’s key features. Here we’re dragging in a woodblock sound to add click to a kick drum. You can audition each raw sample using the A and B buttons, and set the blend with the crossfader. You can also tweak each sample’s start point, Gain and Pitch – we’ve adjusted the latter two on the woodblock to make it work with the kick.
Let’s use the sample pad parameters to mess with the clap sound. First we add a touch of LoFi, then we curtail the highs with the lowpass filter. Next, we reduce low frequency boxiness with the high-pass filter; and finally, we adjust the very handy Spike setting to add punch to the attack stage. (Audio: Step 3)
Phalanx features individual looping for each A and B sample. For the snare we leave the main snare body sample as it is, but set up looping for the B sample. This creates a pitched effect as we adjust the very tight loop points, enabling us to set the pitch to suit. We then adjust the A/B balance with the crossfader. (Audio: Step 5)
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Phalanx’s sample pad waveform display incorporates a number of tiny parameter settings, including both Phase and Sample Reverse. Most useful, though, is the Sample Delay, which allows you to adjust how the two samples align with each other. Here we’ve combined a clap with a snare sound and are delaying the snare to fatten up the overall hit. (Audio: Step 2)
Now let’s work on the insert effects for the kick drum and clap. We start by copying them over to two empty slots. For the clap, we load the effects chain preset Lofi Destructor and tweak the EQ and Bitcrusher settings. For the kick, we apply distortion and multiband distortion, then use the Room Simulator and Impulse effect to add tight space.
Chorder is a four-part note multiplier with Note Offset, Pan, Level and Detune controls. We load a basic pitched blip sound and set it to Multitrack mode on a separate MIDI channel so that we can play it across the full keyspan. With notes offset, a touch of detune and a little reverb, we’ve got a great chordal house stab. (Audio: Step 6)
build a sample kit with phalanx < > Step by step 3. Doing it live
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To take our beats to the next level, we can apply some real-time control. Phalanx includes a modulation matrix for every sample pad. Modulation sources include various MIDI controllers, three GUI Modifier knobs and 63 DAW automation slots. We’ll be making use of several of these options.
Scratcher is an interesting effect that lets you scrub backwards and forwards through the sample as if you were using a turntable. Rather excellently, pitchbend is hardwired to control the position of the playhead, but it also has its own envelope. We combine both for some classic kick drum ‘scratching’.
Let’s route a GUI Modifier knob to control the ride cymbal. The ride already has a loop point set, so any real-time control will continue to sound as long as we hold the note down. Our target parameter is the Pitch Modifier for sample A; we set a positive amount so that the pitch rises with the control.
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At the bottom of every sample pad slot is the Retrigger setting. This simply sets a time at which, if you’re still holding the note, the sample will retrigger – a time-based loop control, basically. To give it a performance angle we connect the Time setting to our keyboard mod wheel. We then use it with our kick drum. (Audio: Step 2)
Next up, the Trancegate, the Gate Time of which we assign to the mod wheel. This doesn’t do much for short sounds like our snare, but if we also connect the Retrigger speed to the mod wheel, we get an excellent tempo-synced effect – as the Retrigger time shortens, the pitch increases.
Finally, let’s have some fun with an LFO. Using our blippy house sound, we first set LFO 1 to the saw shape and to retrigger on all notes. It’s synced to quarter-notes with a small positive offset. In the modulation matrix, we set the source to LFO 1 and the target to Pitch Modifier A. For hands-on control, we also connect the mod wheel to the LFO 1 offset. Finally, we set both amounts to -100.
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gear guide
There’s a lot of software out there dedicated to generating beats, but which is the best? Our round-up of drum machines and ROMplers is packed with possibilities Since the launch of , we’ve scrutinised dozens of virtual drum machines. A few have elicited yawns, while others have become standard or coveted tools for desktop producers. Though every developer has their own ideas about how a drum machine should work, they fall into two basic categories: synthesis-based and samplebased. The former traces its evolutionary roots back to early analogue drum machines; while they seemed somewhat limited at the time, many of those machines – such as the Roland TR-808 and 909 – are now highly prized and fetch hundreds or even thousands of pounds in second-hand markets. 80 / Computer Music special
Modern variants of the drum synthesiser provide a veritable smorgasbord of timbral control, allowing you to craft complex drum sounds from scratch – indeed, we’ve devoted a lengthy tutorial to that very subject elsewhere in this magazine. Old-timers will remember the sense of astonishment that accompanied the first sample-based drum machines, which were produced by Linn, Oberheim and Sequential Circuits. Those machines used (8-bit) samples of real drums and allowed users to create and save patterns that sounded, well, reasonably convincing – at least when compared to their analogue counterparts.
Today’s sample-based software drum machine is the logical next step on from those old grooveboxes, adding features like velocity sensitivity, sample import and multisampled, layered sounds in order to deliver astonishingly realistic results. And like their hardware forebears, many software drum machines include built-in sequencers that are intended to make the process of programming beats as easy and intuitive as possible. Over the next seven pages, we’ll give you the rundown on the finest drum machines the software industry has to offer. No matter what sort of music you make, you’ll find something here to fit your particular groove.
cm gear guide <
Audio Damage
Tattoo $59 Format PC/Mac (VST/AU) Web www.audiodamage.com
Need a classic-style virtual analogue beatbox? Audio Damage have just the thing. It’s called Tattoo and it’s a vintage voltage dream machine with no less than a dozen independent drum synthesisers powered by a grid-style sequencer. Yes, you read that right. Instead of relying on a single voicing algorithm to produce all or most of its sounds, Tattoo gives you 12 drum synths, each with its own set of parameters. Sure, the three different tom synths have the same functions, but each one is entirely independent and tied to that particular drum. However, most are unique to a specific drum voice. For example, the kick drum offers Tune, Saturation, Noise Freq, Pitch Mod, Click Level and a choice of two
waveforms, along with graphical pitch and amplitude envelopes. On the other hand, the Snare 8 synth provides Tune, Noise Color, Noise Level, and Noise Decay knobs, while Snare 9 gives you Tune, Noise Color, Noise Level and Noise and Tone amplitude envelopes to play with. Some drums offer only a couple of parameters – the clap, for example, sports only Tone and Reverb (we’d really like to see a spread or delay function added). No matter, though – as the preset kits suggest, there are more than enough parameters onboard to create a nearly infinite variety of sounds, all of which can be rolled into patterns using the aforementioned sequencer. This stunning pattern machine provides all manner of randomisation, along with velocity, pan and level control, host sync and more.
Image-Line
Drumaxx $99 Format PC/Mac (VST/AU) Web www.image-line.com
Most drum synths are designed to create decidedly artificial sounds using familiar subtractive synthesis methods, evoking the synthetic sounds of classic analogue machines like the Roland CR-78 and TR-909. When it comes to emulating realistic tubs, sampling is the usual go-to technology, but there is another, less-explored option: physical modeling. This is a synthesis method by which the behaviour of physical objects is recreated mathematically, and one that we’ve covered in detail elsewhere in this issue. Drumaxx offers an intuitive approach to modeled drums. Its interface is divided into three primary sections, with the top section given over to the pads and patch browser, the bottom section holding the sequencer, and the modeling in the middle. There,
you’ll find typical modeling functions like an exciter (mallet) and resonator (membrane), each described sensibly, which helps with navigating potentially alien functions. For example, the membrane section provides adjustments for size, tension and material, along with familiar tweaks like cutoff frequency and phase. These parameters are available per drum, and there are 16 drum slots available for building kits. The aforementioned pattern sequencer provides a swing function that syncs to the host, but you can, of course, trigger Drumaxx’s sounds from your MIDI controller or DAW. Your kit can be further finessed with EQ and built-in limiting, and there’s a mini-modulation matrix with which you can assign incoming velocity to any four of the 28 available target parameters. All in all, Drumaxx offers a goodsounding alternative to subtractive or sample-based drum machines. Computer Music special / 81
> cm gear guide
gear guide Audiorealism
ADM €95
Format PC/Mac (VST/AU) Web www.audiorealism.se
808, 909, 606… Nine numbers that suggest pulsing patterns of raw energy. These classic Roland beatboxes formed the backbone of countless musical genres. With ADM, Audiorealism have given us not one but three recreations of the most sought-after of Roland’s beat machines and wrapped them up in a beautifully designed interface. With 11 slots, 25 drum models and four PCM samples, ADM offers the ability to mix and match different x0x drums to create hybrids – for example, you might have a kick from a TR-606 paired with the snare from a 909. There are a number of tweakable parameters akin to those on the original machines – Decay on toms, kick, cymbals and hats, Snappy on
snares. Tuning is provided for bass drums, snares, toms and congas, cowbell and cymbals, and bass drums and snares get a tone control as well. Though this may seem like a small number of parameters with which to play, it is true to the originals and gives you everything you need to forge some very recognisable sounds. You can write and play patterns using the sequencer, or trigger each sound via MIDI. Patterns can be triggered over MIDI, too. ADM can be synchronised to the host or internally, and Shuffle and Flam options are provided to help get you into the groove. There’s a nifty Pattern Controlled FX section for automating various parameters, including the built-in filter, and a Mangle effect adds considerable dirt. The sound is utterly authentic and totally inspiring.
D16 Group
Drumazon €99 Format PC/Mac (VST/AU) Web www.d16.pl
D16’s adherence to the design of the vaunted Roland TR-909 drum machine borders on fanaticism with Drumazon – and with secondhand 909s trading for around two grand, that’s no bad thing. Don’t get us wrong, though – D16 haven’t simply photocopied the legendary original here. They’ve added some of their own special touches to give Drumazon a bit more flexibility than its hardware predecessor – things like preset management, host sync and MIDI learn – but if you want a plugin that captures the experience of using the real deal, you’d be hard pressed to find better than this. This is particularly true of the influential 909 pattern sequencer, recreated here almost note for note. It’ll play from its own internal clock, too, if you want it to. Accent, Flam and Shuffle are all here, and as with the
original, programming patterns is easy and intuitive. It’ll even send MIDI out, enabling you to sequence other sound sources from it within your DAW. Of course, the sequencer wouldn’t matter one bit if the sounds themselves weren’t any good, and thankfully, they are. Drumazon’s authenticity approaches the uncanny – it could fool even the most stubborn of retro fetishists. The analogue kick has the special poke-you-in-thesternum oomph that you know and love, while the synthesised snares sizzle and the sample-based metals ring out in all of their faux 6-bit glory. No producer of electronic or dance music should be without a 909 in their instrumental arsenal (the kick drum is still as essential to house, hip-hop and other styles as it’s ever been), and Drumazon is probably the one to put at the top of your shopping list. An outstanding imitation.
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cm gear guide <
D16 Group
Nepheton €99 Format PC/Mac (VST/AU) Web www.d16.pl
Here we go again! Developers D16 make the list once more with Nepheton, and it takes only a few minutes with the plugin to hear why. As ever, the developers’ reverence for all things Roland is unflappable, and this time around they’re bowing their heads to the power and glory of the venerated TR-808 Rhythm Composer. This classic drum machine is renowned among producers in the know for its booming, bombastic bass drum and whip-crack snare, not to mention the omnipresent tin-lid clank of its cowbell. All these sounds and more have been lovingly preserved in Nepheton. Some 17 drum sounds are spread across the board, each with a set of basic parameters –
Decay for all but the maracas and handclap; Tone for bass, snare, clap, hats, cymbal and maracas; Tune for congas, toms, claves, rim shot and cowbell. The bass drum and ‘Laser Gun’ get an additional Sweep function, while snares, toms and Laser Gun all get the famous Snappy knob. The closed hi-hat, meanwhile, gets a high-pass filter. As with all the other D16 offerings mentioned in this roundup, you can trigger the sounds via MIDI or sync the internal sequencer up to the host DAW and program them that way. As with the real thing, whipping up patterns is easy and fun, and you can throw in accents, flams, shuffle and even an intro and fills. Whether you’re a budding Beastie Boy or a second-gen Sister of Mercy, Nepheton is an ideal companion for beats.
FXpansion
BFD3 £99 or £299 Format PC/Mac (VST/AU/RTAS/
AAX) Web www.fxpansion.com
FXpansion have been in the plugin game for pretty much as long as there’s been a game to play. Over the years they’ve released a number of drum machines; some of these have been based on synthesis, others on sampling. BFD3 falls into the latter category and is intended as a hyper-realistic ‘acoustic drum studio’ offering a selection of professionally recorded kits sampled in high-end studio spaces. Be aware, though, that all of that audio eats up a whopping 50GB of disc space – quite a hefty download. Thankfully, there’s also a hard-format purchase option for those with slow connections or data caps. If you want to bring your own samples in, that’s a go, too – you can create your own stereo
multisampled kits with velocity layers for a sound all your own – but it has to be said that with the wealth of quality material here, you may never need to. Each drum can be finely tuned to perfection: pitch, velocity response, ambience, and damping are only some of the many tweaks on offer, and a wide variety of effects is available to sweeten your sounds, including filtering, distortion, delay, dynamics and EQ. BFD3 is not intended as a drum machine, but is more of a specialised sample-playback workstation with a focus firmly on acoustic drums. Nevertheless, there are many thousands of included MIDI grooves to drag into your DAW. BFD3 achieves its aim: it can sound utterly real, but there’s enough flexibility to create a unique sonic signature, too. Expansive but not particularly expensive, BFD3 is hard to beat for Computer Music special / 83
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gear guide D16 Group
Nithonat €99 Format PC/Mac (VST/AU) Web www.d16.pl
Released in 1981 as a companion for the similarly styled TB-303, Roland’s TR-606 drum machine was a cheap alternative to the big guns of its day. Nitonhat is the virtual version created by Roland revivalists D16 Group. Like the original, Nitonhat builds its drum sounds on analogue subtractive synthesis, resulting in a sound not dissimilar to the TR-808, but with its own distinct character. However, although Nithonat fully and admirably recreates the sounds of the original, the developers have added a wealth of handy new features not found on the 606. Thankfully, these include the ability to adjust the sounds themselves – the TR-606 only provided volume control over the
septet of synthesised drum sounds, while Nithonat adds Pitch, Tune and Attack to the bass drum, Tune, Tone and Snappy to the snare, Tune and Decay to the toms, Tone and Decay to the cymbal, and Decay to the hi-hats. This flexibility allows it to edge closer to TR-808 or 909 territory, thus providing a bit more bang for your buck. As ever, the pattern sequencer is a blast to program and play, with shuffle and accent functions included, along with a random pertrack pattern generator that’s genuinely useful. Multiple outputs, MIDI CC assignment and MIDI learn, host sync and a preset browser push Nithonat’s 606 into the modern era. The sound has everything you’d want from an x0x box, even if the voice count is rather limited, and the overall vibe is wonderfully vintage.
LinPlug
RMV €139 Format PC/Mac (VST/AU) Web www.linplug.com
LinPlug have been pumping out fantastic synthesisers, samplers and percussion synths for ages. With RMV, they’ve mined the best of their previous successes to produce a drum workstation combining the best features of synthesis, sampling and looping in one comprehensive product. RMV offers 48 polyphonic ‘pads’, each of which can call upon LinPlug’s specialised drum synth or sampler modules. You can load your own loops and samples, although LinPlug have included a treasure trove of prefab loops, samples and kits suitable for a wide variety of musical styles. If you’ve used our own CM-505, you’ll have an idea of what’s in store in the synthesis department. There are two kick modules, two snares, open and closed hi-hat modules, a tom tom synth, two
cymbal synths, a general purpose drum synth module and a nifty bare-bones FM module. Synthesis veterans will appreciate the latter as an ideal tool for creating percussive timbres. Sampling comes in the shape of a complex Sampler module facilitating up to 30 layered samples with all the essential parameters: sample start and end, reverse, delay, volume, pitch envelope and more. Meanwhile, loops can be sliced, diced and played back using six independent Audio Loop Modules. Pads and loop slices can be subjected to three LFOs, distortion, bit reduction, EQ and filtering, as well as various insert effects. Parameter modulation can be assigned in a 12x12 modulation matrix, and the Varizer adds a touch of humanising should you want it. All in all, RMV is a real percussion powerhouse – be sure to check it out.
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iZotope
BreakTweaker £165 Format PC/Mac (VST/AU/RTAS/
AAX) Web www.izotope.com www.timespace.com
This one breaks (!) from the pack in that it seeks neither to emulate or imitate, but rather to thoroughly reinvent how you view and use percussion in your tracks. Yes, it has many of the same elements we see in our other contenders – there’s a built-in pattern sequencer and plenty of included content – but the focus here is on cuttingedge EDM beats and glitches. iZotope have collaborated with producer extraordinaire BT to capture the magic of his lauded ‘micro-edit’ techniques, which are combined with sample playback and surprisingly sophisticated synthesis to create an inspiring rhythm production environment.
Essentially a mini-multitrack DAW-within-your-actual-DAW, BreakTweaker gives you six tracks, each of which can play back samples or synthesised sounds in sequence. You can trigger patterns or play individual notes on a given sound from your MIDI controller, and each part is independent, playing back at its own beatdivision of the main meter. Once you’ve entered a step into the sequencer, you can micro-edit it, breaking it down into miniscule parts and messing with the way they’re played back. Various modes are available – division, pitch, time and speed can be manipulated – and randomisation is an option. The effect can be startling, but is invariably interesting and often delightfully unusual – ideal for those with an adventurous attitude.
Sonic Charge
Microtonic $99 Format PC/Mac (VST/AU) Web http://soniccharge.com
Created by former Propellerhead boffin Magnus Lidström, Microtonic is a pattern-based drum machine with a firm focus on synthetic drum sounds. Microtonic’s pattern sequencer was a welcome feature upon its release, when most plugin drum machines were intended to be triggered from the host DAW rather than internally. Even a cursory play reveals why: making beats in a simple sequencer is fun. You can turn each of the 16 steps on and off, add fills and adjust the length of sequence for the currently selected sound, or if you prefer to use a multitrack grid, there’s a handy pop-up display to facilitate that sort of programming as well. Given the developer’s pedigree, it’s not surprising that Microtonic’s sequencer is quite similar to those of Reason’s devices, and patterns can be
dragged to the host sequencer’s MIDI tracks for further editing. The synthesis engine itself is fairly advanced, with sounds made using a simple oscillator and a noise generator, each including a smattering of controls; a mixer allows you to tweak the balance between the two. The oscillator offers simple frequency modulation using a sine wave, noise source or envelope shaper. A multimode filter is onboard, and envelopes are of the two-stage AD variety, with the noise generator offering three different envelope types for handclaps and other noise-heavy sounds. Microtonic’s sound quality is superb, ranging from delicate percolations to in-your-face aggression. The low end thumps with some conviction, while the highs are sharp and can easily cut through a crowded mix. It’ll do the classics, but it’s even better for modern, edgier sounds. Computer Music special / 85
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gear guide FXpansion
Tremor £99 Format PC/Mac (VST/AU/RTAS) Web www.fxpansion.com
A fully loaded drum synthesis workstation, Tremor makes the perfect foil to the developer’s other entry in this round-up, the samplebased BFD3. With its focus on classic beatbox sounds combined with modern synthesis techniques and a tricked-out pattern sequencer, Tremor is everything BFD3 is not. Tremor is built on FXPansion’s DCAM (Discrete Component Analogue Modeling) technology, as used in their lauded Synth Squad. The idea behind DCAM is that analogue circuits are modeled down to the component level for a more authentic sound, and the results speak for themselves. Tremor can be sharp and punchy or warm and rounded. As you can
imagine, it excels at emulating retro drum machines, but it’s also capable of generating aggressive, thoroughly modern sounds. With its comprehensive synthesis engine and a host of excellent effects processors, Tremor offers elements of analogue, additive and even physical modeling technology, along with multimode filters, triple envelope generators and a quartet of LFOs, a tough-as-nails preamp, and FXPansion’s excellent TransMod modulation scheme. Tremor’s grid-based pattern sequencer allows each channel to be set to its own pattern length for crazy polyrhythmic action. You get all the usual sequencer goodies as well, including swing, plus some nifty Drag Edit functions that can be used for things like stutter and roll effects.
Ron Papen
Punch £125 Format PC/Mac (VST/AU/RTAS/
AAX) Web www.robpapen.com
A genius electronic musician in his own right, Rob Papen has earned a reputation over the years as a firstclass sound designer, crafting highly prized sounds for a variety of hardware synths, including the ubiquitous Access Virus. In recent years he’s turned his attention to developing a series of quality signature plugin synths and effects, and Punch sees his gaze fixed squarely on drums and percussion. Like others in our round-up, Punch combines synthesis, sampling and effects in a comprehensive percussion workstation. As you’d expect, there’s also a built-in pattern (or ‘groove’) sequencer with which to program your beats. Though a library of excellent samples is included, the focus is on synthetic sounds, and Punch’s
drum synth engine is, in our assessment, the star of the show. Here you can load various synthesis models designed to produce specific drum sounds (two bass drums with four models, two snares with two algorithms, and so on), combine them with samples, then route them through a set of excellent synthesis functions including six filter modes, as well as distortion and effects. As with all of Rob Papen’s instruments, the sound quality is top-notch, making it easy to knock out chestthumping kicks, whip-crack snares and sizzling hi-hats, along with a wide range of unusual and original percussion effects. Punch is a one-stop synth drum shop capable of producing sounds that truly live up to its name. And though it can indeed mimic some famous vintage instruments, its real strength lies in its potential to provide original, ear-catching electronic percussive timbres.
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XLN Audio
Addictive Drums €179.95 Format PC/Mac (VST/AU/RTAS/
AAX) Web www.xlnaudio.com
Addictive Drums is designed to do exactly what the session drummers of the past always feared drum machines would eventually do: replace the real thing. It offers a huge library of samples and MIDI grooves, and can give your tracks all of the nuance, power and musicality of a live drummer. In addition to standard soundshaping stuff like EQ, Addictive Drums gives you the ability to adjust the balance of the mics on the kick drum beater and front heads and top and bottom snare heads, and even add the sympathetic buzz that a real snare drum generates when the nearby kick and toms are bashed. Moreover, there’s the ability to
adjust the level and distance of the room mics in relation to the close mics used on the kits. The drum kits themselves are the stuff of legend: Sonor Designer, Tama Starclassic, DW Collector’s Series, Sabian and Paiste cymbals, along with a kick and some snares from Pearl. And if you need more, XLN Audio offer a range of separately purchasable add-ons. Multiple outputs and flexible mixing are here, too – a dozen mixer channels are provided, with a whopping 52 insert effects and a pair of reverbs. With its excellent prefab grooves and superb samples, AD gives you everything you need to craft prosounding drum tracks, whether you trigger it yourself using a MIDI keyboard or electronic drum kit, or have it take care of the performance on your behalf.
Toontrack
EZDrummer 2 £99 Format PC/Mac (VST/AU/RTAS/ AAX/standalone) Web www.toontrack.com www.timespace.com
It hardly seems possible, but Toontrack’s EZDrummer has been around for eight years now. In that time, it’s become the drum production tool of choice for countless desktop songwriters and producers. The key to its popularity? It is, in a word, easy. Selecting kits and swapping out drums is easy; auditioning sounds and patterns is easy; and, in this newest version, assembling selfcontained songs is easy as well. New version? Yes indeed – Toontrack announced EZDrummer 2 just as we were putting this magazine together. Like version 1, EZdrummer 2 is entirely sample-based, offering up a selection of modern and vintage kits built on a meticulously recorded collection of quality
drums. There are 13" and 14" snares, 20", 22", 24" and 26" kicks, rack and floor toms of varying sizes and depths, a ton of hi-hats and cymbals from a range of name manufacturers… there’s even a smattering of hand percussion sounds, too, including claps, shakers, maracas, tambourines and a cowbell. Add to that a built-in mixer with EQ, effects lifted from EZmix 2 and the ability to control kick and snare bleed, and you have everything you need to make realistic drum tracks. An enormous library of prefab grooves is included, covering a wide variety of musical styles. The excellent browser makes it easy to find the patterns you’re after – you can even tap in a rhythm and EZDrummer will tell you which are the closest matches. Most importantly, EZDrummer 2 sounds nothing short of magnificent – big and bold, with presence to spare. Computer Music special / 87
the beat makers <
The beat makers Seven masters of groove let us in on the processes and techniques that go into their drum and percussion tracks
This might seem like a silly question to ask readers of a magazine like , but how important is the beat? For most people, the answer will be straightforward: surely, if you’re making electronic dance music, you need a beat – a rhythmic backbone. Unless a dance track can still stand up when stripped down to just the beat and bassline, it’s probably not doing its job properly. On closer analysis, though, neither the question nor the answer is as simple as it appears. All keyboard players need keyboards and all guitarists plays guitars, but beyond those basic facts, you’ll find infinite and myriad musical possibilities; the difference between Rachmaninov and Rudimental, between Jimi Hendrix and Django Reinhardt. And so it is with ‘the beat’. Yes, most dance tracks rely on a beat, but it’s what you do with it that really matters. Even without the aid of notes or chords, and often using the most basic of equipment, a beat can convey both the subtlest and the most powerful of emotions – and everything in between. It can drag you on to the dancefloor at your cousin’s wedding and calm the nerves of a Sunday morning hangover; it can cause mayhem in a heavy metal mosh pit and
“If you’re making electronic dance music, you need a beat – a rhythmic backbone” lift a hundred thousand joyous rave hands into a laser-filled summer sky. Take the simple 4/4 disco stomp, for example. Compared with the complexities of, say, an intricate EDM/DnB/footwork loop, this traditional kick/snare combo might seem rather limiting, but it helped Daft Punk create the quintessential dance tune of 2013. And anyone who saw the great Omar Hakim – a drummer who’s provided rhythms for everyone from David Bowie and Chic to Miles Davis and Weather Report – work his magic during the French duo’s Grammy performance will know that, even within a simple 4/4 beat, there are
endless possibilities. A genius like Hakim may only be pushing or pulling the rhythm by a matter of milliseconds, but that’s all you need to bring a beat to life. Indeed, it could easily be argued that we are currently living through the age of the beat – we’ve got dubstep in California, dirty Dutch in Australia, moombahton in Milton Keynes. The beat defines genres and causes irreparable fallouts between DJs. The beat is all over mainstream radio and TV, and has fuelled an unparalleled dance music explosion that’s stretched across every continent on the planet. It really doesn’t matter if we don’t speak the same language; as long as we can all feel that kick drum rattling our kneecaps, we’ll understand each other perfectly. With that in mind, we thought it would be interesting to talk to a few people who make beats for a living about the instruments (from analogue classics to state-of-the-art plugins), the inspirations (from hip-hop to the resurgence of the Amen Break) and the musical ideologies (far too many to mention) that have created this contemporary rhythmic soundscape. How important is the beat? That’s exactly what we’re about to find out… Computer Music special / 89
“I honestly don’t think a lot of modern genres would have happened the way they did without the help of ReCycle”
Mint Royale’s Neil Claxton : How important are beats to the music you make? NC: “Not every song I do starts with a beat, but it usually ends up as the thing that the rest of the song hangs off of. If the beat isn’t working, then it probably means the song isn’t going to work.” : Did it take you a long time to learn how to program decent beats? NC: “I started years and years ago on a Roland TR-505. With a machine like that, you were working with a fairly limited palette because you couldn’t really edit the sounds. You could add a bit of a groove and some accenting, but that was about it, so your programming was the only way to catch people’s attention. It was all about trying to get the beat to sound human, which is probably still the biggest challenge when you’re working with electronic beats.” : What are your main beat production tools in the studio? NC: “Like a lot of people, I came up through the Akai sampler route. And from there, it was Logic and the EXS24 – with my sampler background, it made immediate sense. Just lately, though, I’ve moved on to [Native Instruments] Battery. It’s a neater way of working, because you can do all 90 / Computer Music special
: Do you ever use synths to create percussion sounds? NC: “Definitely! Once I’ve got the nuts and bolts of a beat in place, I like to look around for something a bit different. The percussion section of any analogue emulating plugin is usually a good place to start – there’s always a little ‘dink’ or a ‘shoosh’ that will come in handy. And it doesn’t sound like your standard drum machine sample.”
NC: “If you’re producing dance music, the beat obviously has a particular importance – it deserves close attention. The main problem seems to be that, like a lot of digital sound, modern drum samples can be a bit too shiny. That’s why I’m such a big fan of D16’s Decimort; essentially, it knocks it all down to 12-bit. “The Waves NLS does something very similar, but there’s a natural density to the Decimort that I really like. It seems to be able to pull a beat together without compressing it too much. When it comes to compression, I prefer to add a bit of sidechain around the drums to create some space. If you’ve got really well-recorded samples, they’ll have all been compressed at some point, so there doesn’t seem much point in adding another level on top. “You can also do a bit of filtering with the Decimort, which allows you to wind off some of that shiny top end. For some reason, though, I always seem to overdo the high-end cut and get drums that have no top end whatsoever – then when I’m ready to mix down, I have to start adding some of the top end back in!”
: In terms of production, are the beats ‘treated’ separately or do you consider them simply another element of the song?
Neil is currently working on remixes of tracks by Tim Burgess and CutWires, and has a fourth album due out later this year
your tweaking and editing inside Battery, then come straight out with just a stereo pair. When I was using the EXS, I would usually end up with a separate output for each percussive sound. “I also have to mention [Propellerhead] ReCycle. I don’t think you can underestimate just how important it’s been to the development of dance music – in fact, I honestly don’t think a lot of modern genres would have happened the way they did without the help of ReCycle. It stretches sound in such a musical way… it was a complete revolution in terms of what you could do with a loop.”
the beat makers <
Om Unit aka Jim Coles : Who were your early influences in terms of beats? JC: “The key years for me were the early 90s, so it was a lot of the great jungle guys. Hearing them chop up breaks for the first time really got to me. I always liked DJ Hype because he was so creative with his programming, pitching stuff up and down and sending a break somewhere new. From there, I started listening to New York hiphop like DJ Premier and Pete Rock. That’s when I started to swing things a bit more, which led me towards Flying Lotus. I guess I began to appreciate the looseness of a beat.” : We remember reading an interview in which you said that the beat conveyed the intention of a song… JC: “Well, sort of. The rhythm is born from a song’s intention, so they’re inextricably linked. The beat tells you how a track is going to make people feel. Whether it’s a simple, relaxed rhythm or something more syncopated, the beat conjures up a particular spirit.” : How did you first start making beats? Drum machine, sampler, software…? JC: “Actually, I played the drums from about 13. I never had amazing chops or anything, but it
came in useful when I started programming. In the early days, I was on Scream Tracker, Impulse Tracker, FastTracker… after that I tried Cubase, Logic for a bit and then Cubase for the last ten years or so, with a recent detour into Battery.” : As a drummer, do you find it easy to translate what’s in your head into beats in your DAW? JC: “I can tap something out on a table top, work out what’s needed, program that in the computer and… it usually sounds absolutely nothing like my original idea! Getting that feeling out of your head and into a song is always tricky.” : Do you use drum pads? JC: “No, I always program with a keyboard. Unless it’s something really, really simple – then I put the audio straight onto the screen. I am a total geek when it comes to drum sounds; I’m more interested in them than I am in plugins and effects. I reckon I must have about 20 years’ worth of samples and sounds, but I’ll never stop collecting – I’ve just bought a really great Goldbaby collection. I like the idea that I’ve got way more than I’ll ever need; that way I’ll always find what I’m looking for.”
: Any plugins you can’t live without? JC: “Not really. I can pretty much work with whatever I’ve got. A friend put me on to the DMG EQuality, which has a very cool sound; UAD’s Cambridge EQ is handy; and I use the API 550B for boosting the top end. One thing I don’t like is valve-sounding effects; they chew the sound up and make it cloudy.” : In terms of production, do you treat your beats separately to everything else or just consider them another element of the song? JC: “There’s no road map for this stuff. If you start getting all academic about production – I must do this, I must do that – then things start to sound samey. There are certain basic things you need to do to drums; if your kick drum’s a bit flabby, you do a low-cut. But you also have to be very careful when it comes to EQ. There are tunes I’ve put out there in the past that make me cringe because all I can hear is that ridiculously EQ’d snare. Don’t try to make a drum sample sound like something it’s not; you’re better off trying to get the right sample at the beginning.” Om Unit’s debut album Threads is out now on the Civil Music label. For tour dates, visit www.facebook.com/omunit
“I am a total geek when it comes to drum sounds; I’m more interested in them than I am in plugins and effects”
Computer Music special / 91
Mr Scruff aka Andy Carthy : You’re a well-known lover of classic gear. What are your main beat production tools? AC: “A bit of everything, really. Obviously, I use a computer – in my case, I’m running Logic – but then I use a collection of samples, old sampling drum machines like the MPC60, mic’d up drums and weird little recordings that I’ve made over the years.” : Do you ever use synthesisers to create percussion sounds? AC: “Because of the way I work – remember, I’m a bloke who still plays vinyl! – I would be more likely to create something ‘real’. I’ll start banging and rattling things in the studio. You can create brilliantly bonkers and unusual sounds just by experimenting with mic placement. Often, you’ll end up with something that you could never have created with a plugin or synth. “I think it’s also worth asking the question: what actually constitutes a ‘drum sound’ or a ‘percussion sound’? If you’ve got a single, ringing piano note that repeats throughout a track, it might as well be a cowbell. Is that part of the beat? Is it percussion?” : Do you treat the beat separately, production-wise, or do you consider it simply another element of the song? AC: “I tend to jam rhythm ideas and get them into the computer as audio straight away. I don’t spend ages messing around with the sound. I think that’s because I come from a sampling background. I like the idea that certain things are fixed – you get what you’re given and a sample is a sample; that’s all there is to it. “What I think is really interesting – considering I’m talking to you for a beats Special – is that I very rarely listen to the beats in isolation. The sound that I’m after from a beat will very much depend on what the rest of the song is doing. A song is a conversation between several people; you’re creating an invisible band. And if you do isolate the drums, you also run the risk of focusing so intently that you start seeing problems that aren’t really there. You end up ironing out the quirks that attracted you to a particular loop or sample in the first place.”
“A song is a conversation between several people; you’re creating an invisible band”
: Who were your early influences when it came to making beats? AC: “God, there are literally thousands! Amazing drummers like Sly Dunbar. In the studio, you’ve got Juan Atkins and the Cybotron stuff, Egyptian Lover, Arthur Baker and Afrika Bambaataa, anything by Kurtis Mantronik – always undermentioned compared with other guys from that time. The usual hip-hop names: DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Kenny Dope, or Gabe Roth’s work with Daptone. Then there’s the drum ’n’ bass guys like Photek and Hidden Agenda. There are far too many to mention here.” : Give us your top beat programming tip. AC: “If really interested in a particular rhythm, spend a bit of time investigating what came before; investigate the roots of that sound.” Mr Scruff’s new album, Friendly Bacteria, is out on May 19 on Ninja Tune. www.mrscruff.com
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the beat makers <
“I don’t actually use my computer that much for making beats; I like to use old-school drum machines”
French Fries aka Valentino Cazani : How important are beats to your music? VC: “I played the drums for years when I was younger, and I still really love percussive club tracks. If you listen to some old-school Chicago house, you’ll notice that you can actually make people dance with nothing more than one drum machine. For my music, I try to be creative and do something a bit more intricate – but still easy to dance to.” : What are your main rhythm tools? VC: “I was really young when I made my first beat – maybe eight years old. My father is a producer, too, and he has a studio, so I spent all my childhood there. I grew up playing acoustic instruments, but a few French rappers used to rent the studio and I was always trying to watch their sessions; they all used the MPC2000 XL. I didn’t have any money, so I started making beats using a computer and a MIDI keyboard. Then I had the chance to meet Ministre X, who now runs the ClekClekBoom label with me, and also The Boo. He helped me discover house music and lent me his MPC when I was 16. “Today, I use Sonar. I think that just a few people use it, but it’s the first software I worked with so I like it. I don’t actually use my computer that much for making beats; I like to use old-
school drum machines like the DrumTraks and the Roland TRs. I also fell in love with the Tempest from Dave Smith Instruments a few months ago, so I use that a lot. For me, the best gear to make beats will always be the MPC; it has an amazing sound and such a specific groove.” : Who would you say were your early beat production influences? VC: “When I started making beats, I was listening to a lot of hip-hop. I really liked the productions from rappers like Three 6 Mafia, but I also loved the beats from Pharrell and the Neptunes. Above all, I started listening to Prince when I was really young. My father is a big fan, so when I was born I was already familiar with records like Controversy, Purple Rain and Parade. Back then I didn’t understand how they were making these sounds, but I was still obsessed by them. When I discovered the LinnDrum and the DrumTraks, I just went crazy!” : Do you ever use synthesisers to create percussion sounds? VC: “I love to use analogue synths for percussion sounds: the Moog Voyager for weird and subby percussion sounds; cool sounds with the Alpha Juno 1; and especially the Waldorf Q – it has a
really shiny sound, a bit metallic, but you can make everything with it. I could build a track only using this synth. “It’s interesting to make, for example, a hi-hat sound with a synth and push it right to the front of the mix. Using two oscillators, you can add a discreet synth note and play with the frequency; you can play with the noise and the cutoff, too. With analogue, the sound never ends.” : In production terms, do you treat the beat separately or do you consider it simply another element of the song? VC: “I treat and mix everything while I’m sequencing; I have to do it immediately to see if I’m going in the right direction. I work on my productions like I’m doing a live show. For example, I would play a beat on the MPC, then try a synth over it, then plug in a drum machine and record everything at the same time.” : Give us your top beat-programming tip. VC: “I get bored very easily, so my only tip for myself is: don’t make the same music that you were making two months ago.” French Fries’ new album, Kepler, is out now on ClekClekBoom Computer Music special / 93
Drums of Death aka Colin Bailey : What are the main rhythm tools that you use in the studio? CB: “In the early days, I had some sort of beatmaking software called HammerHead; I think it was by Steinberg. After that, it was a cracked copy of FruityLoops, followed by Logic 9 and a recent switch up to Logic X. There’s some Ableton in there, too, but Kontakt is the main sampler – man, it’s awesome! – with a bit of Battery thrown in for good measure.” : And where do your samples and sounds come from? Obviously this is a big question for a man who calls himself Drums of Death! CB: “Ha ha! The main Snare of Death is taken from a track called Banned from the Roxy by a brilliant punk band, Crass – it sounds like a high, rasping, distorted 808 snare. I suppose my regular starting point for a beat is always the 808 and 909. I’d love to brag that I’ve got the genuine articles, but I’m afraid I’m a total faker. Yes, I use samples. I’ve always been a software producer, though, so that doesn’t really bother me too much. “I’ve sampled the crap out of the Korg Electribe, and whenever I do a remix, I always make a full sample set of any drums. That way,
I’ve got access to sounds that not many other people can get hold of.” : Who were your early beat influences? CB: “Marshall Jefferson, Adonis, Green Velvet, Modeselektor… all the Chicago house stuff. I don’t want to keep going on about the 808 and 909, but they really have been so important to the development of what I do. The sound isn’t natural – it’s made by firing electricity into these machines – and yet it feels so perfect and so organic. That’s why so many people keep going back to it.” : Any plugins you couldn’t live without? CB: “[Cytomic’s] The Glue multiband compressor, Slate Digital’s Virtual Tape Machines… anything by D16. I was doing a lot of parallel compression for a while, but I found that it was beginning to affect the actual drum sounds a bit too much. These days I prefer to keep the drum chain quite simple; just a bit of Glue and some limiters. “If I’m being totally honest, I find making music on a computer a bit of a drag. By that, I mean it can sometimes be quite timeconsuming working out how to get the idea out
from inside your head and into the speakers. I come from a rock band background, where you picked up a guitar and you played your song. I guess what I’d really love is a plugin with a USB stick that I could slot into my brain. That way, I could download the idea straight into Logic.” : Give us your best beat-programming tip. CB: “One thing I do a lot is work on a track without any kick drum at all. When I start writing, I get a few percussion loops going, then add some claps; just get a basic groove with a few hooks and a bassline. Once those basic building blocks are in place, I start auditioning kicks and I have a much better idea of what’s going to fit into the track EQ-wise. “I find that if you start with the kick, it tends to lock everything down. Without it, you can be a bit more free and funky with the bassline. And when you finally do add the kick, it’s almost like the track gets a whole new lease of life. You’ve got used to the track without it, and then, bang – the kick takes it to the next level.” For Drums of Death tour dates and the free download of Fierce Feat Azealia Banks, visit www.facebook.com/drumsofdeath4eva
“I find that if you start with the kick, it tends to lock everything down. Without it, you can be a bit more free”
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the beat makers <
“A straight 4/4 or a single loop running for 32 bars is not enough to keep me interested” Ital Tek aka Alan Myson : What are your main beat production tools in the studio? AM: “I’m mainly sample-based, all going via Battery and the Akai MPD32 pad controller. I know this interview’s supposed to be about beats, but most of my songs actually start with a melody or chords. After I’ve put together a rough sketch of the tune, I use the pads to tap out something sloppy and simple. Obviously, I add to that as I’m working on the song, but I always like to keep a flavour of that first, un-quantised beat.” : In interviews, you often talk about not wanting to make beats that are too ‘obvious’. AM: “A straight 4/4 or a single loop running for 32 bars is not enough to keep me interested. I’m not saying that I try and make complicated beats just for the sake of making them complicated – there will be times when a pulsing kick is all that’s needed – but I like to add little fills and ghost hits to keep refreshing the listener’s attention. I was always a big fan of Aphex Twin’s drums for that same reason – they always seemed to evolve gently over the course of the track.”
: Do you treat your beats as a separate entity to the rest of the song or as simply another element of it? AM: “In the early days, I wanted to throw as much compression as I could at the drums to try to make them sound as fat as possible. That’s what I thought you needed to do for dance music. What I’ve got today is… well, I suppose there are more things happening to the drums, but I use less, if that makes sense. There’s straight compression, parallel compression, distortion – my current favourite is u-he’s Satin Tape Machine – and EQ, but I try not to overdo any single process. If you’re going to extremes when it comes to processing a certain drum sample or loop, there’s something wrong. “Every day, I listen to music, and every day, I realise I’ve still got so much to learn. I’ve been putting records out for about seven or eight years, and I’d like to think that, over time, my beats have got better – but there’s still a long way to go.” : Give us your top beat production tip. AM: “Can I have two? Number one would be: don’t get lost in your own beat. You sit there for
12 hours banging out a tune that sounds absolutely fantastic in the studio, then you take it round your mate’s house and it sounds rubbish. Always make sure you’re listening to other tunes during the day, comparing the track your working on with songs that have a similar frequency range. Try different monitors, too. I always have a cheap iPod dock sitting next to the computer, because regardless of what I think it sounds like, that’s how a lot of people are listening to their music in 2014. “Number two: don’t always reach for the quantise button. Don’t squash everything so tightly that it sounds cold. There was a beat that I was working on just this morning and, for some reason, it sounded much better when every hi-hat was pushed away from the beat. Why not experiment with pushing every fourth snare back or forward? Why not cut the loop early and leave a bit of space? Sometimes, it’s the wonky beat that really catches everybody’s attention.” Ital Tek’s Mega City Industry EP is out now on Civil Music in vinyl (http://cvl.mu/ital-tek-mega-cityindustry) and digital (http://cvl.mu/ital-tekmega-city-industry-itunes) formats Computer Music special / 95
> the beat makers
“You can’t always rely on the beat to carry the whole song – you still need decent hooks”
Reso aka Alex Melia : How important are the beats to the music you make? AM:“Ha ha! I’ve been playing drums for most of my life, so obviously, I’m a fan of beats and loops – I guess that’s why I love jungle and drum ’n’ bass. And the availability of software today means that, even if you’re a relatively new producer, you can create the most amazing beats. I’ve been sent stuff by 14-year-olds and it’s just incredible! “But there has to be more to a song than hours and hours of Amen programming. You can’t always rely on the beat to carry the whole song – you still need decent hooks, melodies and chord structure. That’s the real challenge in dance music.” : Who were some of your early beatmaking influences? AM: “The most important years for me were around 2005–06, listening to a lot of dubstep – Elemental, Search and Destroy. Drum ’n’ bass, too, plus some weird ambient stuff. And I have to mention Photek; both the Solaris and Modus Operandi albums.”
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: What are the main rhythm tools that you use in the studio? AM: “It used to be the EXS24, but I’m gradually switching over to Battery. I love the way it can timestretch a sound; sometimes I even use it for processing basslines. I’ve also got into running things through Kontakt. I think it’s good to change things around every now and then, because it’s very easy to rest on your laurels and keep churning out the same old beats.” : You’re a drummer, so have you got a drum kit in the studio? Do you ever record live drums for your tracks? AM: “Everybody asks me that, but my studio is my spare room, so I doubt the neighbours would appreciate me playing live drums at two in the morning! On top of that, there’s the actual time involved. Recording decent, close-mic’d live drums is not a quick process. “I’ve got a set of V-Drums and I use XLN Addictive Drums, which seems to work for me. If I get an idea, I can usually get it down in an hour or so and then have total control over the final product. You can get a real feel for all the grace notes and the velocities, but you can also isolate
certain sounds, change them or even go for completely unnatural sounds. Achieving that with real drums would be a nightmare!” : Do you treat your beats separately or as simply another element of the song? AM: “I always mix/produce a tune as I’m working. If you get things sounding good right from the off, you save yourself a whole lot of bother later on. Get your kick drum and bassline working in the right spot, and then build from there. If I try to start messing around with a song after it’s finished, I suddenly find that I’ve got 250 channels and I can’t remember what the f*** I’ve put on there! “One of the most important things you have to be aware of is tuning your drums. Get the frequency analyser on there, but also get used to listening to your drums – listen to how they sit in the track. Try pitching a snare up or down a couple of semitones and you’ll often find a bit of space that really allows it to jump out.” Reso’s Pulse Code EP is out on Hospital Records. Order from Hospital (hospi.tl/pulsecode) or buy on iTunes (hospi.tl/pulsecodeitunes)
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> cm disc & downloads
DOWNLOAD
Downloads
To get access to the samples, tutorial files and videos accompanying this Special, log on to vault.computermusic.co.uk and select ‘Computer Music issue 66’.
575 Future Loops samples A beat-bolstering treasure trove of slamming drum loops and hits
www.futureloops.com For this beats-centric Special we’ve teamed up with sample producers Future Loops to deliver one of the most awesome gatherings of dance drum and percussion samples that we’ve ever had the pleasure of presenting to our readers. To bring you this collection, Future Loops have delved deep into their bulging soundware locker and hand-picked the very finest hits and beats from a staggering 42 of their commercially available packs. Broken down into seven genres – Breaks, Club & Dance, Drum ’n’ Bass, Dub & Reggae, Dubstep, Hip-hop & Vinyl, and Trap – the collection comprises full-on loops as well as one-shot kicks, snares, hi-hats, cymbals and more, all lovingly produced and guaranteed to breathe new life into your productions. And you don’t have to keep these sounds within their titular genres, of course – if you find that dub snare working well in your minimal house tune, don’t hesitate to use it there. Future Loops are also offering exclusive discounts in their online store for Special readers until 15 July 2014. See the accompanying Readme file for details.
Breaks
Antimatter Breaks Critical Breaks Live Breakbeat Drums Rennie Pilgrem – Godfather of Breaks Stickybuds – Funk Breaks & Bass
Club & Dance
Complextro Evolution Da Fresh – Tech House & Techno Deep & Minimal House Sessions Deep In Garage – Classic Sessions Epic EDM Anthems Essential Bass House Tools Mainroom House & Electro Sessions Pro Dance Kits – Tech Funk 01 The Loops of Fury – Electro Meets Rave
Drum ’n’ Bass
Consequence – Experimental DNB Future DNB Elements Jungle Guerrilla Jungle Intelligence Live DNB Drums Nuclear DNB Techstep DNB
Dub & Reggae
Reggae Drums Zion Train Dub Drums Zion Train Dub Selections
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Dubstep
Chillstep Elements Dark & Dungeon Dubstep Deep Dubstep Elements Distance Dubstep Dubstep Invasion Dubstep Roots – Ambient Dub & Bass Future Bass Chill Skyline – Future Ambient Works
Hip Hop & Vinyl
Beatdiggin Boom Bap – Dark Kits Dusty Breaks & Vintage Drums 1 Dusty Breaks & Vintage Drums 2 Hip Hop Millennium Total Chillout Urban Symphony – Orchestral Hip Hop Kits
Trap
South of Trap Trap Battles Trap Invasion
Tutorial videos!
Also accompanying this Special is a collection of tutorial videos, bringing six of the walkthroughs in the magazine to life onscreen. Watch them directly on your reading device or download them to your Mac or PC.
PLUS Tutorial Files Drum sequencing essentials Sampled beats Synthesised beats Programming realistic acoustic drums Programming percussion Mixing beats Cinematic beats Make beats with Maschine Make beats with MPC Software Build a sample kit with Phalanx
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