Making breaks sound great

OK so I'm trying to process an amen into greatness but having trouble making it sound nice and clear and punchy, anyone got any tips? I'm guessing compression and EQ'ing but don't really know too much about them, tutorials would be handy if people have good ones.

(not been doing this too long, be gentle!)

Not exactly what you're looking for, but with other breaks I've been layering 2 or 3 with different amounts of filter, distortion and reverb on each and all resampled into one with great results.

just fuck around a fuckload

I've come up with great breaks adding 10-20 compressors on one beat and lots of crappy effects.. really original sounding stuff, i should post a track w it sometime

Helps to have good quality breaks. I'm pretty sure I got my Amen break from an mp3 originally which obviously ain't good.

  Promo said:

Helps to have good quality breaks. I'm pretty sure I got my Amen break from an mp3 originally which obviously ain't good.

i get so pissed off with fannies saving previously mp3'd breaks as wavs then putting them on websites masquerading as full quality - argh!! so so many of my massive collection are like this, total shite. first thing i do now is have a look + listen and chuck them if they're not useable - obviously if there's not much in the way of hats/high stuff then its not so bad but its a pain nevertheless.

Tricks by od

* Don't forget stereo. Sometimes putting a bit of width on the snares or the hits with both cymbals and bassdrums going for oomph

* don't forget the eq. Bring the high end up, put a little low in there.

* compress it.

* Sometimes you'll need to boost the volume of individual bits of the break. Often I split off the snare, chuck it in it's own fx track with a seperate compressor so the bassdrum doens't swallow the snare if it's used as a gracenote

* turn off the release. i like all my drum hits to continue..... until the exact point i want them to stop or when another drum hit occurs.

sometimes to emphasise a drum hit you can make the volume of the previous hit cut out 1/4 or so of a step beforoe the next drum hit. Tiny snip of silence between a hit brings it out a bit.

btw I got my amen from an mp3 ahahahah not bad quality though

the amen should sounds good anyway, compared to a lot of breaks you might find at least... once you pitch it up its already punchy. Generally with breaks I'll loop them and put a parametric eq on and just fiddle with the frequencies, see what parts sound better when their gone and which bits sound good with a boost. Sometimes it sounds cleaner to EQ out a whole load of the low end and use a kick from a drum machine on top of the break.

if you want your amens to sound like boc just crank up the mids and lower the highs.

then compress.

if you want your amens or other breaks too sound GOOD monitor your mids and work on your highs and the lows. also do whatever orange dust says.

then compress

be careful about over compressing breaks that have already been compressed in the original recording, or in the re-sampling.

layer youre sounds.

fuck about with some narrow band eq sweeps, to find the 'sweet spots' that need boosted or cut.

process the shit out of it until you can no longer recognize it as the amen break

i am just a weiner, but i'd recommend doing a low-cut at like 100 or 80 hz, depending on where the kick is. if there's a lot of rumble / turntabley boom or whatever goop in there, this can really up the clarity a LOT. plus then you have a lot more headroom to work with.

i find that even if you don't grab the beat off vinyl, if it's old there's still usually a ton of subsonic junk in there that you don't care about.

but yeah, other than that, i dunno.

  Ascdi said:

i am just a weiner, but i'd recommend doing a low-cut at like 100 or 80 hz, depending on where the kick is. if there's a lot of rumble / turntabley boom or whatever goop in there, this can really up the clarity a LOT. plus then you have a lot more headroom to work with.

 

i find that even if you don't grab the beat off vinyl, if it's old there's still usually a ton of subsonic junk in there that you don't care about.

 

but yeah, other than that, i dunno.

yup... tru dat.

Cheers guys, got some reasonable results from EQ'ing (reducing the bottom end and increasing the top), adding a little reverb and compressing (although I don't really know what I'm doing with that, I just fiddled about until it sounded a bit better)

Here's the result of my first proper attempt at chopping up a break (if anyone is bothered!)

Next step, trying to make pads sound nice and locating a plinky xylophone/glockenspiel type sound! Thanks for the help anyway chaps, most useful for the learning process.

Amen_chop.mp3Fetching info...

good call on the reverb. Plug is full of roomy amens and shit and it glues it together so well. i could never figure out a reverb and settings that would do that for me without getting it way too goopy.

the cheap ghetto way is to layer it with a version of it an octive lower and mix them poper like.

another is two have two amens, one going thru a weeeee bit of waveshaping and keeping the other intact and mix

i do it the stupid hard way - every hit cut out and treated/layered/tuned individually. i keep meaning to try a proper amen tweaking session doing it this way to see what it comes out like, if i have time i'll try it and bung up a loop.

lots of processing, layering ,compression, variations, EQ and resampling

I took these from an already messed about with amen break that is mastered really well imho. It's got a nice warm sound to it I guess (if that makes sense). May help anyway...

Amen__sequenced_WAVE_.zipFetching info...

  Josso said:

I took these from an already messed about with amen break that is mastered really well imho. It's got a nice warm sound to it I guess (if that makes sense). May help anyway...

 

Amen__sequenced_WAVE_.zipFetching info...

sounded ok, bieing that i really dislike the amen break but it would be better to see it in action to get yer prespective of how you use it with variations, skills and what not