Advice on Drum Breaks

I've been messing around with the standard Amen Break sound recently just for fun. I realize this sort of rhythm isn't original at all, but I'm finding that tweaking fast drum arrangements like this has taught me a bit of interesting rhythmic tricks for actual songs.

I still don't think that my drum arrangements are very good, and was wondering if anyone could give me some pointers or advice that I could apply to make the breaks sound just as fast without being as messy.

beat.mp3 786.8 kB · 66 downloads

sculpting is the process of removing the stone that does not belong.

Oh you know, back in the day with recycle you'd load some huge break into, adjust sensitivity, then change the temp up higher, then increase the pitch higher (so it would play the drum faster).

Same concept applies to the amen... its just a huge big blocky break that someone sped up and pitched up.

Speaking of which, does anyone know of any tutorials for LiveSlice? The manual seems kinda sparse and I haven't been able to do much with it blind.

I uploaded a sample of of what my breaks are sounding like. It's in the first post.

I'm thinking that it may be worth it to make multiple layers of breaks at the same time with different volumes. This could make it sound less messy, but keep is just as complex.

  acid1 said:

Oh you know, back in the day with recycle you'd load some huge break into, adjust sensitivity, then change the temp up higher, then increase the pitch higher (so it would play the drum faster).

 

Same concept applies to the amen... its just a huge big blocky break that someone sped up and pitched up.

thats absolutely the wrong way to use recycle

if you arent slicing by hand you may as well just close the program and give up

kid, if you want your breaks clean, you need to focus on the decay of each individual hit so that you dont have them running over eachother

  beneboi said:

  acid1 said:

Oh you know, back in the day with recycle you'd load some huge break into, adjust sensitivity, then change the temp up higher, then increase the pitch higher (so it would play the drum faster).

 

Same concept applies to the amen... its just a huge big blocky break that someone sped up and pitched up.

 

thats absolutely the wrong way to use recycle

if you arent slicing by hand you may as well just close the program and give up

and it doesn't take long

Yeah, I always do my break slicing by hand. I actually haven't gotten into anything that advanced yet. If you listen to my sample; each pitch change was done simply by altering the pitch of each hit, so I wasn't using any sequencing effects. I may get more technical down the road, but right now I'm liking the minimal set up.

hmm for me it's easier to just grab a random break, slice up manually in any wave editor (i.e. wavosaur), drop each sample into a tracker as an instrument and voilá; now you can pitch every sample independently, etc, etc.

  tauboo said:

  beneboi said:

  acid1 said:

Oh you know, back in the day with recycle you'd load some huge break into, adjust sensitivity, then change the temp up higher, then increase the pitch higher (so it would play the drum faster).

 

Same concept applies to the amen... its just a huge big blocky break that someone sped up and pitched up.

 

thats absolutely the wrong way to use recycle

if you arent slicing by hand you may as well just close the program and give up

and it doesn't take long

Might I point out that I said...

  acid1 said:

...back in the day...

Regardless who gives a fuck if someone still uses recycle, I got great results doing the above method and made tons of my own breaks that I still use to this day.

i had to wait until i was in a proper mood to write properly about this.

i guess i imagine a groove as a strand of possibilities all woven together, you hop around between them, time moving forward. you could call it collapsing the groove wave into a specific reality. take just playing a kick drum... not just four to the floor, but played by a real person, following the melody+chords. dynamic and lively... there are hundreds of good ways to play this kick drum part. just depends on how the musician opts to collapse the wave. no man does it alike.

when you have a lot of drums in the equation, turning it from a brick wall of drum hits into a refined product is a lot like solving the Tower Of Hanoi puzzle. i look at it as a process of continued optimization, recursively listening to the drum line, altering it, listening, altering... i try to remove as much as i can, while still leaving my groove intricate and detailed. i say, if i alter the timing within this measure, i can combine these three drum hits into two. i then apply that optimization to every measure. then i look at all the measures and say, hmm... i could just use one cymbal every two measures, instead of one per measure... and i delete two cymbals.

on and on like that. there's no real formula except practice, and if it doesn't belong with your groove, axe it.

  beneboi said:

kid, if you want your breaks clean, you need to focus on the decay of each individual hit so that you dont have them running over eachother

Clean breaks are the ultimate goal of every WATMMer, EKT or not...

Sorry.

Anyway, a quick and dirty way to achieve this is to throw a noise gate on it and mess with the threshhold till it sounds proper.

  hahathhat said:

sculpting is the process of removing the stone that does not belong.

right on.