Drill'n'Bass/IDM Beat Programming

Hello folks...

I switched from Battery to manual audio track programming in Cubase because it was nearly impossible to chop and edit the sounds as I wanted via MIDI and Mixer automation but I'm experiencing that the basic beat programming is a lot easier to me on a MIDI track... How do you program your drums in Drill'n'Bass-style tracks? Do you use hardware samplers? What effects are you working with?

  Kazuo said:

How do you program your drums in Drill'n'Bass-style tracks?

it depends on my mood. Most of the time i end up cutting up audio tracks with quanitize on, and basically treat each drum hit slice as a i would a midi note in a midi sequence. In cubase when i want to do rolls or stutters by hand ill just copy and paste a slice i want multiple times after itself.

other times i will use a real-time beat slicer like the Fruity slicer or "phatmatik pro" or even Intakt (rarely) to load in a drum loop or even a long drum solo and trigger the slices with midi notes/patterns.

  Kazuo said:

Do you use hardware samplers?

never, mpcs are fun to use but i find it much easier to use software especially for drill and bass style music.

  Kazuo said:

What effects are you working with?

all drill effects i achieve by using Reaktor's fastfx, limelite, Reversi, Fragmenter and my own patch the Squarepusherizer. A lot of people like using a vst plug called "buffer overide" for stutters, it has a really Go plastic-ish squarepusher sound to it. If you want the easiest most masturbatory short cut effect for drill and bass, check out the VST called "Glitch". Run an amen break through that and you basically have a venetian snares interlude.

if you want a really easy way out for drum programming check out Squarepusherizer (www.recordlabelrecords.org/reaktor.html) it takes a drum loop and creates drum and bass patterns out of it.

  awepittance said:

Most of the time i end up cutting up audio tracks with quanitize on, and basically treat each drum hit slice as a i would a midi note in a midi sequence. In cubase when i want to do rolls or stutters by hand ill just copy and paste a slice i want multiple times after itself.

That's the way I work, too.

  awepittance said:

other times i will use a real-time beat slicer like the Fruity slicer or "phatmatik pro" or even Intakt (rarely) to load in a drum loop or even a long drum solo and trigger the slices with midi notes/patterns.

Do you know a good, simple freeware VSTi which allows me to load an audio file, set the slices manually and trigger them via MIDI?

  awepittance said:

all drill effects i achieve by using Reaktor's fastfx, limelite, Reversi, Fragmenter and my own patch the Squarepusherizer. A lot of people like using a vst plug called "buffer overide" for stutters, it has a really Go plastic-ish squarepusher sound to it. If you want the easiest most masturbatory short cut effect for drill and bass, check out the VST called "Glitch". Run an amen break through that and you basically have a venetian snares interlude.

 

if you want a really easy way out for drum programming check out Squarepusherizer (www.recordlabelrecords.org/reaktor.html) it takes a drum loop and creates drum and bass patterns out of it.

Thanks! I'll try out the buffer-override-thingy, sounds interesting to me.

just curious, why would you want to learn something thats being used and overused by thousands already..

I don't intend to imitate a certain style or sound, it's just that I haven't found my "perfect" way of drum programming yet and I thought that maybe I could learn something from others who are more experienced.

i recommend you try 1 of 2 approaches:

1) load individual drum samples (kick,snares,etc) in a software drum machine or sampler, and then draw midi notes...

OR

2) load a drum loop into ReCycle and then load the rex file into a sampler and draw midi notes...

whatever you do, don't be a sell out and use a cheat VST like supatrigga or the squarepusherizer. it'll show. that's one of the things that slightly ruined part of the acid hooligan ep from 168.1 for me (although for a project where time is very limited, shortcuts are necessary).

it's like using cheezy photoshop fx. most people can spot the laziness a mile away.

  Quote

1) load individual drum samples (kick,snares,etc) in a software drum machine or sampler, and then draw midi notes...

Well, that's what I did for a long time. My current technique is to place the drumsamples on normal audio tracks and program the drums in the arranger window of Cubase. The advantage is that you can easily group the samples, bounce them, chop beats and apply individual effects to the drumhits. I just wanted to know how other people do those things. Squarepusher for example claims to use mainly hardware samplers and I can't really imagine how he did a track like "My Red Hot Car" with a MIDI-controlled hardware sampler.

  Kazuo said:

  Quote

1) load individual drum samples (kick,snares,etc) in a software drum machine or sampler, and then draw midi notes...

Well, that's what I did for a long time. My current technique is to place the drumsamples on normal audio tracks and program the drums in the arranger window of Cubase. The advantage is that you can easily group the samples, bounce them, chop beats and apply individual effects to the drumhits. I just wanted to know how other people do those things. Squarepusher for example claims to use mainly hardware samplers and I can't really imagine how he did a track like "My Red Hot Car" with a MIDI-controlled hardware sampler.

why not? it's no different than using a software sampler like Kompakt or the NN-XT in Reason.

Yes, but how could you do all the cuts and effects with a MIDI-triggered sampler (no matter if hardware or software)?

There is practically no part in the song (except of the beginning) where he just triggers drumsounds, everything is chopped and messed up (in a positive sense).

one thing you can do is render the whole midi-sequenced drum-track and apply effects, reverse, re-arrange bits, etc. in a wave editor. then do that again with the whole track to make it extra crrazy, and you can copy + paste little bits of the track too.

  Kazuo said:

Yes, but how could you do all the cuts and effects with a MIDI-triggered sampler (no matter if hardware or software)?

There is practically no part in the song (except of the beginning) where he just triggers drumsounds, everything is chopped and messed up (in a positive sense).

i see your point. On Go-plastic he definitly used a computer. Big loada im not so sure, but his early stuff is almost devoid of quick effect edits. The only effects are sequencing tricks.

  Kazuo said:

Yes, but how could you do all the cuts and effects with a MIDI-triggered sampler (no matter if hardware or software)?

There is practically no part in the song (except of the beginning) where he just triggers drumsounds, everything is chopped and messed up (in a positive sense).

i'd imagine that part of it is done by processing the samples in real time using fx, some of the samples are effected before triggering, and some is post production audio editing.

  blicero said:

whatever you do, don't be a sell out and use a cheat VST like supatrigga or the squarepusherizer. it'll show. that's one of the things that slightly ruined part of the acid hooligan ep from 168.1 for me (although for a project where time is very limited, shortcuts are necessary).

What ruined acid hooligan for you exactly? I've never heard of supatrigga, what is that?

and have you tried playing with Squarepusherizer before? It has 2 different modes, random beat generation and manual sequencing.

the basic concept of it is it loads a drum loop and automatically stretches it to the length of a measure in your host sequencer (according to tempo)

then from here it divides the loop evenly into 8 or 16 segments. Each segment can be retriggered with midi, internal 16 step sequencer, or (what makes it cheating) a random pattern generator. It can be used in a manual way as opposed to automatic.... in other words, dont knock it till you try it this way :wink2:

  blicero said:

it's like using cheezy photoshop fx. most people can spot the laziness a mile away.

i would usually agree with this, but most people cannot spot the laziness a mile away. In fact id say at best 2% of electronic music music listening audience can accurately recognize an obscure preset/vst. I hear people say "oh yeah thats DEFINITELY buffer override" but most of them have no fucking clue and are just bullshitting.

it may or may not surprisyou that artists like Venetian Snares, and Exile have made similar patches to Squarepushizer for their own music.

  awepittance said:

What ruined acid hooligan for you exactly? I've never heard of supatrigga, what is that?

listen to the end of 'Diazepam Comedown Sound', the repeats, pitch/speed dives, stutters, rearragements... all supatrigga (http://bram.smartelectronix.com/plugins.php?id=6)

  awepittance said:

and have you tried playing with Squarepusherizer before?

i have not... i did not realize it could be used any way but randomly. i apologize.

  awepittance said:

i would usually agree with this, but most people cannot spot the laziness a mile away. In fact id say at best 2% of electronic music music listening audience can accurately recognize an obscure preset/vst. I hear people say "oh yeah thats DEFINITELY buffer override" but most of them have no fucking clue and are just bullshitting.

this is definitely true. some laziness is much easier to spot.

re: Exile, et al...

i do believe if you create the patch/plug-in, it's fine. there's nothing lazy about writing your own music software.

Do it all...

Start by...

programming patterns using a sampler and oneshots

bounce to several audio copies of each pattern using different effects each time (and of course a clean version)

chop into various sizes...8ths, 16ths, 32nds.

From here you can go different directions...you could make another kit out of your chopped pattern or you could audio cut and paste micro edit along your sequencer timeline...(ableton is amazing for this)

once you work out your arrangment and lay down a complete drum track go back through and add more edits cuts and chops

its often usefull to have two or three copies of your drum track each slightly offset maybe, or one with the dry drums other with various fx

cut it up between the two or three slightly different rhythm tracks

bounce to a single track

edit some more

load up some sends (as pres) with various effects

cut between sending your drum track through the different sends at precise times...sometimes a mix of the track and the send effect...sometimes cut the the drum track to only get the send effect

bounce again

cut again

keep going until you are pleased

play with your routing

I like to use battery (or impulse x2) with 12-16 mono outputs in ableton

My rhythms template auto loads with battery on a midi channel and 12-16 audio channels each with 1 of the battery outputs routed to it

Also you might want to consider developing an obsessive compulsive disorder.

  blicero said:

  awepittance said:

What ruined acid hooligan for you exactly? I've never heard of supatrigga, what is that?

 

listen to the end of 'Diazepam Comedown Sound', the repeats, pitch/speed dives, stutters, rearragements... all supatrigga (http://bram.smartelectronix.com/plugins.php?id=6)

interesting, can this plugin not be used tastefully? Or is it when it is "abused" do you find it distasteful? I may be wrong (since ive never used this vst) but i usually find even plugins of this nature if used sparingly and with restraint they can improve a beat. Glitch is an exception because it basically makes a full drill song for you. The description of Supatrigga sounds like Go plastic. If that album came out in 2006 would you think it used supa trigga and thus be turned off from it?

im updating squarepusherizer soon with a lot more customizable options, please check it out if you have a chance!

edit: just listened to 05_mosca_diazepam.mp3, i definitly know what you mean. still a very catchy ep though.

I midi it all, sometimes render one loop and chop a bit for a different feel on a fill.

  Kazuo said:

Hello folks...

I switched from Battery to manual audio track programming in Cubase because it was nearly impossible to chop and edit the sounds as I wanted via MIDI and Mixer automation but I'm experiencing that the basic beat programming is a lot easier to me on a MIDI track... How do you program your drums in Drill'n'Bass-style tracks? Do you use hardware samplers? What effects are you working with?

Same way as you. Cubase key editor. Every other way is totally unworkable.

it's odd...

i used to do it all as samples, no midi. edit samples in soundforge and than cut and paste.

now i'm pretty much exclusively doing it with midi

cubase audio track => hitpoints <3

propably most effective drumslicing ever, as you can timestretch and/or reverse and/or prosess invidual slices with vst fx without affecting other slices

i find cubase hitpoints to be annoying

i used to do everything by hand with a keyboard and an MPC, then re arrange the MIDI and add some glitches, all WITHOUT quanitzation, mix it down, add audio fuck ups (VST, reverse, etc.) by hand (listen to the first song on my p168 ep, 'act like you know').

then i started painting in MIDI shit with cubase, but the quantization was a biatch...at most id quanitze little sections id select.

for a while i was doing lots of paint-only drums, (if i'm on a train or something thats really my only choice) but i think paint-in drums lack a certain humanity...esp in terms of release times...now i like to turn release all the way down so i have full control over the drum (mfdoom does this, listen to the first song on my new p168 ep for how this sounds)

i love breakcore and glitchy music, but i dont find it that fufilling to make. i'm not smart enough to invent something cool like the squarepushizer or whatevs, so i just focus on what i AM good at, ie sample arrangement and general production.

i'll never understand how people can make beats with a tracker.

i used to do it with a hardware sampler (emu e4xt ultra) and still do sometimes but i mainly use kontakt now and use peak to chop the breaks up to individual hits then lay them out in digital performer on the drum editor and go apeshit with the clicking. before i used to just load them up into the emu and edit them in the emu. which is considerably more time consuming but other than that not bad.

drawing midi data in cubase --> sampler (all one shots), or

rendering those midi tracks and splicing them up for added precision fx wise, or

writing midi sequences on the rm1x, sending them to my pc and do all kinds of stuff with it in cubase , or

tapping them in with a midi keyboard or with the pads of my rm1x, or

using renoise for general mayhem, especially for sequencing breaks quickly. + a combination of each of those methods (for example, rm1x via renoise into a loopback, feeded into cubase for more mangeling or rewiring renoise with cubase or using a midi keyboard to write sequences in the rm1x etc^2)

oh yea ... i forgot :D ... HITPOINTS then DIVIDE AUDIO at HITPONTS

cause i dont like them either... but you can use them to slice up your audio