Drill'n'Bass/IDM Beat Programming

Fuck all that new modern shit...

This is how you do it

this is my dream way to make beats...

  Kazuo said:

Now that everyone here talks about step sequencing and this stuff... is there a good software (PC) for a total newbie? I always worked with Cubase and Piano Roll but I agree that it does not really feel "natural" to do this sort of music with it.

I'd be really interested in trying out something new, a new approach to composing and editing... is there a software that combines step-sequencing and sampling/beatslicing?

 

EDIT: Just looked at the Renoise Homepage - looks pretty cool, maybe that's what I need! I guess I'll try the demo when I'm back home.

FRUITYLOOPS

  Paulie Walnuts said:

Go Plastic was the first album where he used a PC, running Logic - Everything sequenced with a Yamaha QY700, and processed with 2x Eventides - Logic used as a recording medium...

makes sense, the only thing that doesnt in that chain is the 2x Eventides part. I played a clip of go-plastic to someone who has owned an Eventide H-3000 for over 10 years, an Orville and just bought the new Eventide harmonizer (name escapes me) and he said that what Squarepusher does on that album with midi controlled effects switching and granular processing cannot be done on any eventide product. He may be wrong, but i seriously doubt he actually used eventides on his album, maybe in minor parts here and there, but im almost positive he used a lot of VST/computer dsp for that album.

where can i find the squarepusherizer ? a reaktor ensemble? will it work w/ reaktor session ?

  Velazquez said:

where can i find the squarepusherizer ? a reaktor ensemble? will it work w/ reaktor session ?

yes it will work with Session,

http://www.recordlabelrecords.org/reaktor.html , the 3rd patch down

unfortunately it has errors in Reaktor 5, so if you still have 4 stick with 4.

here is a demo song i made in under 20 minutes using this patch -

here is an actual complete song my friend made using squarepushizer for about 1/2 of the beats.

Thank you. I'm going to download right now.

  awepittance said:

  Velazquez said:

where can i find the squarepusherizer ? a reaktor ensemble? will it work w/ reaktor session ?

 

yes it will work with Session,

 

http://www.recordlabelrecords.org/reaktor.html , the 3rd patch down

 

unfortunately it has errors in Reaktor 5, so if you still have 4 stick with 4.

 

here is a demo song i made in under 20 minutes using this patch -

http://www.recordlabelrecords.org/MP3/LSD%...e%20pushing.mp3

 

here is an actual complete song my friend made using squarepushizer for about 1/2 of the beats.

http://www.recordlabelrecords.org/MP3/MIXD...MA%20HARRY3.mp3

  Velazquez said:

Thank you. I'm going to download right now.

if you want something for live performance check out

Live drum and bass tool, very fun and masturbatory to use.

Live drum and bass tool, more of a go-plasticerizer

also for instructions on how to use the squarepusherizer check out - http://www.recordlabelrecords.org/norcal/3...epusher%20).pdf

if you have any questions about its operation feel free to pm or ask here.

  awepittance said:

  Paulie Walnuts said:

 

 

Go Plastic was the first album where he used a PC, running Logic - Everything sequenced with a Yamaha QY700, and processed with 2x Eventides - Logic used as a recording medium...

 

makes sense, the only thing that doesnt in that chain is the 2x Eventides part. I played a clip of go-plastic to someone who has owned an Eventide H-3000 for over 10 years, an Orville and just bought the new Eventide harmonizer (name escapes me) and he said that what Squarepusher does on that album with midi controlled effects switching and granular processing cannot be done on any eventide product. He may be wrong, but i seriously doubt he actually used eventides on his album, maybe in minor parts here and there, but im almost positive he used a lot of VST/computer dsp for that album.

curious why you think he'd make that up

Once again thank you, I really appreciate it... now I can wow my friends with knob fuckery. I'll pm you once I get going w/ these ensembles? what sequencer do you use w/ reaktor? I have a 'version" of digital performer that doesn't recognise reaktor...

does anyone know of a good tutorial for building the worlds simplest step sequencer, that can trigger samples?

like an 8 step sequencer that can trigger a kick drum sample...

just want an easy start on reaktor.

  tauboo said:

curious why you think he'd make that up

i admit i am very cynical when it comes to what equipment artists claim to use. But i am especially cynical when aphex's friends say what equipment they use (due to aphex and his hobby of bullshitting with interviewers claiming things like building his own synths and samplers ....while he may have built 1 or 2 in his time, he used to give the impression that ALL of his equipment was home made). And i think aritsts have the tendecy to only talk about what hardware they own rather than the software they use. Software still has an amateur/uncool asthetic to some people/music producers. In fact most music producers i talk to have the impression that software is inferior to hardware.

Im not saying he didnt use Eventides on Go Plastic. What i am saying is that all of the effects i am hearing on the album do not sound like an Eventide processor to me, they sound like specifc VST plugins. I have a feeling that while he did use eventides for minor things like reverbs, i think he chose to leave out what VST plugs he used in fear of seeming uncool or too close in practice to "bedroom" music producers. Things like Kyma ($3000+) and Eventide processors ($5000+) are out of reach for most amateur music producers, and i think it kind of adds an allure to a musicians image when they claim to use them.

here is an example of what i mean - Richard Devine always throws out the fact that he owns a Kyma, uses super collider, and Csound in his music.

However when i asked him about it in person it was as if he had never used a kyma, super collider, or csound ever before, it was almost as if he "forgot" that he said that in various interviews, and had a blank look on his face.

  blicero said:

does anyone know of a good tutorial for building the worlds simplest step sequencer, that can trigger samples?

 

 

like an 8 step sequencer that can trigger a kick drum sample...

 

just want an easy start on reaktor.

i wouldnt bother with building a sequencer from scratch unless you intend to reinvent the wheel for your own educational purposes.

unfortunately Reaktor 4 and 5 come with no good basic patches, its all flashy shit.

Reaktor 3 however comes with over 100 patches for basic things like - 16 step sequencer, 8 step sequencer, cutoff/resonance filter, etc

if you want this library of patches you must have a a R3 2 R4 conversion crack for Reaktor 4, a Reaktor 3 dongle, or Reaktor 3 cracked.

Let me know if you just want the sequencer, i can convert it for you and post it here.

  Velazquez said:

Once again thank you, I really appreciate it... now I can wow my friends with knob fuckery. I'll pm you once I get going w/ these ensembles? what sequencer do you use w/ reaktor? I have a 'version" of digital performer that doesn't recognise reaktor...

i use only Cubase sx 2 or Nuendo for my reaktor sequencing. Ocassionally ill play with Ableton + reaktor but i prefer Cubase.

The squarepushizer is designed for both host sequencing mode and stand-alone mode. So you should be able to just load Session and the patch and start maiking beats right away.

You find it w/ a lot of visual artists citing influence who have no visual bearing on their work, almost like a smokescreen.

  awepittance said:

  tauboo said:

 

curious why you think he'd make that up

 

i admit i am very cynical when it comes to what equipment artists claim to use. But i am especially cynical when aphex's friends say what equipment they use (due to aphex and his hobby of bullshitting with interviewers claiming things like building his own synths and samplers (while he may have built 1 or 2 in his time, he used to give the impression that ALL of his equipment was home made). And i think aritsts have the tendecy to only talk about what hardware they own rather than the software they use. Software still has an amateur/uncool asthetic to some people/music producers. In fact most music producers i talk to have the impression that software is inferior to hardware.

Im not saying he didnt use Eventides on Go Plastic. What i am saying is that all of the effects i am hearing on the album do not sound like an Eventide processor to me, they sound like specifc VST plugins. I have a feeling that while he did use eventides for minor things like reverbs, i think he chose to leave out what VST plugs he used in fear of seeming uncool or too close in practice to "bedroom" music producers.

 

here is an example of what i mean - Richard Devine always throws out the fact that he owns a Kyma, uses super collider, and Csound in his music.

However when i asked him about it in person it was as if he had never used a kyma, super collider, or csound ever before

  awepittance said:

  Paulie Walnuts said:

 

 

Go Plastic was the first album where he used a PC, running Logic - Everything sequenced with a Yamaha QY700, and processed with 2x Eventides - Logic used as a recording medium...

 

makes sense, the only thing that doesnt in that chain is the 2x Eventides part. I played a clip of go-plastic to someone who has owned an Eventide H-3000 for over 10 years, an Orville and just bought the new Eventide harmonizer (name escapes me) and he said that what Squarepusher does on that album with midi controlled effects switching and granular processing cannot be done on any eventide product. He may be wrong, but i seriously doubt he actually used eventides on his album, maybe in minor parts here and there, but im almost positive he used a lot of VST/computer dsp for that album.

Yeah, I don't think you can do much in the way of MIDI triggered fx with the H-3000 (although you can crossfade and switch fx with foot pedals and things), but all the DSP series (I've got a 4500 which has most the same presets as the Orville) can do absolutely anything... It's completely modular... When you construct an fx patch you can go right down to the add and div circuits - any MIDI controller can trigger anything, you can have it annalyze the pitch it's hearing, have that control the diffusion level, maybe cross-reference it with the MIDI key being played, and trigger a deep space drone noise every time you deviant more than 50 cents...

They're insanely complicated... You can certainly have MIDI keys/controllers triggers and manipulating fx with a flexibility you don't even get in Max/MSP... Of course, the Eventide's signiture patches sound like $6million reverbs and choruses - but because you can take it down to the rawest maths and diffusors, you can easily program fx that sound completely dry and clinical - like Max/C-Sound... There's a lot of raw, building-block fx patches in it... The real standard DSP code it uses is the same stuff you get in software on the whole, just with much more power behind it, more oversampling, less aliasing, etc... To me, it's just a very powerful Max/MSP come Reaktor thing with a few extremely slick algorithms.

However, I'm not sure he'd do it that way - I get the impression he's more the kind of guy who'd record a number of runs with different settings, and then splice them together...

Yeah, I don't trust a word Rich Devine says - he's just after publicity.. and tbh, he's done remarkably well with it! But guys like Autechre, []pusher, etc... you can just tell where they're coming from... Ceefax clearly has the same ideas about tape and h/w sequencing... People who're into that kind of thing can never shut up about it - it's quite an obsessive, much more direct interface with the music...

eventide fx patch

  Paulie Walnuts said:

Yeah, I don't think you can do much in the way of MIDI triggered fx with the H-3000 (although you can crossfade and switch fx with foot pedals and things), but all the DSP series (I've got a 4500 which has most the same presets as the Orville) can do absolutely anything... It's completely modular... When you construct an fx patch you can go right down to the add and div circuits - any MIDI controller can trigger anything, you can have it annalyze the pitch it's hearing, have that control the diffusion level, maybe cross-reference it with the MIDI key being played, and trigger a deep space drone noise every time you deviant more than 50 cents...

 

They're insanely complicated... You can certainly have MIDI keys/controllers triggers and manipulating fx with a flexibility you don't even get in Max/MSP...

interesting because at namm i pounded the Eventide sales team for literally 30 minutes on how to midi control the parameters of any of their effects units. They acted like it was a very minor feature, and that it couldnt do what i wanted to do with it. But if you have a 4500, and your able to do that type of shit on it i have no reason to doubt you. Id love to hear some output of it sometimes, have you made any tracks utilizing the 4500?

and its definitly possible squarepusher ran loops/pieces of his song through multiple effects passes, recorded those as audio, and then just spliced the audio together. On stuff like the Do you know squarepusher album it sounds like hes using software effect parameter automation though. there is one song off Do you know squarepusher that might be eventide harmonizer preset usage. Its the really glitchy stutter song, i forgot the title but it sounds like Squarepusher doing gantz graf.

  aeser said:

  Paulie Walnuts said:

There's a good 4-page Renoise break programming tutorial coming on in the Covert Ops' forum http://cov-ops.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3305

 

http://cov-ops.co.uk/forum/

 

need to register - half the ppl who post there seem to be well-known dnb/electronic music producers, so lots of good advice about for anyone interested...

 

and you bash notes into a step sequencer - never draw... drawing uses up too much energy

 

 

there appears to be no way to register on that forum at the moment.

Maybe its the same by conner_bw there: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/11/13/182235/45

simple, but really good to start with.

^^ Yeah, that's a good guide using the 900 offset... Normally, when you get more experienced with trackers you probably move away from that technique more, and start manually slicing - I know that's how it went for me... The 900 command is incredibly fast, but never quite as tight.

awepittance: Yeah, here's a wierd patch I made when I first got it, it's noise fed into some random assorted attempts at delays and feedback loops... Controlled by the pitch and mod wheels on my keyboard... But really I was (still am tbh) stabbing in the dark even getting this thing to make a sound... I can't imagine where people find the time to get good at this stuff - I haven't got mine hooked up to the PC so I have to program it the hard way - there's 1000's of presets tho, so you can get away with not being very adventurous.

I think if you're working between hardware and software, then there's nothing better than a Harmonizer to own... It happens to have world-beating A/D conversion (better than I've heard in any soundcard) - it's not just transparent, it sort of imparts a very slick, Hollywood movie kind of quality to audio... Very subtle on its own, but in the context of a track, it gives you a very unique sound... Vladislav Delay does almost everything with an Orville and a microphone nowadays.

When I'm working more native, it's sometimes a hassle to route everything through the Eventide, so I often stick to plug-ins... But in general, it's really only convolution plug's like Waves Q-Clone which offer anything the Eventide can't... and when it comes to really warping sounds, I still don't feel like there's enough freedom in software, unless you want to get your hands dirty with Max/MSP or the like... Again, the Harmonizer's a lot like Max, only you've got more modules and they also give you self-contained modules, which makes difficult programming much easier - like studio-quality diffusor algorithms and very DSP intense EQ's and things...

event2.mp3Fetching info...

  Paulie Walnuts said:

^^ Yeah, that's a good guide using the 900 offset... Normally, when you get more experienced with trackers you probably move away from that technique more, and start manually slicing - I know that's how it went for me... The 900 command is incredibly fast, but never quite as tight.

 

awepittance: Yeah, here's a wierd patch I made when I first got it, it's noise fed into some random assorted attempts at delays and feedback loops... Controlled by the pitch and mod wheels on my keyboard... But really I was (still am tbh) stabbing in the dark even getting this thing to make a sound... I can't imagine where people find the time to get good at this stuff - I haven't got mine hooked up to the PC so I have to program it the hard way - there's 1000's of presets tho, so you can get away with not being very adventurous.

 

 

I think if you're working between hardware and software, then there's nothing better than a Harmonizer to own... It happens to have world-beating A/D conversion (better than I've heard in any soundcard) - it's not just transparent, it sort of imparts a very slick, Hollywood movie kind of quality to audio... Very subtle on its own, but in the context of a track, it gives you a very unique sound... Vladislav Delay does almost everything with an Orville and a microphone nowadays.

 

When I'm working more native, it's sometimes a hassle to route everything through the Eventide, so I often stick to plug-ins... But in general, it's really only convolution plug's like Waves Q-Clone which offer anything the Eventide can't... and when it comes to really warping sounds, I still don't feel like there's enough freedom in software, unless you want to get your hands dirty with Max/MSP or the like... Again, the Harmonizer's a lot like Max, only you've got more modules and they also give you self-contained modules, which makes difficult programming much easier - like studio-quality diffusor algorithms and very DSP intense EQ's and things...

sounds good. I definitly agree that most vst plugs are extremely limited in comparison to the Eventide, thats what i mostly stick with Reaktor, Kyma, maxmsp and the Eventide-like plugin packs (grm tools, Hyperprism, and pluggo). Although in all honesty i think Cooledit Pro still has some of the most powerful effects processing capabilities of anything i have ever used, software or hardware.

Really the main ingredient it takes for making all that complex shit is patience.

  $$$Celatid said:

Really the main ingredient it takes for making all that complex shit is patience.

venetian snares patiently writes software to make the complex shit for him while he goes out for a smoke.

j/k

how much am i looking at shelling out for a sftware eventide?

or a hardware eventide for that matter?

i' liking the look of the 8000, but i'm finding marketing details difficult to locate

You can get the Eventide H3000-series delays and pitch shifting in Pro Tools tdm format now - but, even for a mid-80's fx unit, they eat HUGE amounts of resources... You can buy an H3000 for about £700 s/h... so it's not really saving any money and you don't get the Eventide convertors, which I think are a big part of the sound.

Richard Devine uses the H3000 and Orville as his core fx processing to the best of my knowledge.

You can get the new Eclipse, which is a sort of preset module, for around £1,000 - it's tricky knowing whether to advise that above a Lexicon tbh... To get into the Eventide takes serious work - you really need to download the VSIG PC editing software and get on a very technical forum or newsground... It's quite daunting... Most DSP models will set you back at least £3,000 new, sometimes closer to £6,000... They're cheaper in the US though.

Bargains pop up every now and again, I got mine for next to nothing - a friend of mine got his Orville for £700 - those kinds of deals don't come along often.

It's NOT an easy way to get glitched beats and wierdness, it's basically a heavy, bomb-proof metal box, with a minimal interface, and a ridiculously powerful array of DSP's which can be made to do almost anything if you don't mind spending half your life staring at it...

The modern Eventides are something like 64-128x more powerful than the H3000's, but even a single H3000 pitchshift algorithm eats up a Pro Tools TDM unit - so it shows the kind of number crunching you're talking about... You can even feel the big metal dial on the front vibrating when it's switched on...

A Lexicon is a much more effective studio tool in many ways - You can make a simple reverb, chorus patch in a matter of seconds - and no one's going to complain about Lexicon quality... I don't even think of the Eventide as an fx processor tbh - it's actually a lot of effort to make a reverb + chorus patch... Don't buy one unless you absolutely know you need it.

  Paulie Walnuts said:

You can get the Eventide H3000-series delays and pitch shifting in Pro Tools tdm format now - but, even for a mid-80's fx unit, they eat HUGE amounts of resources... You can buy an H3000 for about £700 s/h... so it's not really saving any money and you don't get the Eventide convertors, which I think are a big part of the sound.

 

Richard Devine uses the H3000 and Orville as his core fx processing to the best of my knowledge.

 

You can get the new Eclipse, which is a sort of preset module, for around £1,000 - it's tricky knowing whether to advise that above a Lexicon tbh... To get into the Eventide takes serious work - you really need to download the VSIG PC editing software and get on a very technical forum or newsground... It's quite daunting... Most DSP models will set you back at least £3,000 new, sometimes closer to £6,000... They're cheaper in the US though.

 

Bargains pop up every now and again, I got mine for next to nothing - a friend of mine got his Orville for £700 - those kinds of deals don't come along often.

 

It's NOT an easy way to get glitched beats and wierdness, it's basically a heavy, bomb-proof metal box, with a minimal interface, and a ridiculously powerful array of DSP's which can be made to do almost anything if you don't mind spending half your life staring at it...

 

The modern Eventides are something like 64-128x more powerful than the H3000's, but even a single H3000 pitchshift algorithm eats up a Pro Tools TDM unit - so it shows the kind of number crunching you're talking about... You can even feel the big metal dial on the front vibrating when it's switched on...

 

A Lexicon is a much more effective studio tool in many ways - You can make a simple reverb, chorus patch in a matter of seconds - and no one's going to complain about Lexicon quality... I don't even think of the Eventide as an fx processor tbh - it's actually a lot of effort to make a reverb + chorus patch... Don't buy one unless you absolutely know you need it.

i'm not daunted by it.

i don't want instant glitch either... most of my posts on the subject advise against it.

i read the specs and was suitably impressed.

question is, is it actually worth the money, in terms of return in sound quality, acoustic environments, multi programmable quad delays etc...?

squarepusher does his thing, i do mine.