Process Beats For Breaks

Hi guys. Once again im experimenting with making my own breaks. These 2 albums brought me to breaks 10 years ago and since they are among my favorite breaks:

Adam Freeland - Coastal Breaks

Omar Santana - Battle For Planet Of The Breaks

...punchy, rough, dirty, but at the same time totally beautiful breaks (no more like that nowdays). After asking how to make breaks like that, many people insisted that it would be impossible to make such breaks with software and that the only way to go is hardware:

"you need hardware. sorry to say. software won't do shit to be honest.

you need either an old akai sampler like an s900 s950. or get an old tape deck and record stuff hot"

Would you agree on that, or good rough breaks could be made using software? Id love to buy a hardware sampler but thats something very far away from my financial status, so im trying to find various solutions to have the results that i wish for.

What do you usually like to put your beats through to make breaks? Id love to hear your techniques if you are willing to share them. Also if you use a drum machine (apart from 70's breaks samples) which one would that be? Ive tried using D16 Group Drumazon VSTi plug which is an emulator of the Roland TR-909 but i didnt like the result very much. Thank you all in advance

If you're looking for that "punchy, rough, dirty sound I would suggest taking breaks from low quality youtube videos. The youtube quality should give you the "rough and dirty" and to add the "punchy" run the breaks through a compressor. Hope this helps

hardware samplers are really cheap, bud.

If you're looking for great breaks, check out this album that John McEntire did with the other drummer from Tortoise under the name Bumps.

http://boomkat.com/vinyl/38311-bumps-tortoise-raw-drums-breaks-beats

That should restore your faith in modern drum breaks.

That's why i have faith in this wonderful forum :) Thank you DerWaschbar, your info was invaluable. After reading about Decimort, Im just starting to realize why old school breaks have this specific sound. it turns out that it was thanks "...to the encoding techniques, lower sample rates, lower bit rate and conversion circuits which these early samplers used". At least i know this now. You know, sometimes when somebody asks peculiar questions like that, many people think that it is meant to be as "how to write "techo", "how to write "IDM" or "how to write this" and "that". But i believe that the passion, and will to gain knowledge about various techniques of making music, gives a sign of pure artistic approach. Otherwise it would be a lot easier just to drop in ready tweaked and cooked break samples. And its even harder when there is nobody around to learn from, a fellow or something. and you have to learn everything that is essential for making good music on your own. everything step by step, so you dont miss anything, having as your guide the music that lives inside you, and forums like this, where some good fellows might give you a piece of info, something that if not totally fulfill the answer that you wish for, but in my opinion give you the most important thing of all - inspiration

PS: thanks Wall Bird, im checking these breaks. looks tasty :)

It's really possible to acheive dirty beat only with software, try to use saturators to make sound dirtier and chain of transient shaper, compressor and gate to make it punchier. All of this you can find in iZotope Alloy plugin.

If you are using Ableton, take a drum loop, practice warping it to get your swing. Then slice to MIDI so you can rearrange. Finally, add the bit reducer, saturator and some compression.

Since no one's mentioned it, layer your breaks.

Try layering two breaks that each have a different character. Try one from the '60s with lots of room-sound and character against something a lot cleaner - maybe something close-mic'd from the late '70s. Chop them up and layer the identical parts (kick, snare, light snare, light kick etc.). Make sure the samples start in such a way that you won't get weird flamming. It kind of sounds cool if you mute one break or the other break on some parts of your song too. You can hear this done in everything from the Chemical Brothers to Boards of Canada.

Cleaner drum machine sounds work as well to layer with breaks - tr-606 hi-hats, tr-909 open hi-hats, kicks and snares, and of course the tr-808 kick. On both the releases you posted you hear this probably on every track.

Bit crushers, distortion, and even amp modeling will help you dirty up your breaks. Compression will help you "glue" your sounds together and control dynamics.

Also if you're using a standard DAW, look into groove templates for your midi parts. I like to quantize with templates based of the Akai MPC-60. Some things are best left unquantized though to stay loose. You can also create midi parts from a breakbeat and use that (this is easy in Cubase and Fruitloops and probably a lot of other DAWs).

My opinion is hardware analog synths are more important for this type of music than hardware samplers, which can be frustrating to use if you're used to software samplers.

hi there

ToneBoosters have got some nice vsts to add some patina..

http://www.toneboosters.com/tb-ferox/

http://www.toneboosters.com/tb-timemachine/

and working rather well..

cheers,

io

p.s.: Ohmforce Frohmage also does a good job on "dirtying things up"

I have no experience in making / processing breaks with hardware, but these are the software solutions I can suggest you :

- Their BitCrusher have already been suggested here, but they also made a distorsion plugin that kicks ass : D16's Devastor. Not so easy to use but take a little time to experiment with it and to read the manual and you'll have a crazy tool in your hands.

- I didn't understand if your question is also about composing breaks from original breaks, anyway, I'd just like to say that I wonder if one day I'll find a tool that'll allow me to have such a control over rhythm and breaks effects like Renoise do.

- Also, as it's been suggesting, layering sounds is often a good way to get some punch and a more complex timbre. I usually do that a lot with drums samples from old breaks + synthesized sounds or sounds I've sampled in a studio or outdoor.