getting "swing" on drums

And if you use straight up the swing function it always sounds off to me. Hence not bothering. What you said was a good idea though, and I've done stuff like that before, but yeah, not in search of swing, but groove. Which is like you say.

There is an idea in bebop whereby the slower the tempo, the "harder" the swing, and the faster the tempo, the more even the 8ths (or 16ths) become.

So this would mean at 80bpm the swing is more dotted-8th-plus-16th than triplet-based swing/shuffle, and at 300bpm you'd just have even-8ths...and try to imagine a smooth gradation everywhere in between.

...unless of course you want a New Jack Swing sorta feel...

That isn't a bad idea Limpy.. Maybe record a rhythm at a very slow tempo, and attempt to really give it loads of swing, very exaggerated like...

then speed it up and hear how it sounds?

i think you probably should just leave this thread now and go walk around on the EAST side and see if you can absorb some riddim...

Yeah Limpy, I tend to swing less in faster tracks, or sections. Something i've noticed. Faster things just sound more mechanical.

I'm trying to imagine how one could couple BPM with swing % using software, so that you could automate the tempo and have the swing % follow

...not because it'd be useful in itself, but rather because that would enable some much cooler shit

Any ideas?

  On 3/3/2016 at 1:35 AM, LimpyLoo said:

I'm trying to imagine how one could couple BPM with swing % using software, so that you could automate the tempo and have the swing % follow

 

...not because it'd be useful in itself, but rather because that would enable some much cooler shit

 

Any ideas?

not really sure if i understood you correctly but in reaper you have the swing option on the piano roll, not a quantize function, it's really a swing function that you select and you get to resize the grid just by grabbing on it and sliding or by selecting the percentage... then, f you sped up or slow down the bpm of the song, the swing will respond accordingly...

unless you're talking about automating the % of the swing, is that it?

this is a pretty cool function btw, only found out about it a few days ago, by accident... i believe you can do this in live too...

^^ Lol, at that point it's just called fucking up

I use (an old version of) Cubase so there's no swing % or anything like that

Just different subdivisions for the grid

I should really look into more "producer-y" DAW

(P.S. I want a DAW with quintuplet subdivisions

I always have to just eye-ball that shit)

Number one, don't be afraid to go off the grid if stuck on a piano roll/midi scroll. It gets said a lot, but it's really true - humans can be really close to perfect, but not sequencer timing perfect... so it makes sense to human it up and make it a tad sloppy for effect sometimes. Turning the tempo way down and programming via playing with yon' fingers on an MPC type pad and then speeding the track back up for playback can be very groovy if you know how to play drums/finger drum. Also, when using old gear, I've found that if I juggle around my swing % settings or shuffle on the machines/sequencers when they're all linked together that I can get a chunky and human-like sound from pretty basic drum patterns. It's really all about using your ears, timing and 'finding the pocket' is something that escapes most musicians I've worked with. Close them eyes and listen, bob your head and groove out, if it's not right, it'll stick out like a green apple in a bin of red delicious. Repeat until sufficiently groovy. Groovy.

A friend is lending me his electronic drum-kit as he has no room in his studio apartment for it, going to get that all triggah'ed up and mapped up for midi use in Live. I can play things that would take me ages to program in a take or two, at least clean enough to work with. I tried it when he had it set up and man was it fun to have control of groove and velocity when smacking out a break, made it so much more chunk-ified.

Sometimes dudes who over-use the swing thing (admit it, sometimes Flying Lotus' drums piss you off for sounding like they have the timing of a spazzed child... he just happens to make it work for him, no disrespect, just sayin')

P.s. change your metronome sound to a sample of a slightly swung 1/8th note or 1/16th note, I'm always amazed at hot people can listen to the BEEP BOOP BOOP BOOP over and over again. Admittedly, I stole that idea from some producer that worked with U2, tried it out and never looked back. Recording with a click track reminds me of being back in drum corps.

  On 3/3/2016 at 1:35 AM, LimpyLoo said:

I'm trying to imagine how one could couple BPM with swing % using software, so that you could automate the tempo and have the swing % follow

 

...not because it'd be useful in itself, but rather because that would enable some much cooler shit

 

Any ideas?

I'm pretty sure I could set something like this up in bitwig... (will have to try some time)

  On 3/3/2016 at 5:02 AM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

 

  On 3/3/2016 at 1:35 AM, LimpyLoo said:

I'm trying to imagine how one could couple BPM with swing % using software, so that you could automate the tempo and have the swing % follow

 

...not because it'd be useful in itself, but rather because that would enable some much cooler shit

 

Any ideas?

 

you could do this pretty easily in max4live if you made it delay notes by a fixed ms time instead of one that is relative to tempo.

 

could make a gate with 4 outlets that loops around on each beat and set a manual delay time on the second and fourth outlets.

 

Except that would increase the swing percentage as the BPM increases.

  On 3/3/2016 at 4:03 AM, LimpyLoo said:

I use (an old version of) Cubase so there's no swing % or anything like that

Just different subdivisions for the grid

I should really look into more "producer-y" DAW

(P.S. I want a DAW with quintuplet subdivisions

I always have to just eye-ball that shit)

i want that too, in the meantime, make a 5/4 pattern and sped the bpms to around 300? then you'll get a 5/8 at 150 bpms right? i wondered hhow afx did the 7's on 28 organ, and i was able to make it in FL, i did 8, i cut 1, and i time stretched the midi to occupy the place of the 8's...

Take a 1/16 SP1200 swing, an mpc 1/32 swing, some swing from a couple of breaks.....create templates...combine those templates into one....

...

  On 5/17/2011 at 8:48 AM, MrSparkle666 said:

One of the tricks on old trackers was to change the global tempo setting of the song on every other beat. You're essentially speeding up and slowing down the rate at which the notes are played, so it results in swing. not sure if that would work on the rmx1. It's one of those things that's only really easy to do in trackers.

This is how I learned how to do custom swing in Renoise. In Puredata there are several ways to do it, including an LFO shape retriggering the phase offsets or using delay messages with a metro object.

With hardware its either a case of speeding it up and increasing the amount of steps you can work with or doing some groovy delay tricks.

Slow/mid tempo swing study, notice in the main riff how the drums are swung, while the guitar/bass play pretty straight:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHd7ErpuVG8

  On 3/3/2016 at 1:35 AM, LimpyLoo said:

I'm trying to imagine how one could couple BPM with swing % using software, so that you could automate the tempo and have the swing % follow

 

...not because it'd be useful in itself, but rather because that would enable some much cooler shit

 

Any ideas?

Well, if you write your own DAW/tracker/firmware, it's pretty straightforward. Swing consists of counting more then less clock ticks before incrementing the row you're on, so at 24 PPQN normally each 16th note is 6 ticks long, but you'd alternate 8 and 4 at 50% swing. The higher the clock resolution (the PPQN), the more intermediate amounts of swing you have. With a high enough clock resolution, you can vary swing from -99% to +99%, essentially, but only 0 to 50% sounds good to my ears, although the more steps you can have in between, the better, for a nice, smooth transition in and out of swing, as well as more options for how swung you want your music to be anyway.

And yeah, I've also noticed how at lower tempos, you can spot swing easier, and it sounds nicer.

So that's an interesting idea you've got there, to automatically increment the swing amount as the tempo decreases and decrement the swing amount as the tempo increases. You could work out a nice, simple formula for deriving the swing value from the tempo. It wouldn't be particularly difficult, though you'd want to be at a pretty high clock resolution (which most DAWs are, and even were in the old Atari ST days, compared to DIN sync).

Interesting idea, thanks!

As for the original question about how to fake swing, my friend and I used to do that in trackers all the time by alternating the tempo every 16th note. :)

Z-bomb! Hey!

  On 3/4/2016 at 8:11 PM, LimpyLoo said:

Z-bomb! Hey!

Hello. :)

  On 3/3/2016 at 4:55 AM, Audioblysk said:

Number one, don't be afraid to go off the grid if stuck on a piano roll/midi scroll. It gets said a lot, but it's really true - humans can be really close to perfect, but not sequencer timing perfect... so it makes sense to human it up and make it a tad sloppy for effect sometimes. Turning the tempo way down and programming via playing with yon' fingers on an MPC type pad and then speeding the track back up for playback can be very groovy if you know how to play drums/finger drum. Also, when using old gear, I've found that if I juggle around my swing % settings or shuffle on the machines/sequencers when they're all linked together that I can get a chunky and human-like sound from pretty basic drum patterns. It's really all about using your ears, timing and 'finding the pocket' is something that escapes most musicians I've worked with. Close them eyes and listen, bob your head and groove out, if it's not right, it'll stick out like a green apple in a bin of red delicious. Repeat until sufficiently groovy. Groovy.

 

A friend is lending me his electronic drum-kit as he has no room in his studio apartment for it, going to get that all triggah'ed up and mapped up for midi use in Live. I can play things that would take me ages to program in a take or two, at least clean enough to work with. I tried it when he had it set up and man was it fun to have control of groove and velocity when smacking out a break, made it so much more chunk-ified.

 

Sometimes dudes who over-use the swing thing (admit it, sometimes Flying Lotus' drums piss you off for sounding like they have the timing of a spazzed child... he just happens to make it work for him, no disrespect, just sayin')

 

P.s. change your metronome sound to a sample of a slightly swung 1/8th note or 1/16th note, I'm always amazed at hot people can listen to the BEEP BOOP BOOP BOOP over and over again. Admittedly, I stole that idea from some producer that worked with U2, tried it out and never looked back. Recording with a click track reminds me of being back in drum corps.

Great tip and great post! I need to dust off my MPC...

  On 3/4/2016 at 5:44 AM, Entorwellian said:

 

  On 5/17/2011 at 8:48 AM, MrSparkle666 said:

One of the tricks on old trackers was to change the global tempo setting of the song on every other beat. You're essentially speeding up and slowing down the rate at which the notes are played, so it results in swing. not sure if that would work on the rmx1. It's one of those things that's only really easy to do in trackers.

This is how I learned how to do custom swing in Renoise. In Puredata there are several ways to do it, including an LFO shape retriggering the phase offsets or using delay messages with a metro object.

 

With hardware its either a case of speeding it up and increasing the amount of steps you can work with or doing some groovy delay tricks.

When you say an LFO shape triggering phase offsets are you talking converting audio to messages? This never seems to work well for me in Max/PD but I'm probably doing something wrong.

  On 3/5/2016 at 12:43 PM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

did you try using the edge~ object? IIRC it's only as accurate as your signal vector size so try turning that down to below 32.

 

also make sure max is running in overdrive and audio interrupt are ticked

Yeah that's what I was using and I had it in overdrive and vector size pretty low. I mean it did work, it was just weird. I got this steady buzzing tone like I was hitting the message rate ceiling - which actually sounded like Gantz Graf so I wonder if they were doing something similar in there. I might've missed that audio interrupt thing.

LImpyloo's post re how jazz swing pattern becomes 'straighter' as tempo increases is spot on. Was going to expand on that and say that dynamics are affected too. So slow tempi allow for a variety of internal pulse subdivisions and dynamic ranges, but as the speed increases, the dynamic range diminishes and the subdivisions have to be kept much straighter. I reckon this proves the point (about dynamics):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsgaXDpmoSM

Dynamics are very important for swinging drums. Consider things like backbeat vs ghost notes on the snare drum, or alternating loud/quiet hi-hat strokes.

Have a listen to Bernard Pretty Purdie playing his signature shuffle. There are four dynamic levels on the hi-hat and snare drum: SD ghost note, quiet HH, loud HH (on the beat) and SD backbeat.

https://youtu.be/J8DsNo4KB6Y?t=2m44s

https://youtu.be/BEqiq23fqFo?t=48s

"Ain't nothing but rebound!!"