Drum production on Analord/Rushup Edge/Syro

Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts on how Richard is able to achieve such clean, perfectly balanced drum sounds. To my ears, his drums just 'sound better' than anything that anyone else is putting out. Is it the fact that he uses authentic analog hardware, or that he just knows exactly what he's doing?

It's sort of pissing me off because my beats sound as though I recorded them on a fucking Talkboy in comparison ...

Would appreciate some insight ...

talent + experienced ears + high end monitoring system

clever beatboxing

  On 6/6/2015 at 2:27 PM, xox said:

experienced ears

And just general music making experience. He's been at it for a long time now, and with the amount of tracks that he makes, thats's a lot of time to refine his technique. I'm sure he wasn't producing syro level beats when he first starting making music.

exceptional programming and sequencing skills and really good ears. Tuss stuff is some of my favorite sounding stuff ever.

I guess I better get back to work then ...

  On 6/6/2015 at 3:16 PM, heyheyjack said:

I guess I better get back to work then ...

You might want to read his Noyzelab interview, there was a lot of tech talk in there that could maybe give you some insight in the process (PM me if you don't have the interview). But yeah, not just using the standard drum machines and having years and years of experience as well as having a very good ear all contribute to that.

I agree though, his percussion work has always been exceptional, but ever since the late 90's it has been total ear candy. Doesn't get much better than that imo.

the beats were made by the skythians, all he ever does is download them by telepathy

i know what you mean. but you just have forget afx for a second and focus to polish your own style. also have fun.

oor you just have to get a really old, experienced ears. on deepweb you might find such ears.

learn to EQ and use proper compression its dat EZ

I think most of it has to do with the high-end outboard processing gear(API mic pres, etc...), monitoring, and a ridiculous mixing console.

Also, the fact that hes been at for 30 years allows him to probably come up with patterns quickly. I bet he has all the patterns hes made since using a computer ready to throw on whatever drum machine has midi.

Well, actually I think that the way that Aphex achieved that is... Never thinking too much about it, making lotsa tracks without thinking about it, making lotsa tracks doing exactly what he wants to do, and talent

  On 6/6/2015 at 2:19 PM, heyheyjack said:

Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts on how Richard is able to achieve such clean, perfectly balanced drum sounds. To my ears, his drums just 'sound better' than anything that anyone else is putting out. Is it the fact that he uses authentic analog hardware, or that he just knows exactly what he's doing?

 

It's sort of pissing me off because my beats sound as though I recorded them on a fucking Talkboy in comparison ...

 

 

Would appreciate some insight ...

Analord in general (unless you count Analord 10) has a very different and much more raw drum production style than Rushup Edge, so first off it depends on which style you mean specifically. Analord uses a lot of authentic Roland classic drum kit like 808,909 and 606 probably ran through an analog mixing console with good (and pricey preamps) being processed with hardware compressors and eqs.

In terms of Rushup Edge he uses a lot of classic breakbeat samples in it, not amen/funky drummer or soulpride but slightly more obscure breaks. So the first step of recreating this sound would be basically to track down the exact breaks he's using (some of the same ones also appear on Drukqs). There is a thread in the aphex subforum from about a year ago about 'sample spotting' aphex twin break samples, users in the forum were able to identify pretty much everything (although the drum samples on the opening track of I Care Because You Do are still a mystery to me)

throwing a classic break sample into a sampler usually doesn't sound good automatically, it requires some surgical eq and compression to make it sound the way it should in a mix with other elements.

Syro is sort of a mixture of the two but arguably much more complex and vast array of drum sounds and techniques hes using to make them. On Xmas Evet10 for instance he's using robotically controlled acoustic drum set for the underlying beat but he's cutting it up just like he would typically on a classic break sample.

On Minipops he's using another break sample as the primary drum sound (has anyone identified this break? ) but hes also using a korg minipops drum machine underneath of it and for the main breakdowns in the song when the breakbeat goes away. Hard to go through it track by track but in general the album seems to be an equal split of synthetic drums from analog machines + identifiable obvious/non-obvious breakbeat sample sources

Woah, a lot of the beats on Rushup Edge are samples? I thought that he constructed everything manually from scratch.

Cheers to everyone for the replies.

they are samples in the sense that he's taking an old drum loop and cutting up each individual percussive hit in the loop to make completely new rhythms with

Got you. Freaked for a second.

http://www.whosampled.com/Aphex-Twin/?sp=1

good place 2 start for the aforementioned obscure drumbreak samples. dat marva whitney.

Whoa, cool site!

Afx went to squarepusher for drum lessons...then later luke vibert came in and said -just use a sampler like me.

apparently Luke Vibert is actually the one who originally taught Richard how to cut up breaks and repurpose them (before he had mostly been using one-shot samples or full break loops). It must have been in a very old Aphex interview because it was before I had heard any luke vibert

1:40 here is the 180db_ loop

cock ver 10

more cock

I apologise for sounding like a total amateur here, but how on earth do you go about filtering out other sounds when you're chopping something up. It it done through filtering?

both Tuss and Syro is a good mix of breaks and drum machines and weird synth drums. awesome.

  On 6/7/2015 at 1:50 PM, heyheyjack said:

I apologise for sounding like a total amateur here, but how on earth do you go about filtering out other sounds when you're chopping something up. It it done through filtering?

Gating can help A LOT too. Especially if you can target the frequencies you're gating or not.

  On 6/7/2015 at 1:50 PM, heyheyjack said:

I apologise for sounding like a total amateur here, but how on earth do you go about filtering out other sounds when you're chopping something up. It it done through filtering?

If you're asking what I think you're asking, then the answer is that you generally don't filter out the other sounds. Instead, you sample from the part of the record that doesn't have them, i.e. the drum break. See the examples above and find the sections in the middle that are only drums. That's the part you use.

for reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break_%28music%29