Drum Loops, Drum machines, Samplers & Drum Editor

[Guest mollekula]

im getting a bit deeper into cubase, the lesson for today was the Drum Editor so it gave me the chance to ask what ive always wanted to ask, the ways and techniques of creating drum beats for various genres - trip hop/downtempo, tribal, drum n bass, breakbeats, techno, idm/glitch and anything else that electronica uses. im really interested to experiment on all of them. i have some experience on drum loop manipulating and creating beats on FL when i was using this software years ago, i have never used a drum machine but ive been told they are very powerful (i hear Kontakt, Battery & Superior Drummer are among the best machines), and drum editor is something new to me too. so which way (and the combination between them) in your opinion matches best for each genre, generally speaking of course because the techniques are endless i assume. also where is it best to use drum loops and where use separately kick/snare and hi hats. this is one of the most important aspects in making music so im really interested to hear your opinion guys. thanx

[Guest SampleScience]

I only use acoustic live played drum loops, because there is really a difference between them & the electronics programmed ones. When I want to learn how to create a specific genre drum patterns I simply sampled a drum beats from the genre & recreate it in FruityLoops with one shots one percussions at a time. It can be long if the drum loops are complex but the result is really worth it in my opinion. For example, if I recreate an acoustic drum loop with a drum synth the results are often quite impressive. Anyway, I wuld recommend to recreate beats you like & analyze them to understand how they are built. If the timing is not 4/4 you'll see it immediatly, but I have to admit it can be tricky to find the right quantification!

 

Hope it helps!

[Guest iamabe]

You don't need battery, kontakt or anything, really. If you have a library of drum samples you can just use Cubase to sculpt each sample and then sequence in the piano roll. When I started I didnt want to do it that way because I thought it wasn't as legitimate as using a drum machine or some official drum program, but it really is the same thing. I don't know cubase though so I can't tell you exactly how to do that. In Fruity it would just be drag samples onto a channel and voila, you can use the step sequencer or piano roll and then add eq, filters, or whatever to each channel.

 

That said if you can get your hands on battery it really is awesome and has a lot of power in how you can edit samples, arrange things, add fx, etc. And the sample library covers tons of genres so you can literally just load a kit like "Trip-hop Kit" and start with that. If not Battery, there are lots of other good ones including kontakt and maschine from NI, and even Ableton and Reason have good drum libraries and drum machines.

 

The difference between using a recorded drum loop that you slice up and building a kit from seperate samples is mostly in the feel. Breaks and drum loops are fun because they can have their own swing and live acoustic feel and chopping and rearranging them can have a very unique sound. Sometimes using a chopped loop can sound pretty electronic. Also there is something very convenient about just grabbing a loop for a whole kit instead of assembling all the seperate parts from scratch which can be tedious (but usually it's rewarding to hand pick your sounds).

 

As far as learning how to make patterns for each genre, youtube is not a bad resource if you are willing to wade through lots of useless videos to find a few gems. Keep searching for things like "drum n bass patterns" and "dnb tutorials" and youll find a good channel to use. Otherwise it's a matter of experimentation and using your ears. Just listen to some DnB and you'll hear that most of it is based on some kind of breakbeat sped up to something nuts like 170 BPM. Usually theres a lot of rearranging and slicing. The easiest beats to pick up are house and dance beats that usually consist of quarter note kick drums and snares on every second and fourth beat, and some faster hi hats, 8th or 16th notes in between. That's the essential four to the floor beat. Hip Hop usually has 2nd and 4th beat snares and some funkier kick drum shit, so just dick around and put kicks on different beats until you find something you like. Seriously, the best thing to do is just experiment, get a big drum library and play with it with no intention of making a great track or anything, just to learn and discover for yourself.

 

Play with production too. Some genres rely on heavy compression and pumping effects for example, so go ahead and load a plain drum loop and just mess with fx like compression, noise gates, delay, whatever.

[Mr.Sensi]

also where is it best to use drum loops and where use separately kick/snare and hi hats

 

Depends on the genre you're going for. I only know jungle (old school) for the most part, so if you're going into that then you want to cut your breaks into different loops rather than just straight one shots, especially when you're dealing with the amen break (sorry Snafu). One loop would start on a kick, next on the ride cymbal, next on the snare, etc. but keep the rest of the loop intact for the groove. Other things you can do is purposely limit yourself to only a few parts of the break to force you into making something you otherwise wouldn't make. A good example is an old jungle producer named Chatta B. His best tunes only used the crash, a snare and the cymbals from the the amen break which lead him to creating some really cool edits by doing a lot of pitch changes on the drums to keep it interesting.

 

 

 

 

There wasn't a lot of break recreation (by that I mean cutting the break into one shots and resequencing on the grid for tighter timing) in old jungle unless the break was really out of time (Soul Pride is a good example of that). A lot of modern jungle producers do that though, so if you're into that then you'll want to resequence your breaks that way then sample them.

 

Another thing you can do is find a few breaks that you like and stick to them for a while. A lot of producers use only a few breaks in their tracks. Squarepusher typically uses sesame street, think, the worm, and soul pride. It should help you get a feel for using multiple breaks at the same time, usually to accompany the amen break which is the bread and butter of most jungle music.

 

Uh...

[Polymershapes]

also where is it best to use drum loops and where use separately kick/snare and hi hats

 

Depends on the genre you're going for. I only know jungle (old school) for the most part, so if you're going into that then you want to cut your breaks into different loops rather than just straight one shots, especially when you're dealing with the amen break (sorry Snafu). One loop would start on a kick, next on the ride cymbal, next on the snare, etc. but keep the rest of the loop intact for the groove. Other things you can do is purposely limit yourself to only a few parts of the break to force you into making something you otherwise wouldn't make. A good example is an old jungle producer named Chatta B. His best tunes only used the crash, a snare and the cymbals from the the amen break which lead him to creating some really cool edits by doing a lot of pitch changes on the drums to keep it interesting.

 

 

 

 

There wasn't a lot of break recreation (by that I mean cutting the break into one shots and resequencing on the grid for tighter timing) in old jungle unless the break was really out of time (Soul Pride is a good example of that). A lot of modern jungle producers do that though, so if you're into that then you'll want to resequence your breaks that way then sample them.

 

Another thing you can do is find a few breaks that you like and stick to them for a while. A lot of producers use only a few breaks in their tracks. Squarepusher typically uses sesame street, think, the worm, and soul pride. It should help you get a feel for using multiple breaks at the same time, usually to accompany the amen break which is the bread and butter of most jungle music.

 

Uh...

 

You should do a youtube tutorial on the old jungle ways of doing things to balance out all the dnb tutorials

[Guest wake]

FXpansion Guru is also a nice drum machine style sampler. You could also consider getting something like an MPC if you wanted to go the hardware route.

[Guest mollekula]

Thanx a lot for your response and your invaluable help. by reading all thats mentioned above, ive proved to myself that its all a matter of imagination and experimenting, listening carefully to the music, in order to understand how these particular elements that your hear, could be achieved on technical level and experiment without limits, thats why knowledge of using the correct tools to do what you want to do is essential, thats why information is so invaluable. this desirable "how to". concerning sampling techique, it is what iamabe said above, thats exactly what i used to do in fruity, just drag a drum loop or some other loop that i had sampled myself from my favourite jazz or funk album, stuff like gil scott heron or james brown or other 70s funk, placed them in patterns and then made various experiments with the pitch and tempo tools, also adding a kick or snare where needed, the results were quite impressive for me cos i could hear some jungly stuff, after that the basis of hip hop and breaks/drum n bass was clear to me, it was fun playing the outcome of beats processing with atmospheric pads or various other interesting sounds. i also liked the idea of yours to manipulate samples right inside cubase instead of using a drum machine, thats an interesting point.

 

and thanx a lot to Oscar for mentioning the 'amen break', i found threads in this forum about amen break and that led me to a term named "beats slicer" and then i found this in youtube:

 

 

 

and i was....wow!!! i had this question in my mind for many many years, how the hell do they do it? how they break these beats into such a chaotic pattern? this slicing bits and rearranging them thing sounds very very tasty, is it Acid Pro thats the best thing for that or there are other interesting tools(maybe inside cubase too)? it seems there are a lot of interesting little things ahead of me, things to learn so that i can achieve the level i so wish for. thanx once again for your tips, im going to dig up the net and develop all these ideas, hopefully with more help and info :)

[Mr.Sensi]

is it Acid Pro thats the best thing for that or there are other interesting tools(maybe inside cubase too)? it seems there are a lot of interesting little things ahead of me, things to learn so that i can achieve the level i so wish for. thanx once again for your tips, im going to dig up the net and develop all these ideas, hopefully with more help and info :)

 

Any of them will do. Some just make it a little easier. I think Acid and Renoise have the quickest ways to sequence breaks.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2O1nYtRhDM

 

Made with Acid

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-iFWYfZ0XU

 

Made with Cubase

 

 

Made with All Sound Tracker

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy1aRYHT0W8

 

Made with Octamed and an Akai sampler

 

 

Made with an MPC2000

 

 

Made with Renoise

 

Use whatever you want is what I'm getting at.

[Guest mollekula]

thank you Oscar, your help is so valuable. this beat slicing thing is taking over me, i can feel its going to be one of my next obsessions, i think it could making some amazing stuff out of other sounds and atmospheres too, apart from drum loops. i just wonder if IDM and glitch involve beat slicing or other tools??

[sneaksta303]

that and may other tools. stop saying idm btw, it's embarrassing.

[Guest mollekula]

that and may other tools. stop saying idm btw, it's embarrassing.

why embarrassing? i actually like it. what would you call it then?

[sneaksta303]

Really, anything but. It's the most pretentious sounding thing ever.

 

What's in a name anyway? It's all electronic music right?

[Guest mollekula]

i didnt mean to put it this way at all. there is absolutely nothing pretentious about it. thats correct, its all electronica to me too, or just music. im not a big fan of putting labels on things either and naming stuff, but some things have to be explained and described somehow so that somebody who reads the post can understand clearly what the issue is about. i needed to know about these specific tools to make abstract stuff, so IDM was the easiest way for me to call it. there was a guy who i asked from to recommend such tools for this genre, and it was so clear to him what i wanted that he answered right away: LiveCut/Effectrix/Instant Sampler/Glitch/Bent. simple and easy, i doubt he would understand me if i tried to explain that to him otherwise. im here to gain knowledge, and im thankful to everybody who truly helps.

[sneaksta303]

Oh I understand. I was just saying. The term IDM is annoying to me.

 

As far as tools go (plugins I mean), I wouldn't rely on those glitchy ones too much. use as a seasoning, as they are often overused. It's more about the programming and composition.

[Guest mollekula]

use as a seasoning, as they are often overused. It's more about the programming and composition.

 

i feel you

[Redruth]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poTKV0Uy6-M&list=QL&feature=BF

[Guest sirch]

sneaksters' 303 is well IDM.

[Guest hahathhat]

just stopping by to say that dj sabotour x track is making the chipmunks outside my window glitch out.

[chassis]

Can someone reccomend a pack of drum wav's? Ive become bored with any that I already have.

 

Acoustic drum wav's, not glitch shit.

[Redruth]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg5oQKfNs4k&feature=related

 

 

 

lol

 

[Guest mollekula]

freackin awesome troon :)