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GROOOVE CM
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Grooove CM Put the ‘ooo’ back in your beats with a fabulously funky drum plugin that brings your sample collection to life In an age of digital excess, ‘more’ is often touted as ‘better’, and many multigigabyte sampled instruments firmly adhere to this principle. But what if there was a super-compact, resource-friendly plugin that aimed to wring the absolute most from just a handful of samples? That’d be this month’s ace plugin giveaway, Grooove CM! This ingenious VST/AU/ standalone device comes to you from German developers brunsandspork, who describe the commercial version of the plugin,
KIT DISPLAY Information on the currently loaded kit – click it to access Grooove CM’s main menu
Grooove, as “a unique virtual drum machine that enables the user to easily create vibrant and dynamic drum kits while making use of maximally two samples per drum sound” – a description that applies equally to our special edition. Features include 50 built-in kits (see Micro Kits samples to the right); 6 Key slots into which to load samples; 2 samples per Key; 3 stereo outputs; 2 LFOs; 11 velocitymodulatable parameters; choke groups; and much more. With a few simple knob tweaks,
samples can be made to dance and groove in response to that most vital of MIDI articulations, velocity. From enlivening stiff, static beats to generating insane electronic fills, Grooove CM is up to the task. If that all sounds good to you, don’t miss the big ’un, Grooove, which packs in 8 stereo outputs, 128 Keys instead of 6, 8 LFOs, and tons more nifty extra features. Best of all, readers get 50% off Grooove until 28 Feb 2016 using the discount code GCM1115! www.brunsandspork.com
HELP TOOL/SPEAKER Click the ‘?’ icon and hover the mouse pointer over a control to see its tooltip
Micro Kits samples A drum plugin isn’t much good without a ton of great drum sounds to back it up, so we’ve put together Micro Kits, a pack of 50 six-sound kits using the finest sample hits selected from the archives. Each kit is built into Grooove CM as a preset as well as included in a standard zip o’ WAVs for use in any music app. Not only that, but alongside dry WAVs, we’ve supplied a ton of tasty variants that have been treated with some of our most treasured effects processors – try layering them for phat variations!
MIXER Click a vertical meter to edit one of the three stereo outputs’ mixer settings download
SAMPLE SELECTION Load up to two samples per Key using drag ‘n’ drop, or the dropdown menus
Get the plugin, the video and the Tutorial Files on PC/Mac at
MIDI INPUT vault.computermusic.co.uk Edit the Note field to change which MIDI note a Key responds to Velocity Dynamic Shape incoming MIDI velocity levels before they’re passed to a Key’s Sound Engine
SOUND ENGINE Where the magic happens! Dial in how Grooove CM responds to velocity – see the tutorial opposite for more detail. CLUES Displays control options for whatever’s under the pointer – press a number on your computer keyboard for info on what each does
SAMPLE PRE-ADJUSTMENT Basic tweaks made to a sample before it is further processed by Grooove CM’s Sound Engine
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Keys Each of the six ‘drums’ in Grooove CM is known as a Key
TRUNCATION TRIGGER Choke groups, in other words – use this to get your closed hats to cut off the open ones
grooove cm / download < > Step by step Installing and using Grooove CM
Tutorial
Files
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To install the plugin, simply doubleclick the relevant installer for your PC or Mac and follow the on-screen instructions. Be sure to give the included manual a good read, as it’s packed with detailed instructions and advice. In the plugin itself, you can click the ? button and hover over any control to see a description, and there’s also the Clues option (see previous page) to point you in the right direction.
In the lower-left Sample PreAdjustment area, you can adjust the sample’s Volume, Pan, Pitch, as well as where playback Starts from within the sample, and how much of it to play, that is, it’s Length. There are also Mute, Level and Pan controls for the Key, affecting the overall output (useful when using two samples per Key). Play MIDI note C1 or click Listen to audition. Have a play, then Cmd/Ctrl-click to reset the parameters.
Grooove CM is all about using MIDI velocity to smoothly modulate between two sets of parameters – you just dial in how you’d like your drums to sound at minimum and maximum velocities, and Grooove CM takes care of the rest. Click the third Key tab, the Digger Break ClosedHat one, then click Sound Engine to access the Key’s modulation controls. Here’s where you shape your drums.
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To follow along, start a new 110bpm project in your DAW and import Bass.wav and Rhodes.wav onto audio tracks, and Beat.MIDI onto a MIDI/ instrument track – load Grooove CM onto this track. The central column displays six Keys – each is triggered by a MIDI note. Click the bottom one to select it, and drag sample Kick.wav from the Tutorial Files folder onto sample slot 1 (or click the slot and use the pop-up menu).
Just one drum isn’t much fun, so let’s check out the 50 drum kits that come with Grooove CM. Click the upper-left ‘display’ and a dropdown menu appears, with various options for saving and loading kits. Click the CM Edition sub menu to see our 50 kits – select one that takes your fancy. We’re going with Digger Break, as it fits the vibe of our dusty bass-and-keys groove.
In the Vel. Conditions section, turn the Volume Min. knob up gradually – the soft MIDI notes get louder, eventually becoming as loud as high velocity ones. Turn down Volume Max. for an inverted volume response, as shown. Use the Min./ Max slider beneath the lower Waveform panel to see a preview of your drum hit at the chosen velocity. Cmd/Ctrl-click the Volume Min./Max. knobs to reset them.
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The sound can now be triggered using MIDI note C1 (or a note of your choosing, selected in the MIDI Input section in the upper right). The other five Keys are identical in functionality, and are, # # by default, mapped to C 1, D1, D 1, E1 and F1. Let’s concentrate on just one Key for now, though. Note that Grooove CM automatically names the Key according to the sample name, but you can doubleclick the label to rename it.
You can flip through kits with the up/ down arrows in the upper-left panel. Individual kit pieces can be switched out in the same way: click a Key, then use the up/down arrows in the Sample Selection panel, or click the waveform to browse by Instrument or Category. When you’re done, reload the Digger Break kit, and use the Key faders to turn the two hi-hats down by 4dB and the Kick and Snare up by around 3dB. Hold Shift for finer control.
We’ll come back to the Mix control, but next is Pan – we use it on our hats, with Pan Min. at L25 and Pan Max. at L40. Next, the Cutoff and Resonance controls introduce a low-pass filter, which removes high frequencies. Click the Kick Key, then turn Min. Cut Off down to about 3kHz, to mimic how a real drum is brighter when struck harder. Resonance emphasises frequencies around the Cut Off point.
November 2015 / Computer Music / 11
> make music now / dnb track-builder 2015
DRUM
BASS &
TRACK-BUILDER Push your sub to the limit as we hook up with four of the scene’s finest producers to show you how to build a big, bad DnB banger, 2015-style
38 / Computer Music / November 2015
dnb track-builder 2015 / make music now <
It’s a genre that spans every level of modern music, from the top of the commercial charts right through to the deepest, darkest underground venues. It has one foot placed firmly in its past, consistently maintaining its jungle heritage of breakbeat manipulation and bass fetishism, while simultaneously looking to the future by incorporating cutting-edge sound design and mixing techniques that leave most other genres looking primitive in comparison. Make no mistake: drum ’n’ bass is here to stay, and it’s more popular than ever. Packed full of blistering beats, gigantic basses, atmospheric FX and razor-sharp vocals, contemporary DnB tracks are overwhelmingly intricate and impressive, leaving even the most die-hard production heads perplexed. And there’s no wonder – professional DnB producers put in unimaginable hours honing their craft in order to create unheard sounds within the notorious 170+bpm framework we all know and love. So, to give you expert insight like never before, and to celebrate the mighty genre of drum ’n’ bass in all its forms, we’ve recruited an
all-star lineup of artists who have all agreed to let us watch over their shoulders as they do what they do best: create pro-quality sounds from scratch. We’ve got Bristol-based legend and Symmetry Recordings boss Break constructing a breakbeat, Hospital Records’ experimental evangelist Lynx mangling 808 basses, Med School young gun Keeno composing one of his signature orchestral offerings, and skilled junglists Chromatic synthesising old-school hoover stabs. You’ll see them all in video form, and you’ll also be able to download and check out their sounds for yourself in our Tutorial Files folder. Plus, we’ve called upon our in-house neuro-wizard and seasoned DnB guru InsideInfo to deliver ten expert production tips that’ll push your tunes right up into the stratosphere. Never ones to let a prime cut of audio go to waste, we’ll then be using our four experts’ pro sounds to form the backbone of a meaty, upfront DnB track. You can follow along with each step, hear how we’ve twisted up the sounds, and even deconstruct our finished mix for yourself – all the project files are included. So, without further ado, crank up that sub and get ready for a rumble in the jungle!
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breakbeat design
808 bass hits
ten top dnb tips
BREAK
LYNX
48
50
orchestral vibes
hoover masterclass
STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE
CHROMATIC
Get the sounds, videos and tutorial files on your PC/Mac at vault.computermusic.co.uk
insideinfo
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KEENO
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TRACK-BUILDER
November 2015 / Computer Music / 39
> make music now / dnb track-builder 2015
Break
Bristol’s breakbeat-loving badman rustles up an original vintage-style break with Addictive Drums 2
The DnB producer’s DnB producer and Symmetry label boss Break (known to his mum as Charlie Bierman) was keen to create a custom breakbeat for us using XLN Audio Additive Drums 2’s state-of-the-art virtual drumming and some sliced-up “vintage” breaks from the sample repository. We were only too happy to let him... : Why did you want to create a break using Addictive Drums 2? CB: “Over the last ten or 15 years of producing, I’ve gone through a lot of the classic breaks, and there are always more breaks to find out there, but it’s that freedom of being able to create your own. It’s not quite the same, but it gives you more control to create that drum kit you’d imagine. I’ve used Addictive Drums for a couple of years, and there are times when you get beats that do sound like breaks – you can get
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pretty close to emulating that. So, it’s the opportunity to do it yourself and be in control. : “Many soundware developers have made attempts to create vintage-style breakbeats. How successful do you think they’ve been? CB: “I probably haven’t heard all the packs, but I think they’ve done pretty well, and there’s certainly some I’ve used and some I’ve really rated. The thing is, if you’re trying to make a new break and you’ve got Funky Drummer in your head, you’ve missed the boat already– I haven’t heard one that’s like Funky Drummer that’s better than Funky Drummer! I’ve done drum recording myself, and I think everyone should give it a go. It’s a really good challenge... there’s no reason someone can’t come up with a new Amen or new Funky Drummer. It’s partly luck and partly the skill of all the people involved.”
dnb track-builder 2015 / make music now < > Step by step Creating a DnB break with Addictive Drums 2
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Charlie begins by loading up the Black Room preset from Addictive Drums 2’s Black Oyster expansion, and programming a basic DnB rhythm with velocity variation on some of the hats, using Logic’s 16B groove to get a funky feel. A duplicate of this track is created so that the original can be referred back to at any time, to assess the improvements being made.
Finally, the kick’s Room level is attenuated to get a more direct sound. Charlie turns his attentions to the snare, which is pitched up to make it fast and punchy. The Tone Designer and Volume Envelope are used to smooth and tighten the sound, and the Shape section’s Delay is brought down to make it snappier.
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Charlie works on the kick first, activating the sound’s ‘No Alternating Samples’ mode and turning down its velocity sensitivity to get a more consistent feel. The kick is pitched up slightly, and Addictive Drums 2’s Tone Designer is used to attenuate some of its resonant frequencies. The Volume Envelope’s Sustain Time and Release are lowered, giving the kick a snappier sound.
Drive is applied to crunch the snare up a tad, and the Compressor is used with a slow Attack to keep it punchy. Charlie also adjusts the Distortion section in AirPressure mode, adjusting the Frequency and Amount to add punch. The EQ section is used to remove some of the snare’s ringing frequencies, and the bottom end is brought up to make the snare weightier in the 200Hz range.
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The tape saturation emulator is activated, and its Drive and Bottom are turned up, fattening up the kick’s sub. A slight touch of fast-attacking compression tames the signals peaks a little, and EQ is applied to take out the unwanted sub frequencies and soften out the kick’s ‘clickiness’. Charlie also uses the kick’s dedicated Cut filter to mellow out the top end.
Charlie tweaks the hats next, pitching them up and adding a little room reverb. Once again, the Volume Envelope tightens them up, then they’re turned down slightly in the mix and saturated with the Tape effect. The Cut filter is applied to take out any low-end rumble, and the hats are dulled with EQ to make them about as bright as the snare.
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Charlie EQs the room reverb to bring out the highs, helping glue the top end of the mix together. The Overheads’ mids are brought down to lessen the impact of the snare’s ringing frequencies. Charlie uses FabFilter Pro-Q 2 on the Addictive Drums 2 channel to further attenuate the unwanted peaks in the mids, and compresses the signal with Universal Audio’s FATSO emulation for UAD-2.
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Charlie layers the Addictive Drums beat with a chopped-up Vintage Breakbeat sample (from 206’s Young Punx VIP Series pack). The dynamics of the breakbeat are tweaked with iZotope Ozone 5’s multiband dynamics, and Charlie applies more compression and EQ to both drum parts, which are grouped to a bus for some final glue with Native Instruments’ VC 160.
Break, Music Is Better bit.ly/BreakMiB Jaguar Skills & Chords, Lust (Remix) bit.ly/LustBreak
WWW
www.symmetryrecordings.co.uk soundcloud.com/symmetry-recordings twitter.com/symmetryhq facebook.com/SymmetryRecordings
November 2015 / Computer Music / 41
> make music now / dnb track-builder 2015
Lynx The Hospital star shows us how to make a beefy bass sound, and it turns out ‘the Lynx effect’ is FabFilter Saturn With releases on labels as diverse as Ram, Hospital, 31 Records and Soul:r, Steve Nobes (Lynx) is a truly versatile DnB producer. We set him the challenge of creating some big bad bass sounds, and he set about it with relish, FabFilter Saturn and a clutch of 808 kick drum samples.
controlled, and the 808 is like a kick and a sub at the same time, which makes it really interesting.”
: How come you opted for 808 kick samples rather than synthesis? SN: “I guess because a lot of my tracks use 808 basses! I just love the sub elements to them, and when you overdrive them, you can end up with really unusual, mysterious things coming out of the top end that you’d never expect.
: Why did you plump for FabFilter Saturn? SN: “That’s easy – because it’s absolutely amazing! I lot of the techniques I use generally aren’t very extreme, but Saturn is a really extreme plugin. I wanted to keep the whole thing simple, no multiple layers of the same sound playing and just a couple of plugins, so that it was easy to understand. Saturn is ideal for that because it’s so powerful. I barely scratched the surface; it’s just an amazing plugin.
: What is it that makes 808 kicks so special? SN: “I think for me, personally, it’s that it doesn’t sustain a single note – it’s always moving, and that holds a lot of interest for me. Though sine wave subs are awesome, they’re very
: What else do you use for distortion effects? SN: “I don’t use many others, but I do use bitcrushers to lower the bit depth and create distortion, which I’ll run in parallel to the dry signal.”
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dnb track-builder 2015 / make music now < > Step by step Distorted DnB 808 bass with FabFilter Saturn and Waves plugins
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Steve sets out to create four bass sound variations using just 808 kick drum samples and a handful of plugins. The first involves using Saturn’s multiband capability to split the sound up into five frequency bands, and using higher saturation levels on higher frequency bands to inflate the top-end.
Another Saturn is added, this time with three bands and less distortion in the highs. Steve reduces the stereo width using Cubase’s mixer, and rolls off the highs and the lowest sub frequencies with Renaissance Equalizer. An automated OneKnob Filter again takes off the tops, but this time it opens up again to reveal the tail’s resonant mid tones.
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Waves’ OneKnob Filter is added next. It’s automated to close its low-pass filter over the sound, attenuating the signal’s noisy high-end and creating a sweeping effect. Steve adds another Saturn after this, to boost the signal’s top end, this time less drastically. Both Saturns are set to Warm Tape mode, which Steve feels delivers a good type of distortion for this kind of sound.
We’ve reached third bass, and Steve is feeling frisky. He begins with a punchy, clean 808 kick, which he immediately crunches up with a five-band Saturn. The higher mid band is quieter, but its Feedback is turned up, creating a queasy modulation in the mids. Steve fine-tunes the timbre and movement in the sound by tweaking the Feedback Frequency, and decides on a value of 150.14Hz.
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The second bass is based on a more distorted 808 kick sample. Steve again boosts the tops, this time with Saturn set to four-band mode and the Tone levels adjusted to compensate for some unwanted hiss in the sample. Steve’s heavy use of distortion on the third band creates a whistle-style tone in the mids.
Another Saturn is added, and the Drive of its highest bands is automated to achieve a strong punch at the start of the sound and a fade towards the end, retaining the natural curve the 808 kick. Steve dips a couple of resonant frequencies in the mids, then rolls off the extreme high and low end, and automates a band in the mids to rise and fall, accentuating their grungy harmonics.
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The final bass begins life as an 808 kick, with a bend between 60 and 30Hz at the end of the sound. A five-band Saturn boosts the highs, and the middle band is set to Broken Tube mode, allowing Steve to dial up its Feedback level for some filthy distortion in the mids.
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Another Saturn is added to bring out the tops of the distortion, but Steve decides against using the OneKnob Filter to sculpt them any further, leaving the juicy harmonics intact. Finally, REQ is applied to ensure there are no extreme lows or highs present in the signal.
Lynx, Clap Track bit.ly/LynxClapTrack Lynx ft. Kemo, Keep it Low bit.ly/LynxKiL
WWW
lynxdnb.com soundcloud.com/lynxdnb twitter.com/lynxdnb facebook.com/lynxdnb
November 2015 / Computer Music / 43
> make music now / dnb track-builder 2015
DnB Track-Builder Over the last few pages, four expert DnB producers have opened their studio doors to us for a series of sound design masterclasses, so now it’s time to take the four separate track elements and craft a bangin’ drum ’n’ bass track from scratch. We could simply drop all these parts into a project and use them ‘construction kit’-style, but DnB is a sound design-heavy genre, with producers historically generating new, fresh sounds from a wide variety of sources; so instead we’re going to treat these parts as ‘samples’, twisting them up in a multitude of ways. We’ll also be supplementing our core elements with heavyweight sounds from this month’s Loopmasters CM DnB Artist Pack, which is absolutely chock-a-block with pro sounds from more of the scene’s favourite producers. We’ll be rendering many parts to audio as we go along, simplifying the arrangement process and making it easier for you to join the tutorial at any point – so be sure to load up the WAVs for each tutorial to ensure you’re following along correctly. We’re aiming for an upfront, neurofunkesque, hoover-heavy vibe, and we’ll be building our track in Ableton Live 9. If you don’t use Live, you’ll still be able to follow along with the demo version (which is available from ableton.com), which will load any of our projects and is practically fully functional besides the lack of saving/ exporting. We’re also supplying all the audio files required for you to follow along with each step in your DAW of choice. The vast majority of the plugins we’ll use are from our ever-expanding Plugins collection, and we’ll offer free alternatives to any Live devices we use. 50 / Computer Music / November 2015
dnb track-builder 2015 / make music now < > Step by step 1. Eerie, textured DnB pads with Keeno’s sounds
Introducing… atmosphere! In most club-oriented 4/4 genres such as house and techno, the first minute or two of a track is usually regarded as ‘mixing fodder’: a basic drum groove will provide the DJ with a rhythmic blueprint with which to mix, slowly introducing the core musical elements towards the drop. In contrast, drum ’n’ bass producers instead use the intro section to showcase intricate, evolving atmospheres and cinematic textures, luring the listener into an extravagant soundscape that merely hints towards the imminent beatsand-bass barrage that’s just over the horizon. So where’s best to begin when composing a DnB intro? Well, you can synthesise your own pads, FX, strings and textures, of course – and this is great if you’re making a more modern, ‘digital’ style of DnB – but drum ’n’ bass and jungle both have a rich history of sampling, so don’t be afraid to pillage old records, film soundtracks or just about any pre-recorded sound source (being mindful of sample copyright law, of course) for melodic snippets that you can then replay, pitch, loop, filter and process in a sampler, as we’re doing with Keeno’s orchestral composition in our tutorial.
Tutorial
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Start with a new Live project at 174bpm. A tried-and-tested technique for creating eerie, textured intro pads involves playing a small segment of a dense cinematic composition back via a sampler, so let’s do just that with Keeno’s orchestral loop. Load Keeno CM Full Bounce.wav into Live’s Simpler on a MIDI track, then turn the track down to -7dB.
When triggered by a single note, it’s clear that this melodic, emotional chord would suit a more liquid style of DnB. However, we can turn it into more of a dissonant, evil element suitable for a harder track by playing pairs of adjacent MIDI notes. Pad Notes.mid contains eight # bars of a chord made of G and G in two octaves; load it onto the Simpler track.
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Use Simpler’s Start parameter (or drag the start point arrow on the waveform display) to find a suitable chord within the dense composition that can be used as a sample for our intro pad. We set Start to 37.1%. Remove the click at the beginning of the note by raising the Volume envelope’s Attack to 0.5ms.
Intro elements are often washed in reverb, delay and modulation effects. Our pad sounds rather dry, so insert Wolfram CM and load the Delay » CM Canned Octopus preset. To reign in this extreme stereo effect, load Live’s Utility next in the chain (other DAW users can use the free A1StereoControl, a1audio.de). Set Width to 50% and Gain to 0.5dB.
> Step by step 2. Layered DnB synth and vocal stabs using Loopmasters samples
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Let’s add a stab element. Stab.wav is a hoover-style sound taken from this issue’s Loopmasters Data sample pack. Drop it onto an audio track, turn it down to -14dB, then copy it to beats 1, 3, 5, and 7. Load Wolfram CM’s Delay » Asian Touch preset for characterful quarter-note delays, then Satson CM with its High Pass at 1 o’clock to thin the sound out.
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We can add timbral interest to the stab by layering a subtle vocal sample underneath. Drop Enei Vocal.wav (taken from Loopmasters’ Enei pack) onto a new track, turn it down to -13dB, then copy the hit onto the same beats as the previous stab. Again, use Satson CM to High Pass the sound at 1 o’clock, or copy and paste the stab’s Satson CM to this channel.
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Transpose beat 7’s stab down -12 and the vocal up +12. Then replace the final vocal hit on beat 7 with Enei Vocal Pitched Delay.wav – a delay tail from the original sample. To keep things uncluttered, we render the stab and vocal as an eight-bar stem (WAVs are in the Tutorial Files folder), then import it onto a new track and delete the original tracks
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> make music now / dnb track-builder 2015 > Step by step 3. Building a hard-hitting DnB beat around Break’s drum loop
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The atmospheric pad and stab have set the moody tone for our DnB track, so let’s now lay down a solid foundation of upfront beats. Import Break’s drum break (Break Drums.wav) onto a new audio track and turn the channel down to -11dB. Rather than use the loop in its current form, we’re going to treat this grooveladen break as a ‘sampled’ breakbeat to provide shuffle underneath our main kick and snare samples.
The break’s transients are still clashing with our main kick and snare, so let’s squash the loop with some creative limiting. Insert Barricade CM on the break channel, and set the Out Ceiling to -14dB and the Input Gain to +20dB. This pulls the sustain up too much, so load Audio Assault’s free Transient plugin (audioassault.com) after the limiter. Pull the Sustain down to -89 for a tighter effect.
Insert Live’s Compressor on the breakbeat channel (or your DAW’s stock sidechain-capable compressor if you’re not using Live), activate the Sidechain, then route the A SC Trig signal into its Audio From section. Set the Ratio to the maximum inf:1, Attack to 0.1ms, Release to 37.5ms and Threshold to -18dB. Set the Compressor’s Lookahead to 10ms for a faster response.
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To keep our session moving along smoothly, we’ve prepared custom kick and snare hits by layering samples and hits from our own BeatMachine CM by DopeVST. Drop Kick.wav and Snare.wav onto new audio tracks. Note how we’ve visually lined the kick/snare pattern up to mirror the exact placement of hits in the original break, including the subtle swing on even 16th notes that Break applied.
For simplicity, render the processed breakbeat as a new audio file (Break Processed.wav), then import it back onto a new audio track and delete the original version. Despite our processing, the break is still overpowering the main kick and snare, so let’s use sidechain compression to duck the backing beat out of the way each time the main hits fire.
To beef up the kick, load 6X-500 CM onto its channel, and set the Gain to 6.5 and Output to 3.5. A resonant highpass filter can be used to add more punch at the all-important kick fundamental frequency (approximately 100Hz). Load Philta CM, set its Highpass to 91Hz and push the Resonance up to 47%.
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The breakbeat is a bit wide for our mix, so add Live’s Utility (if you’re not using Live, try A1StereoControl: a1audio.de). Set Width to 65% and Gain to 0.5dB. To stop it clashing with the kick and snare, remove the low frequencies with Satson CM, setting its 12dB/oct High Pass to 12 o’clock. Add STA Enhancer CM next: set Mode to LoFi, Low Process to 25%, High Process to 22%, and Saturation to 100%.
We want both the kick and snare to duck other elements, which would normally mean using two compressors. Instead, let’s set up a combined channel with the two mixed together – we can do this using a Return channel. Send the kick and snare to Return A by the maximum amount, mute the Return’s output so that we don’t hear the drums ‘twice’, and rename the Return ‘A SC Trig’.
Let’s also drive the snare: load 6X-500 CM on its channel, and set the Gain to 8 and Output to 2. To boost the fundamental frequency, load IIEQ Pro CM and dial in an AnaPeak boost of 1.1dB at 262Hz with a Q of 2.1. To remove midrange mud and treble harshness, make two EQ incisions: a -3.3dB AnaPeak cut at 467Hz with a Q of 2.59, and a -3dB AnaPeak cut at 3939Hz with a Q of 1.26.
dnb track-builder 2015 / make music now < > Step by step 4. Adding hi-hat, ride and percussion layers to a DnB beat
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We have a core kick, snare and break, so let’s add percussive elements to fill out the beat. We processed the kick and snare in the previous walkthrough, so here we’re using rendered versions of them (Kick Proc.wav and Snare Proc.wav in the Tutorial Files folder). Remember to send the kick and snare to Return A (our combined sidechain bus – see previous tutorial) by the maximum 0dB amount.
To subtly widen the beat’s stereo field, pan the open hat left by 10 and the ride right by 17. Finally, let’s add a short drum fill (Small Fill.wav) on a new track, on beats 4.3 and 8.3, as a small, skippy embellishment. Route the break, closed hat, open hat and ride to a new audio channel (we’ve named ours ‘Perc Bus’) so that we can process them as one.
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To create a hi-hat part that swings in time with the backing breakbeat, we take Break’s original break sample and use Live’s Convert Drums to New MIDI Track function to extract the groove’s MIDI data, which we then use to trigger a closed hat from our Loopmasters CM DnB Artist Pack. Our resulting hi-hat groove is CH Pattern.wav, a skipping closed hi-hat loop – load it onto a new audio track.
Next, we need to sculpt the treble, adding sizzle at the very top and reining in harshness further down, so insert PTH2A-CM on the group, turn it On and set the Atten knob to just past 1 to ‘dim’ the treble. Load 6X-500 CM, and set the Gain to 10 and Output to 0 for a heavy dose of drive, then put a subtle amount of excitement and sparkle back at 16kHz by setting the High Boost knob to 4.
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Let’s use sidechaining again to make this hat pattern ‘dance’ around the kick and snare. Copy the breakbeat’s Compressor to the hi-hat channel, and set its Ratio to 6.3:1, Release to 71.3ms and Threshold to -24dB. Now add two new audio tracks: one for a looser ‘open’ hi-hat (OH Loop.wav) and one for a subtle ride (Ride Loop.wav). We created these loops using the excellent BeatMachine CM.
Finally, let’s sidechain all the percussion a little more around the kick and snare. Live 8’s Compressor featured an FF1 mode which causes less clicks and artifacts than the Live 9 version at extreme settings, so we’ll use that in this instance – copy the settings shown here, or load the ready-made Rack from the Tutorial Files folder. You can save this Rack into your library for later use.
Selector! It’s a cliché often repeated in production circles: the key to making a great track is selecting suitable sounds at the source, instead of wasting time and processing power trying to make below-par sounds fit the bill. But what constitutes a ‘suitable’ sound, exactly? When making a trackbuilding tutorial like this, we spare you the agony of our ‘behind the scenes’ sound selection process – following us audition 50 kick drums would be a tedious process indeed – but rest assured that we’ve put in the time and effort auditioning many sounds to find suitable matches in the context of other elements. In fact, context is a key word here. A snare may sound impressive in isolation, but it might not work when layered with your chosen breakbeat; in this case, it’s better to try another sound alongside the others – you may find that a “mediocre” sample fits the bill perfectly when
“You may find that a ‘mediocre’ sample fits the bill perfectly when heard in context” heard in context with your existing parts. This is one advantage to programming drums via MIDI and sampler instruments: once your MIDI pattern is set up, flicking through different samples is a straightforward process, and you can keep your loop cycling as you do this. It’s important to train your critical ear and develop a taste and preference – this will help refine your
decision-making skills. Here, our drums follow a typical DnB formula: the punchy kick features a short tail and a fundamental frequency of roughly 100Hz, leaving room for sizable sub frequencies underneath; the hard-hitting, full-frequency snare with a 200-300Hz fundamental and plenty of top-end splash provides fizz, punch and weight in all the right places; then Break’s breakbeat adds the desired groove, swing and character to fill out the beat behind the main elements. We’ve then slotted complementary hats and rides in to fill out missing frequencies. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you can’t break “the rules” when making your own DnB beats – your scope for creative decision is almost infinite in a real-world scenario, and the best way to refine this decision-making is through practice and trial-and-error. November 2015 / Computer Music / 53
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