That "Flying Lotus" sound

[morro_e]

thanks for the heads up i understand what you are saying, but yes on top of sidechaining thing you can easily gain weight back with carefull eq'ing and restoring with compressor on the top, its all about reasons architecture right, layer things up as much as you want it until your pc stops breathing haha. but, in the end of the day, i like to make stuff musical, not on the dancefloor tip only

[fiziks]

Play your drums by hand. Or better yet, record the midi notes and edit to taste in your daw. I've got the Akai MPK25 and the pads are great for doing this. Although, sometimes I prefer the keys.

[86.]

it's true flylo tunes lack on the dynamics at high levels. noticed this myself....not a bad thing though

[nowaysj]

Play your drums by hand.

And it helps if you've got good timing too!

[AnalGangstaHo]

Anyone have any clue as to what his avatar was on his Myspace page from a couple of months back? Had some girls head getting sucked into some big tentacle thing. Looked fucked up

[JFK]

Play your drums by hand.

And it helps if you've got good timing too!

Or perhaps even bad timing.......

[nowaysj]

I don't know bro, I play by hand and it's just a little too organic.

[fiziks]

Play your drums by hand.

And it helps if you've got good timing too!

Or perhaps even bad timing.......

Now you're getting it!

I actually just started playing some things by hand...sorta. For instance, I'll draw the kick and snare in and paste out a few minutes worth of these measures. Then I'll record me banging away on the pads and keys and pick out what I want from the hats and bongos and shit. It's cool because you get a bunch of different velocities and notes that aren't snapped to the grid since you're doing it live. Then you can tweak the notes to your taste.

[gkmusic]

Damn...haven't posted on the forum for ages

But yeah, i found this thread and felt like putting my two cents in:

1. It's more the sounds he's using, i.e if you notice the most distinct thing bout lotus tunes are the way he uses his synths, drum samples. Not only is his sound design unique but the way he uses samples are also different so that could contribute to teh illusion of the Flying lotus sound. I suggest making your own patches, recording your own drums sounds

2. Alot of his drums are off centered, shuffled rhythms, either use a pad to play in your drum tracks or programme your drums to get a live feel by turning the snap off and shifting the note's slightly out of time. He probaboly layers thee drums with bit crushed and distorted sounds to add to that heavy "dirty" vibe

3. Also he uses alot of "spacial techniques" as he talks about in one of his interviews, this is probably talking about stereo imaging, instead of just using panning get hold of a stereo enhancer or sum sort of plugin that lets you design your stereo imgae. Ozone 3 has a pretty decent stero imager i would reccomend

4. SIDECHAINING - this is one thing about the lotus' production i can say is a fact. He use heavy sidechaining, mostly with the drums and samples, i assume some times he uses sidechaing and mutes the trigger so you hear wierd gaps in the source that is being sidechaine to give that "pulsing" sound

5. He also uses a load of compression on the overall tracks, according to my knowledge Dilla used a Roland SP-303 and i'm pretty sure samiyam uses the same gizmo so it might not be a long shot to assume that even lotus has got one of them lieing around, roland effects have a pretty distinct sound and i can blatantly hear it in a lot of samiyam tracks. The compressor on that sounds very much like something lotus would use. Also instead of compressong the overall track he might use parralelle compression, that could be wot makes his tracks sound very heavily compressed yet very clear cut

But yeah that's as much as i can think of off the top of my head, check out the track i made using the Roland 555 which is an upgrade of the 333, i used most of teh techniques i spoke about in the post

http://www.myspace.com/0noice0

track - 0bantchote0

hope that helped folks

[nowaysj]

Lot of interesting sounds in there, but for me, a groove never sets in. Shifts from idea to idea without any kind of through-line. Feel like you've got an lp's worth of ideas right there.

[ill-esha]

Some people have posted some really good tips, but you're actually on the wrong forum..
you can get lots of tips from the one actually dedicated to this sound..

http://www.glitchhopforum.com

[T_O_B]

Yeah as said before... That whole style of production is different to what someone might generally be doing in Dubstep.
That whole "lotus genre" mainly is made on MPC's and thats how they get it to sound so lose. Its generally done in freehand/unquantized and the "skipping" sounds is generally cos of the pads triggering samples and gives the impression of skipping.

Go to my player http://www.myspace.com/tripletcy and check out "On Point".. That whole track was written freehand, done on MPD

Those guys use ducking allot too and play allot with noise textures.

Best,

[gkmusic]

Lot of interesting sounds in there, but for me, a groove never sets in. Shifts from idea to idea without any kind of through-line. Feel like you've got an lp's worth of ideas right there.

totally agree, thas cos they were pretty much different loops i made in the same key.

but yeah i just used that track as a refference to the technoques i was talking about rather than showcasing the beat as a piece of music for an audience, was more for the "production" rather than the musicianship.

[abZ]

here's what he told me

in steps

1. get high as shit
2. drum on your drum pad and don't quantize it
3. sample some vinyl
4. bounce to disk
5. release to public
6. repeat

Step one being the most important part.

I don't know if you are being facetious or not but it is probably pretty damn close to the truth. I find the best producers are ones that don't even know their equipment that well. They just do their thing and it comes out sick. While a lot of producers that know their studio like the back of their hand make the most boring shite. Not a rule obviously, just sayin'.

[nowaysj]

Anyone know of a guide on how to make battery behave like an mpc?

[tripwire22]

mans got killer style his beats got alot of groove to them.

[Grimace]

Wtf are some of you on about?

His tunes sound like he is just jamming with a controller/pads with quantize turned off for some drums.

No need to get all technical about.

its that simple

[deadly_habit]

technically it's been listed
honestly having natural rhythm and real instrument skills is key

[Pedro Sánchez]

technically it's been listed
honestly having natural rhythm and real instrument skills is key

This all day.

[thor_beatz]

One thing is important with these wobble hip hop acts:

weird beat programming and hyped fx.

Lets look at the track tea leaf dancers by FLylo:

Main attraction in this track is the oomph that almost mutes the whole signal just after the kick. This is done via sidechain compression. Check out tut's on youtube about sidechain compression. Now flylo did not stop there ofcourse, the beats are losely programmed, and the entire track is based on samples treated with extremely tweaked fx.

Main thing is the groove. Lukid is a much more laidback flow, but uses the same kind of techniques to achive the wobbly beats etc. I can only recommend you to experiment, smoke a good spliff and go out buy some dope vinyl's at your local yard sale.

Also: check out dimlite, if you have not already

[Edit] Most of what I wrote was already said. Sorry only read the first page... On a side note: i've read on an interview that he does not use his trigger pad (not an MPC) anymore when creating beats. only for live. So the whole sit down with a MPC thing really does not hold up. It does not matter how you get your groove, as long as its grooving. (just dont use a DAW that has a ducked up pianoroll)