80s Dancehall/Digital

[kleiner_kirk]

Hi guys!

I know, this is a dubstep board, but there is no community for the music i'd like to produce, so i hope you will help me with a few questions.
My favourite sound is the simple and primitive sound of the dancehall era of the eighties... the time from ~84 - 89 and i would like to make riddims by myself for a long time.

some examples
http://www.myspace.com/maffidrengene
http://www.myspace.com/thedigitalwoods

I have the time to get some practise in this atm and so now there is the time to try it. (i'm not a musician, so it could be a quick journey... but i have the feeling and so i think it will be a funny thing.)

I don't have any knowledge about producing riddims. So i need some help for the first steps...

I researched in the web and found some interesting infos... i have

1. reason
2. many vintage drum sounds
3. audition
4. vintage warmer vst

I did some video tutorials for reason, so the main functions are no problem...

But how i have to start?
How is a 80s riddim build-on?

Do i need a keyboard for the keyboard sounds or does reason have something to do the nice keyboard melodies in this kind of production?

Can you please give me some advices how i have to start?

best regards,
kirk

[jsills]

start by listening and analyzing the sound youre looking to make. study that sound thoroughly, inside and out. what instruments are being used? how does the rhythm work? what tempo? how is the song structured? read about how they recorded during that era, what equipement did they use? i recommend "A Red Rose For Gregory" if you can find it, its a masterful album. a producer has a LOT to think about before even starting a track.

[deadly_habit]

old dancehall or dub = pretty much soak everything in compression

[phrex]

paaaaass mi a dubplate, i'm gonna kill somebody toniiiight

[skallawa]

check this out

http://wayneandwax.com/org/lessons/root ... orial.html

go listen to some Jammy's production. steelie and clevie production. Korg type sounds is very dancehall. Oberhiem DX drum sounds. Learn the Dave Kelly drum pattern and vary it.

It's not that hard to do dancehall, it's a vibe more than anything else.

[kleiner_kirk]

Jeah, this is really cool!

I need some basic idea, how a early dancehall riddim work. This roots tut is a good start by the first view! thank you!

I did this tut to understand how reason works... http://www.youtube.com/user/XdoggJaySmi ... ky0ZQKG5Qk
very good, but it's for hiphop beats...

thanks guys!

[skallawa]

Jeah, this is really cool!

I need some basic idea, how a early dancehall riddim work. This roots tut is a good start by the first view! thank you!

I did this tut to understand how reason works... http://www.youtube.com/user/XdoggJaySmi ... ky0ZQKG5Qk
very good, but it's for hiphop beats...

thanks guys!

OK. make your tempo 166 (it is doubled so it would really be 83). put your snare on the three. put your hi hats on the 1,2,3,4. play a bassline using a sine wave bass patch. play a piano bang. that is a good starting point. The bassline is very important. make sure that it is very groovy. put your kicks where you want (usually atleast on the 3 with the snare.) to be real it is about a vibe and will take a while to learn.

Wayne and Wax has a dancehall tuturial on his site also. search for it. it's more of a dave kelly 90s dancehall tuturial. not 80's. the roots tuturial would be more of a 80s dancehall tuturial.

[alphacat]

Downsample bitrates on drums and synths, because a lot of those cats were using 12-bit digital gear (S330, S900, TX16's, etc.)

[kleiner_kirk]

Thx guys!

Snare, Kick, Hi hat are ok zu handle, but the bassline is very difficult in my opinion.
maybe it#s easier to make a melody and find a bassline after that?

I used subtractor and thor, but it's very hard to find good basslines. For me, it's also very hard to hear out from a production, how the bassline works...
can you reccommend a bass patch?
and maybe a nn18 keyboard, organ or something like that?

Skallawa, i do not understand that thing with the tempo... if i us the 166 it's very fast, too fast.

[studio dread]

This is a free software copy of the Yamaha cs-01 which was THE bass synth. http://www.pethu.se/music/instruments.html

Oberheim DMX, Kawai R50 and Linn drum 1 are all good drum sounds, you can probably find the samples on the internet.

You can load the original Yamaha DX7 patches into a software synth called FM7, that will give you a good (terrible) piano and other synth sounds.

http://www.interruptor.ch/vst_overview.shtml

the wow and flutter plugin on there will give you a warped tape kind of sound that you can put on your synths. The tape delay is a good plugin as well.

Theres also a free plugin called camelphat which can give you nice saturation.

[jolly wailer]

http://forums.reggaedubwise.com/

[kleiner_kirk]

thx!!!

yamaha cs-01... can't get it on! not in adobe audition and not in wavelab. the other vst's are workin fine... any ideas?

i really need some good bass patches. the one's i've used sound very low... subtractor attack, bassy bass, bread bass....and so on.

but it really makes fun to hear the phat kicks and so on...

[studio dread]

The cs 01 is a synth, not an effect so you wont be able to open it in audition or wavelab. Just seen your using reason.. You can't open VSTs in there either. In my opinion you would be better using a different DAW because the digi sound is really specific and i think it would be hard to get those sounds from reason. I don't know anything about refills though, there might be suitable sounds to be found from them.

[kleiner_kirk]

I read in another board, that reason is the best software to make those riddims. Maffi (check the link in my first post) have this in use too. They wrote, that this software have all functions to make those riddims, but it is very important to use the EQ in reason and to finish the tracks in cubase, audtition, etc with some plugins like psp vintage warmer... unfortunately the forum is locked and i can't register there to ask for some more details. Maybe i should ask them directly by myspace or so...

Does somebody know, with which software i can use the hahaha yamaha cs-01? There are no infos about this synth on the net...

[scraping micha]

I read in another board, that reason is the best software to make...

dont ever listen or learn from people who recommend something as the best software for music or "this is the only way" or whatever...
reason is just one tool to express what you wanna express. if you can handle it, its a very nice tool. but its kind of restricted or limited in a way, which is in imho part of its success.
so, when you come to a point you want more than just reason - audio, other virtualinstruments, fx - REWIRE is getting interesting. inform yourself about that and then choose a sequencer which can do that. (almost any!)

Does somebody know, with which software i can use the hahaha yamaha cs-01? There are no infos about this synth on the net...

so...actually ANY other sequencer, but protools can handle vst(i) nowadays.
BUT with no further experience or at least the "basics" its means to spend lots of time to challenge all the possibilities a sequencer combined with reason gives, but its worth it.

i could recommend reaper. you can run vst and rewire and it does everything i want. most of the time at least... but cubase, logic, sonar, studio one, would all please your needs as well.


greets,

micha