Utilising Loops

[digital cause]

How do you go about using loops (if at all) to make drums? ive recently gotten into using rex files and have heard that people then pitch the original loop up or down, or replace the hits with their own samples, or both... I was makin my drums manually for ages but using rex loops is pretty cool, just dont like using someonelses shit but apparently its pretty common. just wondering how everybody uses em, modifies them, gets grooves from em etc.

cheers.

[vonboyage]

dont like using someonelses shit but apparently its pretty common. just wondering how everybody uses em, modifies them, gets grooves from em etc.

I've got this same question !

[digital cause]

[ludofuzz]

Isn't that almost the same as using other peoples loops?

MAKING YOUR OWN BEATS/GROOVES/SOUNDS whatever you want to call it IS WHAT MAKING MUSIC IS ABOUT.NOT USING OTHER PEOPLES SHIT.BEING ORIGINAL AND CREATIVE!!!!

1.Get your head down and stop trying to get around learning how to make your OWN BEATS.

2.Have drumming lessons. I'll teach you for £20 p.h.

3.Use you ears-thats why god (if there is one) gave us them. Listen to tracks and count to 8. I presume you can do that by yourself?

[b-lam]

well it's standard for dnb and breaks oriented musics....
most dubstep doesnt use sampled breaks as far as i can tell.
if you want to browse the endless knowledge that is dogsonacid.com u can find pretty much every good tip ever on breaks manipulation.
as a start, think about pitchshifting, layering on individual drum hits into the right bits of the break, layerin on more than one break....


the only reason i can think of to them is if you want it to sound like a real drummer and you don't have loads of nice equipment .... most dubstep doesn't need this.

and i agree with the guy above me, but drum lessons arent necessary

[doomstep]

just chop n use em how u use any other sound - why wud anyone wanna use other peoples loops the way other people use em


n llow the 'I dont use loops' snobs n all - flipping samples is as much an artform as proggramming / playing.

[shonky]

DOA's usually pretty good on this. One tip I got from there was to stick the loop into Soundforge or whatever audio editor, set regions for each of the individual hits and then eq them independently. Little bit of boost to the sweet spot of the kick somewhere from 80-120hz depending on what sounds good, and low cut the flab. Low cut snares at around 350-500hz and low cut the hats to remove those virtually inaudible traces that cause clashes in the low mid-range and cause mud. You can also apply small fades at the end of each region to tighten the loop up (also makes it easier for Recycle to set hit points)

Then take the loop, compress or limit it to get the sounds fat (don't squash all the dynamic out of it however), and then stick it in recycle. Load the rex loop into your sampler and then open up the piano roll editor to see the midi notes. Unless you're doing odd-syncopation grooves, you probably want to move the notes around in 1/4 or 1/8 note segments as it will sound a bit too fiddly otherwise and may destroy the original groove.

Get your break sounding how you want and then add further instances throughout the tune where needed. If you use the glue tool to link it into one long file, copy the entire file twice so that you have 3 copies and use the same sampler patch on two further tracks. One of these should be for the kick, one for the snare and one for the hats - do this by taking the kick track for instance and removing the snare and hats and remove the other unnecessary hits on the other two tracks.

Doing it this way means that you retain the original groove from the loop but can compress, eq and effect each part of the kit individually. There may be easier ways to do this in other samplers/daw's but this is how I do it in Logic 5.5 with the Exs24 (or nab the midi file and use it in the Emulator X2)

I generally tap the riddims in, but it's quite handy if one lacks funky fingers

[Sharmaji]

if your sampler has multiple outs, you don't need to do all that in soundforge; just process kick/snare/hats on separate channels. plus then you can load samples over the kick+snare slices, velocity-layer them, etc, etc, etc.

nothing wrong w/ breaks at all. just another tool in your arsenal.

[batfink]

eurgh

[batfink]

aagh

[batfink]

the splitting beats into bassdrum, snares, hihats is good for some breaks but eq'ing em seperate isnt always ideal. and it can be a serious ballache.

The hihats, cymbals, snare and bassdrum in a sampled break often run over into the next beat, or worse still are played at the same time,and so youll have to be damn careful with your eq'ing of individual hits unless you want your break to end up sounding all over the shop and a bit shite. Sometimes the choppy effect it gives can be what you want, but if you;re wanting to keep a break sounding natural its not a great idea.

sure, get rid of nasty frequencies on the whole break (best thing is get an eq, turn the Q right up so its affecting only a tiny range of frequencies, then set boost to loads and scan up and down the frequency range listening for the frequencies that sound aprticularly nasty and/or much louder than any others) and highpass your breaks to get rid of vinyl rumble and othe rnasties.

Another thing is stripping out excess hits. When ive used rex's for drum and bass tunes its often tempting to drag all the hits onto the beat and leave them there. however if youre speeding a break up you can often afford to strip out alot of hits to make a bit more space for those remaining hits to breathe.....


anyway i should be working. aaagh. time waster.

[shonky]

Wasn't talking about radical eq-ing just getting the unnecessary frequencies out - giving a mad treble boost to the hat and then low-passing the kick is going to sound amazingly shit and completely un-natural.

Does make more sense with multi-outs, but I suppose that also depends on whether your sampler has that option and of course how many outputs you have at your disposal on your DAW. Presume everyone has a more up-to-date set-up than myself.

And the technique usually works much better with hi-hat style riffs rather than with rides, because as Batfink says these are usually going to have fragments going over the beats due to the decays of the cymbals.

[pk-]

Isn't that almost the same as using other peoples loops?

MAKING YOUR OWN BEATS/GROOVES/SOUNDS whatever you want to call it IS WHAT MAKING MUSIC IS ABOUT.NOT USING OTHER PEOPLES SHIT.BEING ORIGINAL AND CREATIVE!!!!

you can be original and creative in your use of samples. that's what most electronic music is all about

[pompende]

if i use loops its only to snatch out certain hits.
it can be quite nice sometimes to have an entire drumset in one place like that.
using other peoples sequencing sounds stifling.

Wasn't talking about radical eq-ing just getting the unnecessary frequencies out -

yeah i do this on every drumhit now.
seems like a longting at first but well worth it.

[untold]

Does make more sense with multi-outs, but I suppose that also depends on whether your sampler has that option and of course how many outputs you have at your disposal on your DAW. Presume everyone has a more up-to-date set-up than myself.

you can do multi outs in logic 5.5 with esx24 or kontakt

http://sound-on-sound2.infopop.net/2/Op ... =639107492

[j_j]

re edit the loop. 'b with me' on my myspace.chk it.its piss easy.

[deadly_habit]

depends on what you're after
ie if im doing dnb: drumfunk - send snares to one output, hats another etc eq
resequence and make it choppy and funky as hell maybe even layer some other drum hits on it though at times i stay true to orig breaks
i mean i've seen amens and other classic breaks used in dnb and many other genres pop up in dubstep (breakstep i think someone called it to me once for a few tunes)
nowhere near the amount of manipulation used in dnb on em well besides dnb people doing dubstep
but hope this helps a bit

[batfink]

Wasn't talking about radical eq-ing just getting the unnecessary frequencies out - giving a mad treble boost to the hat and then low-passing the kick is going to sound amazingly shit and completely un-natural.

And the technique usually works much better with hi-hat style riffs rather than with rides, because as Batfink says these are usually going to have fragments going over the beats due to the decays of the cymbals.

sorry man. i didnt read all the other posts. I juts splanged a reply.

i realised afterwards youd already said much of what i did. hehe.

[batfink]

re edit the loop. 'b with me' on my myspace.chk it.its piss easy.

is that using dr rex?

and if so do you mean rearranging the notes (slices) once youve done the copy to track shizznizz? in which case, yeah, easy!

if only acid pro properly supported fecking rexs. it just loads them as one whole file and ignores the slices. i guess its cos it has a built in break chopper but its still shite.

[j_j]

re edit the loop. 'b with me' on my myspace.chk it.its piss easy.

is that using dr rex?

and if so do you mean rearranging the notes (slices) once youve done the copy to track shizznizz? in which case, yeah, easy!

if only acid pro properly supported fecking rexs. it just loads them as one whole file and ignores the slices. i guess its cos it has a built in break chopper but its still shite.

sounded cocky huh lol.. tbh no point over complicating,when u got ur breaks compliled and chopped the works half done.
preset breaks r prob not the best way,sample from a old jungle tape or suttin and chop.amen brother!