Looking for some new ways of creating beats that I haven't yet explored. like innovative approaches that make rhythms sound unusual. At the moment for example I'm using moph2 to mash two percussion tracks together that have counter rhythms. That sort of thing.
In the past it's just been drum pads and ableton, hit the record button and that's it. But I'm listening to music now and there seems to be a shift towards a more processed sound for percussion/drum elements.
How do you create your beats?
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- Banned
- Topic Starter
- 1780 posts since 26 Aug, 2012
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- Banned
- 57 posts since 4 Aug, 2017
I don't think that things are more processed, but people nowadays are using extensively foley samples for percussion and in many cases those samples have a binaural sentiment which gives the sound a sense of 3D space and if you were not following "newest trends" your ears could be tricked that there is a lot of processing there and using a bunch of effects, while things are more simpler.
Go to 99Sounds, you can download a lot of foley samples for free to get you started. Even though all sound libraries there are made for Kontakt, samples are in .wav format, not .ncw, simply because not everyone has Kontakt so that people can mangle samples however they want and to use them in their own samplers, etc.
I would also suggest you to reuse those same samples in granular synths and to keep mangling them to create all sorts of cool effects and pads.
Maybe this doesn't really answer your question, but if you start paying attention to actual sound you'll notice that foley sounds as percussion are literally everywhere nowadays, from cinematic orchestral percussion (metallic hits) and all the way to ambient music where all sorts of foley sounds are replacing traditional percussion. So, load those samples in whatever you are using, start creating rhythms, layer that with standard samples (kick, snare, hihat, etc.) and experiment a bit.
Also, because they are non-standard "instruments", you'll get a lot of variety by experimenting with different pitches. In one track you can use their normal pitch, in other track those same samples you can pitch by whole octave to get different sounds.
Also, while I'm already here I'll give you my honest criticism about production in your music, even though not being into those genres, but I was doing a lot of atmospheric and other subgenres of DnB.
I know that using exciters is popular nowadays, especially cranking it up in Ozone but you are overdoing it which causes having some seriously annoying frequencies popping out, between 2000-5000Hz range. This range is known as high mid frequencies.
If you over-bump this range you get really annoying sound, let's call it "ears bleeding" effect.
Maybe your speakers or headphones are lying to your ears, but you definitely need to lower that range down by like 20% because you are losing and killing warmth by cranking up that specific range.
Just make sure in the future when using exciter while mastering that it affects frequencies above 5000Hz, that way you'll get that...let's say industry standard top-end while having warmth.
In a nutshell, nowadays industry standard production can be summarized like this:
Bump everything up which goes up to 150Hz, lower down everything between 150Hz to 6000Hz and bump again everything above 6000Hz.
Go to 99Sounds, you can download a lot of foley samples for free to get you started. Even though all sound libraries there are made for Kontakt, samples are in .wav format, not .ncw, simply because not everyone has Kontakt so that people can mangle samples however they want and to use them in their own samplers, etc.
I would also suggest you to reuse those same samples in granular synths and to keep mangling them to create all sorts of cool effects and pads.
Maybe this doesn't really answer your question, but if you start paying attention to actual sound you'll notice that foley sounds as percussion are literally everywhere nowadays, from cinematic orchestral percussion (metallic hits) and all the way to ambient music where all sorts of foley sounds are replacing traditional percussion. So, load those samples in whatever you are using, start creating rhythms, layer that with standard samples (kick, snare, hihat, etc.) and experiment a bit.
Also, because they are non-standard "instruments", you'll get a lot of variety by experimenting with different pitches. In one track you can use their normal pitch, in other track those same samples you can pitch by whole octave to get different sounds.
Also, while I'm already here I'll give you my honest criticism about production in your music, even though not being into those genres, but I was doing a lot of atmospheric and other subgenres of DnB.
I know that using exciters is popular nowadays, especially cranking it up in Ozone but you are overdoing it which causes having some seriously annoying frequencies popping out, between 2000-5000Hz range. This range is known as high mid frequencies.
If you over-bump this range you get really annoying sound, let's call it "ears bleeding" effect.
Maybe your speakers or headphones are lying to your ears, but you definitely need to lower that range down by like 20% because you are losing and killing warmth by cranking up that specific range.
Just make sure in the future when using exciter while mastering that it affects frequencies above 5000Hz, that way you'll get that...let's say industry standard top-end while having warmth.
In a nutshell, nowadays industry standard production can be summarized like this:
Bump everything up which goes up to 150Hz, lower down everything between 150Hz to 6000Hz and bump again everything above 6000Hz.
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- Banned
- Topic Starter
- 1780 posts since 26 Aug, 2012
Yeah i realize there's a lot of foley samples in beats, i did a lot of this myself on the tracks you said you listened to. But i meant other methods besides this to make your beats sound unique like textures and shit.AstroCastro wrote:I don't think that things are more processed, but people nowadays are using extensively foley samples for percussion and in many cases those samples have a binaural sentiment which gives the sound a sense of 3D space and if you were not following "newest trends" your ears could be tricked that there is a lot of processing there and using a bunch of effects, while things are more simpler.
Go to 99Sounds, you can download a lot of foley samples for free to get you started. Even though all sound libraries there are made for Kontakt, samples are in .wav format, not .ncw, simply because not everyone has Kontakt so that people can mangle samples however they want and to use them in their own samplers, etc.
I would also suggest you to reuse those same samples in granular synths and to keep mangling them to create all sorts of cool effects and pads.
Maybe this doesn't really answer your question, but if you start paying attention to actual sound you'll notice that foley sounds as percussion are literally everywhere nowadays, from cinematic orchestral percussion (metallic hits) and all the way to ambient music where all sorts of foley sounds are replacing traditional percussion. So, load those samples in whatever you are using, start creating rhythms, layer that with standard samples (kick, snare, hihat, etc.) and experiment a bit.
Also, because they are non-standard "instruments", you'll get a lot of variety by experimenting with different pitches. In one track you can use their normal pitch, in other track those same samples you can pitch by whole octave to get different sounds.
Also, while I'm already here I'll give you my honest criticism about production in your music, even though not being into those genres, but I was doing a lot of atmospheric and other subgenres of DnB.
I know that using exciters is popular nowadays, especially cranking it up in Ozone but you are overdoing it which causes having some seriously annoying frequencies popping out, between 2000-5000Hz range. This range is known as high mid frequencies.
If you over-bump this range you get really annoying sound, let's call it "ears bleeding" effect.
Maybe your speakers or headphones are lying to your ears, but you definitely need to lower that range down by like 20% because you are losing and killing warmth by cranking up that specific range.
Just make sure in the future when using exciter while mastering that it affects frequencies above 5000Hz, that way you'll get that...let's say industry standard top-end while having warmth.
In a nutshell, nowadays industry standard production can be summarized like this:
Bump everything up which goes up to 150Hz, lower down everything between 150Hz to 6000Hz and bump again everything above 6000Hz.
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- KVRer
- 9 posts since 11 Nov, 2017 from United Kingdom
I used to solely program it all from individual hits and use loops for 'realistic' percussion loop additions. But recently I've been having a lot of fun with Groove Agent & Battery; do you use glitching much in your beats? You can get some really interesting textures / grooves that way.
Another interesting technique one of my friends showed me was using Soundtoys Echoboy to make techy beats, setting the offset to non-sync'd values can result in novel loops that you'd likely not come up with by hand.
Another interesting technique one of my friends showed me was using Soundtoys Echoboy to make techy beats, setting the offset to non-sync'd values can result in novel loops that you'd likely not come up with by hand.
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- KVRAF
- 6113 posts since 7 Jan, 2005 from Corporate States of America
Ideas on my list of to-do:
• Load a MIDI performance of drumming (BFD, etc) into a track, but don't use a drummer plugin's intended sounds. Instead, load a bunch of random noise/fx/impact samples into a sample playback plugin (which might be your drummer plugin). (I have made melody parts from MIDI sequences meant for drums)
• Route complex melodic arpeggio patterns to a drummer plugin instead of a chromatic instrument (shuffle notes as needed to hit the drum plugin's required notes for drum sample triggering). Edit to taste.
• Combine the above techniques...
• record the sound of my slippers banging in the dryer one of these days after washing them. It's a remarkably consistent and funky pattern of banging sometimes. The dryer's drum sounds like an actual floor tom, especially in a cement basement.
• build a junk/hardware percussion kit (to sit next to my real drum set, once I am living somewhere else... some place that I can actually have my drum kit set up and not lose an entire room to it).
Things I've already done:
• turned one percussion loop into another by just adding delay/echoes and/or rhythmic/stepped filtering.
• I have mixed two or more pre-recorded loops with different patterns and sounds into one single busy drum track. If they're MIDI, you can easily edit out conflicting hits, but you can sometimes do this with audio just as easily too.
• made vocal noises into a mic fed into distortion effects as drumming
• struck various objects in front of a mic to add decorations to existing drum tracks. (microphones attached to mic stands make decent low frequency kick drums when you tap on the stand).
• I've randomized various Reaktor beatmaking ensembles (sometimes combined them). Randomization doesn't necessarily work well in these but some happy accidents happen after a while.
• I've sampled cheesy backing rhythms from Casio keyboards after running them through a guitar effects rack unit.
• arpeggiated synths with the filter frequency set low and the resonance cranked way up can sometimes produce interesting percussive rhythms. Especially good with delay effects.
• run percussion through vocoders (not nearly enough, since there are ways of doing it that aren't obvious sounding).
• I've manually placed and chopped/reversed/stretched drum samples into a track, tediously constructing a complex percussion part for a song.
• I've run everything through delays and distortion.
• I've sat at and recorded a real drum kit, improvising parts that I modify in the DAW afterward. Playing actual drums is a lesson in rhythm all on its own.
• I've tapped out improvised patterns on a pad controller run into drumming plugins.
• I've modified pre-existing drum patterns supplied by BFD, etc.
When making tracker modules with only four channels, I learned to integrate bass and drums together in one channel, which tends to force a sometimes-interesting mechanical turn-taking/alternation between bass notes and percussion hits. This can be ugly or funky. Music generally works this way, in many genres, though the interplay between bass rhythm/melody and drums is generally less rigid in natural composition, compared to 4-channel tracker modules. But the technique was instructional for me.
Also, I like using multiple different snare sounds in the same pattern.
• Load a MIDI performance of drumming (BFD, etc) into a track, but don't use a drummer plugin's intended sounds. Instead, load a bunch of random noise/fx/impact samples into a sample playback plugin (which might be your drummer plugin). (I have made melody parts from MIDI sequences meant for drums)
• Route complex melodic arpeggio patterns to a drummer plugin instead of a chromatic instrument (shuffle notes as needed to hit the drum plugin's required notes for drum sample triggering). Edit to taste.
• Combine the above techniques...
• record the sound of my slippers banging in the dryer one of these days after washing them. It's a remarkably consistent and funky pattern of banging sometimes. The dryer's drum sounds like an actual floor tom, especially in a cement basement.
• build a junk/hardware percussion kit (to sit next to my real drum set, once I am living somewhere else... some place that I can actually have my drum kit set up and not lose an entire room to it).
Things I've already done:
• turned one percussion loop into another by just adding delay/echoes and/or rhythmic/stepped filtering.
• I have mixed two or more pre-recorded loops with different patterns and sounds into one single busy drum track. If they're MIDI, you can easily edit out conflicting hits, but you can sometimes do this with audio just as easily too.
• made vocal noises into a mic fed into distortion effects as drumming
• struck various objects in front of a mic to add decorations to existing drum tracks. (microphones attached to mic stands make decent low frequency kick drums when you tap on the stand).
• I've randomized various Reaktor beatmaking ensembles (sometimes combined them). Randomization doesn't necessarily work well in these but some happy accidents happen after a while.
• I've sampled cheesy backing rhythms from Casio keyboards after running them through a guitar effects rack unit.
• arpeggiated synths with the filter frequency set low and the resonance cranked way up can sometimes produce interesting percussive rhythms. Especially good with delay effects.
• run percussion through vocoders (not nearly enough, since there are ways of doing it that aren't obvious sounding).
• I've manually placed and chopped/reversed/stretched drum samples into a track, tediously constructing a complex percussion part for a song.
• I've run everything through delays and distortion.
• I've sat at and recorded a real drum kit, improvising parts that I modify in the DAW afterward. Playing actual drums is a lesson in rhythm all on its own.
• I've tapped out improvised patterns on a pad controller run into drumming plugins.
• I've modified pre-existing drum patterns supplied by BFD, etc.
When making tracker modules with only four channels, I learned to integrate bass and drums together in one channel, which tends to force a sometimes-interesting mechanical turn-taking/alternation between bass notes and percussion hits. This can be ugly or funky. Music generally works this way, in many genres, though the interplay between bass rhythm/melody and drums is generally less rigid in natural composition, compared to 4-channel tracker modules. But the technique was instructional for me.
Also, I like using multiple different snare sounds in the same pattern.
- dysamoria.com
my music @ SoundCloud
my music @ SoundCloud
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- KVRAF
- 1530 posts since 17 Sep, 2002
Euclidean rhythms are fun. It's based on geometry and can lead to some rather interesting polyrhythms.
MIDI Ex Machina is a pretty cool free extension for Reaper that makes implementing euclidean rhythms a breeze.
MIDI Ex Machina is a pretty cool free extension for Reaper that makes implementing euclidean rhythms a breeze.
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- Banned
- 9087 posts since 15 Oct, 2017 from U.S.
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- KVRAF
- 5627 posts since 23 Mar, 2006 from pendeLondonmonium
One of the simplest ways to get unique percussive elements is to do this:
1. Load multi-effect plugin like Sugar Bytes Turnado in your DAW
2. Choose a preset and automate some parameters over any standard drum/percussive loop.
3. Render several minutes of this random automation
4. Go to the rendered audio and pick&chose sections that are interesting.
This method can create whole sections of cool percussive textures or it will allow you to cut little chunks of processed audio for further arrangement over a standard drum loop.
I mention Turnado above, since it is child's play to get unique textures by simply automating a single fader in the 'Dictator' page. This fader crossfades over several effect blocks, and all you need to do is pick up a preset and simply wiggle that fader in order to print the automation data in your DAW. Easy but powerful.
1. Load multi-effect plugin like Sugar Bytes Turnado in your DAW
2. Choose a preset and automate some parameters over any standard drum/percussive loop.
3. Render several minutes of this random automation
4. Go to the rendered audio and pick&chose sections that are interesting.
This method can create whole sections of cool percussive textures or it will allow you to cut little chunks of processed audio for further arrangement over a standard drum loop.
I mention Turnado above, since it is child's play to get unique textures by simply automating a single fader in the 'Dictator' page. This fader crossfades over several effect blocks, and all you need to do is pick up a preset and simply wiggle that fader in order to print the automation data in your DAW. Easy but powerful.
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- KVRer
- 9 posts since 29 May, 2017
That Sugar Bytes Turnado video on the site. Kill me. lol Sorry OP, no help.
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- KVRist
- 129 posts since 16 Mar, 2013 from United States
I use Jamstix a lot. Most people use it for stuff like rock, blues, country etc but I've had great success using it for electronic beat based music. I bypass its internal sounds and route its MIDI output to whichever drum VST I'm using - Battery, Geist, Tremor, whatever.
Jamstix emulates real drummers, and its (mostly) very good at it. It comes with a number of different drummer "personalities," each with their own style, and it also comes with a number of musical styles (you can buy more). It has a "brain" section in which you can tweak virtually every aspect of the drumming performance, and uses proper drumming terminology throughout. Even if you don't understand some of its brain elements, it's great fun to tweak them and see what happens.
One of its best features is that you can load a MIDI drum pattern into it, and it will use this pattern as a template on which to apply your drummer and brain settings. So you could for example load a 4 to the floor house pattern and it will happily play a whole song's worth of beats based on this pattern, offering endless variations and fills. It also has a step sequencer on which you can program your own beats for Jamstix to improvise around. If you like what it plays, you can lock any number of measures you like, or decide to recompose certain measures etc.
There are so many workflows and uses for Jamstix. Sometimes, for example, I will record its MIDI output to a MIDI track and use that as a starting point, editing notes here and there that I don't like and adding other notes that I feel it needs.
I've even tuned its MIDI drumkit to scales, and sent the MIDI output to synths to play melodic lines. You can get some great 303 style patterns like this, and they sound very colorful and alive.
Bit of a learning curve - it has somewhat of a weird interface, and it usually takes a couple of readings of the manual and much experimentation before you get how it all works, but once you understand it it's plain sailing.
And the good news is that Jamstix 4 is finally released, which is apparently a huge improvement on Jamstix 3. I'm really looking forward to upgrading.
Jamstix emulates real drummers, and its (mostly) very good at it. It comes with a number of different drummer "personalities," each with their own style, and it also comes with a number of musical styles (you can buy more). It has a "brain" section in which you can tweak virtually every aspect of the drumming performance, and uses proper drumming terminology throughout. Even if you don't understand some of its brain elements, it's great fun to tweak them and see what happens.
One of its best features is that you can load a MIDI drum pattern into it, and it will use this pattern as a template on which to apply your drummer and brain settings. So you could for example load a 4 to the floor house pattern and it will happily play a whole song's worth of beats based on this pattern, offering endless variations and fills. It also has a step sequencer on which you can program your own beats for Jamstix to improvise around. If you like what it plays, you can lock any number of measures you like, or decide to recompose certain measures etc.
There are so many workflows and uses for Jamstix. Sometimes, for example, I will record its MIDI output to a MIDI track and use that as a starting point, editing notes here and there that I don't like and adding other notes that I feel it needs.
I've even tuned its MIDI drumkit to scales, and sent the MIDI output to synths to play melodic lines. You can get some great 303 style patterns like this, and they sound very colorful and alive.
Bit of a learning curve - it has somewhat of a weird interface, and it usually takes a couple of readings of the manual and much experimentation before you get how it all works, but once you understand it it's plain sailing.
And the good news is that Jamstix 4 is finally released, which is apparently a huge improvement on Jamstix 3. I'm really looking forward to upgrading.
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- KVRist
- 61 posts since 28 Feb, 2013
Studio One 3.5.6 Pro
Win 7 x64
Core i7 3770 3.4 GHz
Behringer UMC404HD
No talent.
Win 7 x64
Core i7 3770 3.4 GHz
Behringer UMC404HD
No talent.
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Mister Natural Mister Natural https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=164174 - KVRAF
- 2834 posts since 28 Oct, 2007 from michigan
if you have MAX 4 LIVE : https://smaolab.org/index.php/product/m ... t-drummer/
or
https://www.ableton.com/en/blog/patter-by-adam-florin/
I've used both with some fun results
best of luck !
or
https://www.ableton.com/en/blog/patter-by-adam-florin/
I've used both with some fun results
best of luck !
expert only on what it feels like to be me
https://soundcloud.com/mrnatural-1/tracks
https://soundcloud.com/mrnatural-1/tracks
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Winstontaneous Winstontaneous https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=98336
- KVRAF
- 2351 posts since 15 Feb, 2006 from Berkeley, CA
Do you know if pattern changes on the one from the first link can be automated?Mister Natural wrote:if you have MAX 4 LIVE : https://smaolab.org/index.php/product/m ... t-drummer/
or
https://www.ableton.com/en/blog/patter-by-adam-florin/
I've used both with some fun results
best of luck !
I use a wide variety of approaches - sometimes playing rhythms on Push or MIDI keyboard, slicing samples, Logic Pro X drummer and Ultrabeat, Nerve, Geist 2, Microtonic, Ableton Drum Racks, and Battery. I especially like using gates on multiple rhythm tracks that are keyed off of each other. Can make some interesting patterns and really change the feel/ambience of each machine.
Hoping to find something similar to Logic Drummer that will work in other DAWs.
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el-bo (formerly ebow) el-bo (formerly ebow) https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=208007 - KVRAF
- 16369 posts since 24 May, 2009 from A galaxy, far far away
Like watching a snoozing grandma about to slide out of her rocking chair and not doing anything to stop it?melomood wrote:Allow accidents to happen
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- addled muppet weed
- 105849 posts since 26 Jan, 2003 from through the looking glass
so long as you record the event. then loop it, with some fx.el-bo (formerly ebow) wrote:Like watching a snoozing grandma about to slide out of her rocking chair and not doing anything to stop it?melomood wrote:Allow accidents to happen
