Big Beat drum production tips and tricks

[Polychrome]

I'm planning to make a few tracks with sort of Big Beat feel, and want to know if folks have any advice on producing great drum/percussion tracks for a Big Beat sort of vibe. It seems like a fair amount of compression and carefull eqing is one way to get punchy sounds, but I'm sure there are more tricks/approaches out there.

[C00kie]

Add (gated) reverbs and pitch shifting to that, although I'm not totally sure what you want. Is that a band name, Big Beat??

[Highvoltage]

man distortion is the key. cool, non-linear distortion and as you said, eq, and a hard compression. offcourse you may use samples from more than one loop, a cool snare from here, a cool kick from there. another thing is mixing synthetic bass or kick under the sample.

check mine
http://www.bk-recordings.com/vol2/HighV ... actory.mp3

and http://www.bk-recordings.com/highvoltage/


for more heheh.

[Polychrome]

Add (gated) reverbs and pitch shifting to that, although I'm not totally sure what you want. Is that a band name, Big Beat??

It's not a band name. More of a style of percussion, with mostly sampled drum hits/beats, processed to give really punchy, fat drums. Some examples include Fat Boy Slim, The Prodigy, The Crystal Method, and Propellerheads. And Highvoltage (nice stuff there!)

[3*s]

Give Camelophat a try. It's a hard limiter with coupled distortion. It does the big beat thing rather well. Vintage Warmer is another option for that kind of saturation. Izotope Vinyl is good for getting the "sampled off of a record" sound.

Timing is also a big component to the big beat sound. Things should be swung in the style of the beats that were originally sampled for this style, as in generally straight up, but with some hits swung a big to make it sound "funky." Analysing some classic breaks can help with this.

Bus compression can get some bigbeat sounds as well. That is, sending drums to an aux bus, waaay overcomping it (so you can only hear the attack transient basically), adding some bass gain, then mixing with the dry as you see fit.

[Armadillo]

a "normal" Big beat ..er.. beat... consist of kick on 1, snare on 2 , shuffle around 3 and snare on 4. Propellerheads, Fatboy slim and Crystal Method all have some sort of variation of that theme.
Prodigy is a bit different. Usually a massive kick on 1 and then just a lot of shuffle stuff Here the "1" is the mark, and snare don't necessarily fall on 2 and 4, and the snare is not as distinct as with the other 3. Prodigy breaks their beat up meaning that there is NOT a 8th or 16th hihat. Fatboy slim and Crystal Method might use a 8th hihat.

Regardless what you go for make sure it's heavily compressed and the drums are brought to the foreground. They are the main component of the tunes.

[CypherOne]

good advice Armadillo.

the closest I've managed to get was with my track Depth Charge. The pattern is pretty straight forward but it was the only time I've managed to use SuperCamelPhat (it does exactly what it says on the tin).

I always have trouble with the shuffle element on 3 that you mention, any tips?

[Armadillo]

You ain't doing that bad Cypher

It's a bit hard with this advice thing. It's sort of like trying to explain what notes to use to create a hit

The only thing I've done which is quite Prodigy-ish (as in "Fat of the land") would be a tune from around '98. Piss poor quality, before VSTi

So basically a lot of "shuffle stuff" around 3 e.g. a calmer snare than the main one.
It's called Probably

[griels]

http://www.bk-recordings.com/vol2/HighV ... actory.mp3

This is immensely cool! Fantastic production, sound mangling, and use of melodic patterns

Will check the rest of your tracks in a sec

[clueless]

a little blast from my past...

http://www.clueless.uk.com/Destination_Moon.mp3

now, of the course, the countdown seems to have 'reached its zero climax'...

[Armadillo]

I knocked this up in 15 min. using Redrum in Reason and a free drumset found on CM's site (computer music not Crystal method )

Prodigy styleee
If anyone's interested in can upload the Reason file and see if I can find the link for the drumkit.

[Ackelito]

Highvoltage! amazing music man! awsome!

im keeping this for inspiration!

great work! sounds like you are having a blast in your studio

give us more!! we need more!

[Armadillo]

Highvoltage! amazing music man! awsome!

im keeping this for inspiration!

great work! sounds like you are having a blast in your studio

give us more!! we need more!

yes. especially "no mans land" was just waaay to kewl. respect

[clueless]

a few of us KvR'ers were on a web radio station called grooveclubradio about a year ago (before the head honcho pulled the plug on it - too much work for too little reward). High Voltage's stuff was what i requested the most - virtually the soundtrack to spring 2004 for me. i really think that, of its kind, his stuff is among the best i've heard, in terms of proficiency, and sheer...well...catchiness!

we e-mailed each other a couple of times, and i 'lost' him when grooveclub folded, and then spent the next few months trying to track him down. until...voila! up he pops on KvR! [ ]

i posted a link to his tunes in the 'what are you listening to' thread, but seeing as nobody takes a blind bit of notice of what i say (sob, sniff... ) I don't i upped his hit-rate any...

anyway, glad you're here Mr HV. would like to see you in here a lot more often!

[griels]

i really think that, of its kind, his stuff is among the best i've heard, in terms of proficiency, and sheer...well...catchiness!

Yep, I listened to the rest and I have to say this is some of the best big beat stuff I've heard... Maybe I prefer some of the Chem's or Propellerheads' more melodic stuff but that's just personal taste. The sonic invention and attention to detail in these tracks is stunning.