Chopping Breakbeats

[LMNO]

I need tips on flipping breakbeat samples.

I found a couple ill breakbeats from my stack of records. I sampled all of them. Some are 1 bar, while others are 4 bars. I load them up in Recycle and chop them up. I map them across my midi keyboard in the NNXT in Reason and group all the hits.

Now when I try to construct my own pattern it sounds like shit. Some of the bass drums end too early. Some of them simply sound like shit. Also there were high hats in the original sample, so after chopping up the beats the hats remain as artifacts. I tried messing around with filters, EQ, and compression, it doesn't help very much.

Any tips?? Is it possible that these samples simply will not work?

 

[Loose Cannon]

Theres always a way to make them work. Just try makin a couple breaks out of them even if you dont think the individual samples are perfect. See how it comes out.


Maybe if you could give me a couple of the breaks i could let you know how good they are?

 

[Shonsteez]

Good point man, keep tryin LMNO!...I kno what yer talkin about tho from past experience when i was starting out with choppin breaks...I will say this: Some breaks no matter how dope they are will not sound as good or tha same as when they were an entire loop...Simply put, yer chopping a tight human sounding rhythm and then making it slightly more robotic, so what u gotta do is figure out how to fill tha dead spaces and make tha track still swing naturally...

Try doin these things to start...

If u have a midi controller, go ahead and leave tha quantize feature off when u prgm this pattern and then press record and bang away...this will automatically give a more human feel and alot of tha time works to yer advantage.

Also, fuck with PITCH parameters a bit and a def. tha TEMPO if tha track and see where it feels better...this TEMPO doesnt have to be a permanent tempo but it helps to feel out tha track a bit before u start constructing it in my opinion.

 

[Loose Cannon]

Yea,

and about fillin in empty spaces. Its like dont throw out your seeds if you get a bad bag of weed. Its the same as the small rims, light snares, and extra hi-hats you find in the break. Keep that shit for later. The extra sdounds make it sound more realistic.

 

[Fade]

A good trick to use when you have really short samples that "cut off" too early for example, is to add some reverb or a quick delay. If done right, those short samples will sound much better, smoother and won't "cut off" suddenly.

 

[Dysphuncktional]

heh this topic is so for me.

i chop breaks and shit all the time.

one thing that i think usually sounds good straight out of the box without too much hassle is just using only those chopped up samples for your whole beat. Takes some listening to to figure out what sounds best where (eq break/trip snare does not sound good as main snare, break/trip bd does not sound on good on beat 1 or 3).
this way you can just sequence your drums, snares, and fill up the the spaces in between with one or two individual hihat samples from that beat .(dont play them at the same time as a bd with hihat for example, this is doubling up).

if you only wanna use perhaps the bass drums and/or snares, a simple low pass filter takes care of the hihat sound in a bassdrum. just run it through a lowpass, and lower the cutoff until you dont or very slightly hear the hihat. i have found that snares dont really need to have the hihat smaples removed from them, usually its not very noticable or it gives the snare some extra snap, this too however can be taken care of with a lowpass (with the cutoff way higher than the bass drum). after this, if you layer it woth clean totally different hihats, well, see for yourself to hear what i mean.

two other very important effects are noise gate and reverb. with noise gates you can cut tails off sound, so this can take care of a wooshy cymbal or hihat sound in a bassdrum at the end for example. used properly in combination with reverb, and you are on your way to making some phat drum beats.

 

[Equality 7-2521]

i was gonna say what fade said. you can also make it cut off even more sharply and add more reverb and it will sound dope.

 

[Shonsteez]

I second Fades comment, but its more in tha arrangement and timing in my opinion than layering on effect, tho that method will def. help make yer new break come together a bit better and sparkle a little more.

Also, Dys had a whole bunch of good examples and suggestions as well that i would def peep if u havent....Tha only thing im a bit iffy about is tha fact that if u drop a LP filter on tha snare u can eliminate some unwanted higher sound freq's, but then u also can end up muddying up your snare in tha process...I suppose if u do go head an do that, jus use in moderation.

STEEZ

 

[jaydub23510]

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/5/starchildproductionsmusic.htm




I'm learning this shit myself Deuce but I think one key is to make sure you sample the Kick on the first beat, that way everytime you hit it it will be the kick first, check out my beat first break, that is a break I looped after every 2 bars or so, then let it rip for like 4 bars, something like that. This was my first attempt!

 

[LMNO]

Great suggestions. Ok so I've tweaking the hits on the break and I fixed the delay problem. Now I have a whole bunch of tweaked out drums. Some of them are pitched different, EQ'd, compressed, reverb'd, etc. I don't think they even go together in a drum kit anymore.

How do you make them match the same kit? How can you tell whether they are from the same kit or just random drums?

thanks.

 

[erkl]

time and loving..

OT.
i just picked up the new scratch with kanye, interesting..
funny how he tried to jack eminems drums hehe...

 

[eldiablo]

dont go and tell everyone this, but sample while your freaking the record. make things longer or shorter. blah blah blah


oh yeah! i wouldnt add any effects until i had the beat right,on time or whatever

 

[beats18]

Cubase SX 2.0 has a great feature for this. Its call the hitpoint feature in the audio editor. It if you import a loop double click it, this will open the audio editor. IF you select all and click the hitpoint icon it will place hitpoints at each wave spike (kicks, snares). then you go to audio>advanced> create slices. Now you can set the project tempo and the hitpoints will be on beat whatever u change the tempo to. Also you can rearrange the slices to make new patterns. Once u got the tempo you want, go to audio>advanced>close gaps. This will time stretch each slice so it stretches to the beginning of the next hit. Thus, the loop is not choppy. this works great on things like bass lines too. Makes working with loops easier. Its basaically recycle built into cubase but it has the time stretching to close the gaps. IF you want a better step by step look to the cubase sx manual and look for hitpoint editor.

Big Beats