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Why Are My Percs Total Crap?!!? (pg. 2)
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| Samplers are fine for making a groove, just make manual changes to the notes so that they are not totally quantized. |
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| alanzo |
| quote: | Originally posted by gr8ape
why limited?
i simply arrange my samples on audio tracks...
samples taken from my library of years surfing the internet for samples |
yeah, that's what I do when I use one-shots, too. But I can never seem to get the complexity I want out of them. In the past couple hours I've gotten decent results from using a lot of FX. Maybe that's what's going on .... |
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| gr8ape |
| quote: | Originally posted by alanzo
yeah, that's what I do when I use one-shots, too. But I can never seem to get the complexity I want out of them. In the past couple hours I've gotten decent results from using a lot of FX. Maybe that's what's going on .... |
working on audio tracks youll tend to do little variations of each sound as you work, with fx, dynamics and such
at least thats how I work, ill start off with my kick, snare, hats, sometimes make a beat, process it, chop it up, etc, make different sounding snares from your original snare, same thing with hats (i dont touch the kick too much) and basically just arrange them in the tracks
i used battery a while ago but i actually found it pretty boring |
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| Aurana |
If you want to try something different. Try adding another kick to your loop. Something a little higher then what you currently are using as your main kick and tuck it behind your 2nd and 4th kicks of each frame. Just be sure to EQ the lower end of it out so it doesnt conflict much with the bass and the main kick. Its hard to explain but this helps build a better groove. Add a slight delay and some reverb.
X = Main Kick
x = Offbeat kick
X---xX----X---xX----
or
X---xX--x-X---xX--x-
You can experiment around with this a bit, with different kick samples. I used a Goa kick sample one time for one of my tracks. Sounded really sweet.
Also another thing you can do is add different claps to your mix. Maybe one real short and snappy and the other with more body to it, and vary that around.
Hope this helps. |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| quote: | Originally posted by Eric J
Making your own loops with percussion is really about creating movement, so you should be thinking in terms of primary rhythms backed up with counter rhythms. A lot of that movement can be done with subtle pieces that are barely audible, yet add a distinct groove to your loop. I might have 1 or 2 hat tracks that are obvious stand outs, but I may also have 3 more in the background that you can barely hear, but add a counter rhythm to give the drum pattern more groove.
If you listen to a lot of tech house, you'll notice that a popular technique is to use sine-based kick drums or low toms to add a rhythmic underpinning to a straight 4-4 beat. In many cases, this can also serve as a bass line, where the drums hits make the bass line and there is no actual synth bass line. This is a very popular technique because it works so damn well on the dance floor. |
These are both excellent tips. "Background" percussion can really add a lot to a groove. Another thing you can try is putting other kicks far in the background as well, off of the four to floor beat. |
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| -FSP- |
i try not to make my percs land on the grid. everything but the kicks (for the sake of djs) gets shifted slightly to the left or the right. My claps sound better when nugged to the left a little bit.
as for 'loop' type percussions, i nuge them to the left too. it gives a subtle swingy feel. |
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| 4everX |
| quote: | Originally posted by alanzo
I kind of feel like I'm just using bad samples. I typically can get better results when I don't use Vengeance. Anyone else feel the same? |
the vengeance bass drum are totally :confused: or i'm a real noob to use it ?
somebody know something good ? |
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| orTofønChiLd |
| Percussion is my strongest when it comes to making any type of music. The biggest library of one shot hats can really spice up your grooves since you have a vast amounts of variation. I use Best service drums overkill which has 2,400 one shot hats. Another thing is to look up your favorite producer on percussion and be inspired on making your own. Make your own patterns and find where everything goes and why. I used mr mystery's percussion tutorial as a start and it took off from there. |
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| tehlord |
| quote: | Originally posted by alanzo
Thanks for the great post, eric.
Yeah, I'm still making melodic uplifting trance.
Maybe I'm just over thinking all this .... I'll try relying less on loops, though. But is it common to use a loop as a, sort of, filler and then put a couple one-shot samples on top? |
I use loops like glue these days.
Typical startup template for my percussion is 5 instances of Shortcircuit 2 :-
1 - silent sidechain trigger
2 - Kick
3 - Closed hats
4 - Open hats
5 - Snare/Clap
Shortcircuit is good as it allows me to drag and drop samples onto the keyboard and trigger different versions of similar sounds very easily.
I get my basic groove going with that template with a bassline or two as well. It's only once I have that and maybe some melodic parts going that i'll even look at loops, and then I may just use a small part of a loop.
I quite often send the loop out to a wide delay send to get some weird percs happening L&R too. Sometimes that just creates a mess but other times you get a great result. Channel delay by a few ms either way can achieve a good groove too. In fact (I use Cubase 4 btw) i'm using channel delay a lot on all sorts of parts for groove.
One thing that loops can be useful for is they'll often drop something into a drumbeat that you wouldn't normally use, inspiring you to use that hit with a different sound on a different channel.
Most important think I did was use loops to finsh the drums rather than start them. |
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| Ciaran Fox |
| I find myself spending more and more time on percussion these days. For some unknown reason I'm entirely against using loops. Sometimes I will listen to a loop and using my own one shots, try recreate, but it always becomes something completely different and unique. In proggier stuff, percussion has more importance in a track as previously mentioned. In the stuff your knocking up Alan, its alot more to do with adding energy to the track. I, when creating uplifting stuff, would tend to use layers upon layers of hats, (both open & closed) with some swing, to give it that groove you could be after. |
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| Richard Butler |
I take many hours to make my percs. I'm into tech house and progressive so the groove for me is vital.
I make my own sounds - usually from samples. In the link below I started with samples from minimal techno from wavealchemy recommended by cryophonic. The kick is from there to but I eq'd a lot out of it to give main synth room.
I make use of swing quantize.
Crucially I try and get a very quiet kiky repeaty sound sucking going on - its hard to exaplain what I mean.
Hope you don't mind me shoe horning this in - but it's a link to my latest track - the percs took 2 or 3 hours per night for 2 weeks - but you may think thats total e and madness!
Note the rest of the track is a WIP so is missing all sorts of fx and blips and transitions and in the break (if you get that far) there will be vocals hence why its stripped back until the rise.
http://www.myspace.com/516462617 |
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| floyd741 |
TR-808, TR-909, and Boss DR550 samples are really all you need, imo. Also maybe the Alesis SR16 or SR18 I can't remember whch one exactly.
I find that I end up using the exact same loops for every song if I use loops at all so for a while (I'm currently on a bit of a serious production hiatus) I've been messing around with the same basic samples but I've also been getting into heavily processing them, something which is realitvely new to me. Since I've been changing them so much I find that I rarely make the same sonds twice, this really makes the percusion of each track sound very different (which is good).
I guess if you've been using loops and your percs sound like , stop using loops. You may not want to spend a lot of time on percs but that bit of extra time really has the potential to make a difference. |
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