I thought id share some knowledge with some of you up and coming producers who have asked me to do tutorials on making some jungle breaks.
I’m not gonna do a you chuube video but ill go through it oldskool styleee and go through some of the basics on getting a decent beat going and how I chop my beats up + go through some of the processing.
Step 1. Finding your samples.
I come from the days of what is known as "Crate digging" a process of which I will go and find breaks and samples from random records, I would spend hours and hours + bucket loads of moneys buying old records from old record shops/ charity stores etc or if your name is Liam howlett then you have your own sample pimp LOL.
Today you can grab most decent breaks samples of the internet but be warned try and get the original source as the sound quality will be better or invest in a decent sample c.d. One of the best ones ive come across lately is Ray Keith’s sample pack on loop masters.
Step 2. Chopping your beats up.
For years ive always used Recycle to chop my beats up, I still love it today as back in the day before recycle you had to do your chopping manually and this would take hours especially when you did it all inside a akai/emu sampler. (Serious eyestrain lol).
Always get your start point bang on and then start chopping, I use the sensitive bar to get my basic cut points but will go in and cut manually as you will find a better cutting point. Once you have cut your break up I make sure no clicks can be heard when playing back and will then import into my sampler and save the midi file and export that into my sequencer.
Step 3. Sequencer and Sampler.
I use Logic as my sequencer and the inbuilt sampler called the ex24 but the principles apply to most other setup's so don’t start worrying.
Once the midi file of the break is imported into your sequencer and your samples loaded in your sampler make sure the attack is set to 0 in your sampler, never forget years ago being in the studio with Rennie pilgrim and the attack on his sampler had a factory setting of 25 and so the samples would play back strangely late
SO ALWAYS CHECK!
Also a good tip is if you want to make the break sound tighter then shorten the decay and turn off the release.
Go into your midi file and you will see the midi notes of the break, make sure you quantize the break and then start messing about with the notes, this is what’s gonna personalize the break and make it your own.
Experiment and explore the different possibility’s of what you can make your break beat do. Good tip is loop up different points of the break and you will get some interesting variations.
Step 3. Separating the samples.
Once I have a 8 bar or 16 bar Loop sorted I then start separating the samples, Logic has a cool shortcut that lets you make copy’s of your Ex24 and so then I start separating the Snares, Kicks, Hats etc so this gives me more control over the individual sounds.
Step 4. E.Q.
I start to clean the samples up with the E.Q. taking out any rumble of the bottom end, ringing out any horrible frequency’s that might be present. I have learnt allot from being around engineers such as Dave Pemberton and not to take to much bottom out of the Loop, allot of producers take to much bottom out and the break sounds flat and thin, I still like to maintain the original sound and the phatness of the break.
Try not to add to much E.Q, as it’s better to take away than add but for things like Snares you want them to sound nice and crisp and so boosting 200-250 Hz usually helps.
Step 5. Layering
Once I have my break rolling I start to layer the break up, allot of oldskool breaks just don’t have the punch that’s required for today’s production but layering them up with good quality super phat individual hit's will give them the punch that it requires.
Layer the kick drum of the break with a programmed kick drum, cut the bottom out of the sample kick so the programmed kick sits nicely with it, remember have your kick drums in mono and not stereo.
Also a good tip is to tune your kick drums, im pretty anal about this and spend allot of time tuning drums, its a bit of an art form in itself and just takes experience and a good ear but can make a big difference, good example of this is the Hybrid boys when they make their beats.
You can apply the same principle with your snares, hats etc.
Step 5. Grouping
Now I have my break constructed I want to make it start to gel together and for this I group all the drums together by bussing of the channels to one group and setting the levels.
Step 6. Processing
I’m not gonna tell you the exact way of doing this as everyone has there own way of doing things but applying subtle compression and limiting can help make the break sound phat and also another way of making your breaks gel together.
Other interesting plug ins that can make your breaks sound good are transient designers and expanders.
Allot of people use the Psp vintage warmer but I find better results with the Wave's bundle's L2 Limiter, L3 Ultramaximiser and the Oxford E.q’s have a nice expander built in that just adds warmth.
A good tip as well is to add a subtle short reverb to the overall drum kit but go easy and be very subtle in applying this unless you want big phat dubstep drums lol.
Hope this helps when making your beats, like I said these are the basic principles to start with.
Good luck
Peace Yoof.
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