Reusing beats - It was interesting to hear that they re-use elements from one beat to another. In the example they demonstrate, they re-use a high-end shaker pattern and a processed version of an entire beat they had made previously. I'm personally a bit ambivalent about re-using much myself, but maybe I'm being too precious about my creations. After all, when cooking a meal, one uses the same ingredients again and again.
Pick good sounds and don't over-process them - Their point about finding a great sound and not fucking with it too much is a good one, and one that I will try and keep in mind. Too often I find myself fiddling with a sound, only to listen back to the original sound I selected and realise I've totally killed what I liked about it.
Full-spectrum beats - Their break completely fills the frequency spectrum. I'm a little surprised how full they seem to build it in order to achieve that energy level. My impression is that this is very much in line with the Chase & Status sound though, and less of a must-do production technique.
Cutting the kicks from breaks - They make sure the breaks are kick-less, to avoid muddying up the punch of the low end. I personally don't like cutting out whole sections of my breaks as, to me, the point of a background break is to introduce a kind of live feel and to glue the individual hits I'm using together a bit. The technique I'm experimenting with now is isolating the kicks in the break and making them 12-20 dBs quieter. I combine this with a bit of low-cut EQ and then leave it alone.
Don't push the loudness - Loudness maximising and over-compressing is bad. I was surprised quite how little processing they do here.
Work with audio rather than MIDI breaks - Slicing breaks as sound waves, rather than into MIDI hits. I've been experimenting with this and I've got to say, it seems like the best default thing to do. I've done a bit with Ableton Live's Drum Rack and I really like using it, but unless I'm doing something clever with the individual hits of a break, though, it's probably too complex.
Overall, I'm not sure I agree 100% with their approach, but I've found plenty of interesting ideas in here. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
2 comments:
Hey Mate
They have an interesting approach to Beat making. I cant believe theres no compression on their kick as it sounds huge! will have to experiment are you writing all your stuff on ableton? Ive been trying a combo of ableton and reason which seems to be working well....talk later Todd (annikas boyfriend)
Yup, it's different, for sure. I've had some good success since with avoiding layering kicks and working on breaks entirely within audio, I think there's some good stuff to learn there.
I am using just Ableton Live with VST/AU plugins, pretty happy with that at the moment. Some of my friends use Reason, it's something I haven't done much with myself.
I didn't know you were doing production, man! Are you on Soundcloud?
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