Trance/House/DnB...... pleese help

Hey ive been producing hip hop beats for a while now but i really wanna get into house/trance/Drums and bass
I have an MPC 2500, Fantom X7, Reason 3.0, and my personal fave, ableton live 5
I dont get it, how am i suppose to make electronic bassed music,
wut are the basic drum patterns like
(For example, on hip hop theirs at least a kick on 1 and snares on 2 and 4)
Do i sample?
How do i use these "processed breaks" that i keep on hearing about?
Any help would make u a saint in my eyes
Thnx champs

Erm, not meaning to sound pedantic or anything.....but if it's House/Trance/D 'n B that you wanna produce, wouldnt it be a good idea to listen to tracks from those genres of music and go from there?

A good beat to sample for some Drum 'n Bass would be the infamous 'Amen Break' by The Winstons. Arguably, the break from this single tune has been responsible for the spawning of a whole musical sub-genre.......Drum 'n Bass, but primarily, Jungle.

Anyway, that's all I'm gonna give you. I've put my neck on the line by stating the above.......here come the pain!

Peace.

pdx2000 wrote:Erm, not meaning to sound pedantic or anything.....but if it's House/Trance/D 'n B that you wanna produce, wouldnt it be a good idea to listen to tracks from those genres of music and go from there?

A good beat to sample for some Drum 'n Bass would be the infamous 'Amen Break' by The Winstons. Arguably, the break from this single tune has been responsible for the spawning of a whole musical sub-genre.......Drum 'n Bass, but primarily, Jungle.

Anyway, that's all I'm gonna give you. I've put my neck on the line by stating the above.......here come the pain!

Peace.

co-MO-FO-sign!

For House, traditionally theres a 4/4 kick i.e. 4 kick drum beats to the bar.

Seriously though, you gotta listen to the music you wanna make. Im aiming to make the music I feel myself (House, Hip Hop) so I think aiming to make music that you've never really felt before is counter-productive and aint gonna have the passion behind it.

House, Trance and D'n'B all have vastly different sounds....House being primarily soulful / funky and a similar sound I would say to Hip Hop, whereas Trance is very melodic and to my ears seems to be very high pitched and string based, and then D'n'B has a similar tone to Hip Hop again but with a very different drum pattern to House and Trance.

It'd be like a trance producer who's never really listened to Hip Hop, going "Ive heard that this cat called Madlib is pretty popular, I think im gonna make me some Hip Hop and posting a question on a primarily trance based board asking how to make Hip Hop"

Not meaning to shoot you down like...but if you wanna make that stuff I recommend going and listening to some of that music, getting into a sound you like, learning the scene and vibing with people from that scene. Learn the history behind the tracks and slowly you'll get an understanding for what makes good trance / house/ DnB.

For the house scene, head over to ww.deephousepage.com, which has the biggest house community on the net while also featuring a "Production Forum" so they may be able to help. If you want any more help regarding the House sound then add me on messenger >> [email protected] and I can school you on some of the history, classic tracks, what makes house house etc

CHEEZE
SUSHI

If you start with house or trance, just find a cd that has some good unmixed tunes... they usually begin and end with just the drums going (easier for djs to mix)... just listen to those drum rhythms and try to copy them.

To my ear the typical trance drums go like::

boom ts bap ts boom ts bap ts....

where: boom is kick, ts is hihat, bap is a kick plus a snare or clap.
That may seem similar to hiphop but the feel is a lot different because the kick drums are steady and the offbeat hihats really push.

But you have to add something original to that or it'll just be borrrrrring.
Trance is more about using fast arps and riffs with 'trippy' synth sounds: that's the focus, the drums just back it up (depending on sub-genre).

Use your soft-synths to make an original, trippy, sound, and sequence some kind of fast arpeggio. Maybe make a bassline on the offbeats. Then add the drumbeat I said and:: voila some cheesy ass trance .


And like other people said, make sure not to just use the hiphop type of sounds... for instance the drums in trance r usually more snappy/metallic/and synthetic sounding.

"processed drum loops" just means what you should have been doing for hiphop all along, ie. chopping old breaks off vinyl then editing the sounds with filters effects, etc. Of course there are certain sounds and styles of how to edit that r particular to drumnbass.

lol, of course i listen to alot of house/trance/DnB
but its so overwhelmingly different from Hip-Hop, i just dont have a clue on where to start
O ya, ive been hearing that the alesis 3630 is one crazy comprosser for the genres
Shuld i pick it up?
o ya, wut kinda stuff should i dig for

Another thing, for trance, u need to use lots of 'synths' instead of samplers or rompler/modules.

There are a couple in Reason, but also check KVRaudio.com for a bunch of free ones you can use in ableton live. Check out Triangle, Vanguard (not free) and Superwave P8.

House/DnB are more about samples, but for trance, you gotta tweak out that synth.

nblazer wrote:lol, of course i listen to alot of house/trance/DnB
but its so overwhelmingly different from Hip-Hop, i just dont have a clue on where to start
O ya, ive been hearing that the alesis 3630 is one crazy comprosser for the genres
Shuld i pick it up?
o ya, wut kinda stuff should i dig for

Dude, you're from New York....just walk out your door, it's the home of house.

Ok some Classic House Tracks:

Adonis - No Way Back
Mr Fingers - Can U Feel It? ("in the beginning there was jack, and jack had a groove........" you can't tell me you aint heard that!)
Marshall Jefferson - Move Your Body
Aly-Us - Follow Me
Ce Ce Rogers - Someday
anything by Ten City
Pretty much any Masters At Work pre-96. Pick up there Silver Tenth Anniversary box-set to see how they really brought house forward. Dope beats by Kenny Dope!

Anything you wanna know about House then just ask as I live for it!

CHEEZE
SUSHI

nblazer wrote:......it's so overwhelmingly different from Hip-Hop.....

House and Hip Hop are one, they're connected by more than just a H!

As a side note I implore everyone to pick up the book "Last Night A Dj Saved My Life". It explores the history of the DJ and traces back all modern forms of dance music including Hip Hop to their roots, tracing their influences and developments. How can you look to the future if you don't know where you are coming from?

CHEEZE
SUSHI