Techno & House

i was speaking to some house producers who swaer by logic and moreover swear by the groove quantize...the setting they all seem to be banging on about is the c-swing or swing- c.....apparantly lots of UK house headz use this setting, even inspiring an underground artist to name himself swing c, also jp soul apparantly...

anyhoo the point of this is if you want that swing it is 4 ticks off of the staright placement....so all 24 would become 20 and all 72 would become 76...but don't get hung up on ticks, at 130 bpm its simply 60% swing...

still remember that swing is only a third of the equation....you need velocity and note lengths for proper grooves...

greg

hey swingmonkey! (sorry! ... it suits to well for this thread)

finally i got your house beat there! its really good! ... keeps one movin! i was dancing while addin some basslines from the virus - go one with that song! ... and let us hear what comes out at the end!

some quests and thoughts:

swing: it kinda confused me first but i think i was not completely at the wrong ... swing! i thought first that you add one swing setting for the entire song! but what i've seen you add it in some parts! eg: snake, hat, ... are normally quantized without swing, some other parts have swing settings! and sometimes you switch single hits manually! right?
when i used swing i did it similarly as described right now! some parts straightforward, some switched manually, and on a few i set some swing! what where the swing settings in this seq more or less? do you remember? (it shows me a swing of 50%)

production general: all your sounds from the mpc are comin out in a stereo channel! so you mix em first or play some with hi and some with low velocity! are you always doin it like this, or are you runnin them later on on single outs?

samples: where are they from? sampled out from songs? or resampled? i like them! some samples are some shuffled stuff (you get me?)! those about 1 sec long whit some quiter hits at the end! i often tried to use them too, but they often don't fit in the tempo i need! did you fit them into the right tempo or do you just select some deliberately which fit more or less (this imo could ad some swing, too! what do you think about that?)

samples 2: i ve seen that most of the samples have same prog settings! (same filter, cutoff, res, ...settings!) ... intersting! just a case or wanted? when i set them in program mode, prob each sound gets its own filter setting, and often also diff. filters!

i stop now! there are more quests/discussion points to come if you want too! but anyhow! thanx meanwhile! was very interesting and inspiring for me! i think its very good to see how others work! once i'll have a swing ready i can pass u 1 too (just if you're interested at all, its not everyones aim to hear and analyze other peops. beats! i'd fully understand if u wouldn't! no prob)

thanx meanwhile and cheers

alto

hy dubmonkey
alto again! have reheard the beat right now! my monitórs ain't hear at the moment! so i had to use my headphones on the mpc! your beat is even much better this way! ... really good man!
its due to my monitors! they are very difficult to set - if not impossible!
cheers man and .. keep the swing!
alto

hey i finally got acompressor, i got an alto compressor/limt/gate i got a good deal on it it cost me 100 bucks,


my question is where do i add it in the chain after mpc or after the mixer ijto the recorder or can i hook it up to the mixer bus and use it as an effect.


what are good a ratio to use to hear whats going on, should i be able to tell the sound change.


thanks for the help

hey i finally got acompressor, i got an alto compressor/limt/gate i got a good deal on it it cost me 100 bucks,


my question is where do i add it in the chain after mpc or after the mixer ijto the recorder or can i hook it up to the mixer bus and use it as an effect.


what are good a ratio to use to hear whats going on, should i be able to tell the sound change.


thanks for the help

Ulli,

right first things first- swing...yes you can use different seettings for different parts, im not sure if i did on that beat as i was using a 57% swing on most parts but may have had to manually move some hits around....so types of hit (slow attack- shakers) can be quantized more strictly....

production- they are only coming out fo the stereo channel so that it worked straight away for anyone without the 8 outs.....i haven't had my mixer online since apr but if i did id have the bass drum out 1, sn ou 2, hats out 3 4 and bongos out 3 4......but velocity is the key to groove so i use velocity whether im usinb the stereo outs or not as the mixer effects the overall volume...velocity means you can control the volume of individual notes.....mixer volume is for mixing and not writing the beat....

the samples are from all over the place...i have many sources... for faster style syou need samples with short decays so i tried to pick short samples, or cut them or pitched them up later.....a lot fo the samples respond to note off (with a short tail) meaning you can set the exact length of each hit (the third key to groove)- the open hat for ex has strict note lengths....

firstly there is only one filter on the mpc so i dont use dif filters but it all depends on the song, sometimes my progs will be quite complex with different settings for all, for this tune its quite basic and the beat stays at a certain level- to vary it id copy it across 16 bars and go in and change velocity and note placement settings....to me the beat didnt need much filtering so ive left those bits alone but i do belive most hits are fudge looped....

if you wanna analyse swing switch all the tracks back to 50% and listen to the beat stagnate...

greg

dj ede,

use the compressor as an insert on your mixer channel....

check out your pm....

greg

thanx dubmonkey!

dj e.d.e! can't help u much with compr.! but there are a few recent posts regarding compr. which contain useful information! be careful when readin mine! about 2 weeks ago i thought to have understood somethin bout compr.: i asked somethin bout that you should not run compr. twice over a sound or somethin ... meanwhile - imo - i think that is the biggest bull**** question i did in a while! now i m a bit more careful!

to get started i think this mpc-tutor article is quite good!
http://www.mpc-tutor.com/articles/index.php (it contains also some reference settings)

the compressors manual surely also contains useful info! ... and imo - at the end the only real way ... is experimentin!

have fun with your compr.! ... i m lookin forward for mine, too!

cheers

alto

If you want to really get a hard bass kick with a lot of bottom, set up a sidechain to your kick track, and gate a low freq. sine wav that complements your kick. That will give you a nice lower shelf to work with. After that, I usually send the kick track and the gated sine wave to a bus and trim a little off the top frequency, and compress the 2 together. If I am adding reverb, I will usually do that after compression, but with some effects it may be desireable to use them before you compress.

[quote="TheMPCRipper"]If you want to really get a hard bass kick with a lot of bottom, set up a sidechain to your kick track, and gate a low freq. sine wav that complements your kick.

hy mpcripper

do you sample the low sine wav from a synth? if so, do you merge bd sample with sine sample?

cheers

alto

I don't sample the sine wave, I'll use a tone generator on ProTools or a sine wave off my an analog board. I guess you can sample it though, and there are other ways to get the same effect- i mean you can always record a 909 kick on one track and a 808 on another and key the gate off of the 909 track to gate the 808. You can also route the sine wave to a post fader to have the gate open the sound after the kick happens. that will give you that breathing sound you hear on some older tracks. You know that "Boom-sub, Boom- sub, etc.) You know what I mean? Make sure you don't compress the living isht out of things though, you still want a nice transient, but something that will cut thru the mix. These techniques will take a little while to get it right. If you are sampling off vinyl use only slight compression if any at all because chances are the kicks have been compressed a few times (once as a final mix and once for the kick or drum track). My advice for good sounding house drums, grab a va board or analog board and make patchs and sample the hell out of them. Dont add any effects, sample them all dry. I used to be a big fan of the 909, but now i am really feeling the kicks off of the nord 2. I also jacked all the drums off of my motif, and they sound alright but a little on the thin side, nothing some eqing and layering can't fix. These techniques also work great on snares, but instead of using a sine wave, use white noise. Alot of rock producers used to use these tricks back in the day to get the drums to sound heavy. Hope it helps!

Also try using little bits of slap back delay on your kick drums. That will give you a nice punch.

good tips...also try the jomox stufff the xbass etc has some wickedly tight and deep bass drums....

greg

mpcripper! thanx for the tips! sounds very good! am usin a virus, i liked the drum sounds there too but rarely used them because i didn"t want to loose the voices there for bd, sn, hh, ... gonna sample the **** out there now!
once i m done with some experimentin regardin this would be great to chat with u fellers bout such topics!
dubmonkey: what is jonnox, xbass? don"t get your message! can u explain?
cheers
alto

jomox makes drum machines like the airdrum and the xbase...

http://www.jomox.de/

greg