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How do YOU make beats?
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stiiiiiiive



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PostPosted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 6:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Step sequencers may be a simple approach, easy for having a first sketch of your beat. Then you can complexify it. Still you tried FruiyLoops...

MPCs are quite good at programming beats. Hmm... I mean MPCs are quite good at inpiring beat programming.
The interface is really pleasant and the functionnalities are ok. But I'm not sure you'll make weird glitchy beats with a MPC.

Another step sequencer you can consider is Elektron MachineDrum. That one can be glitchy and the interface is nice too. Take a look at this video to see its potential.

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Mohoyoho



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PostPosted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 6:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I've been having fun and success using my Yamaha RM1X. Granted, the user interface is not the best, but once you get the hang of it, one can come up with some great beats. Then you can load them into Ableton for even crazier results.

I recently purchased a Korg Electribe ESX1 sampler for my son's Christmas present, and of course I had to check it out to see if it works properly. What a wonderful machine. You can go pretty deep, but it also is easy to get started.

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stiiiiiiive



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PostPosted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 6:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Quote:
ESX1 : What a wonderful machine.


I've been told so.

Actually, Evernaut, I think that besides the sounds and possibilities, you have to find the instrument -hard or soft- which interface stimulates you.

For example, I love the Kurzweil K2XXX but have to say their interface isn't very sexy. Well, there are some nice tricks, but globally, a groovebox is more adapted to beat programing.

Maybe having a simple Electribe plugged into Live or any good drum soft would do...

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XpanderXT



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PostPosted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 10:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

stiiiiiiive wrote:

MPCs are quite good at programming beats. Hmm... I mean MPCs are quite good at inpiring beat programming.
The interface is really pleasant and the functionnalities are ok. But I'm not sure you'll make weird glitchy beats with a MPC.


True MPC is not great for glitchy beats but you can always process with a plug in like Lucifer to get that. I'm not a glitch guy but as you say, I find the MPC good for inspiring beats.

stiiiiiiive wrote:

Another step sequencer you can consider is Elektron MachineDrum. That one can be glitchy and the interface is nice too. Take a look at this video to see its potential.

My friend has the mono machine and it is very cool. I'd like to check out a machine drum. I had an 808 when you could buy them for $50 and it was really good for making beats. I liked calling up a sound and then closing my eyes and pressing the beat enables. I could get some junk but also got some really cool stuff.
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choice_of_meat



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PostPosted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 12:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

BFD2 is great... I use it for exactly what you are suggesting.

Also Rayzoon has a auto drummer that reacts to your playing... pretty cool, but windows only.

A simple drum machine is good... a "real" interface goes a long way.
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Nth L0gik



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PostPosted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 7:58 am    Post subject: how do YOU make beats?
Subject description: such a question .... i tell you what.
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oheuthanasia .... have you tried drumsynth 2 yet?
it makes mostly 8 bit punchy type drums .... but if you dont mind raw grimey kinda snares it could be just what you might look for if you want hard hitting rigid drums... check it:

http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/programs/DrumSynth/

enjoy !
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Veil



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PostPosted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 7:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Interesting. I guess I've always thought of beat making in an old skool original rock&roll/jazz band way i.e. the bass instrument is an extension of the kick drum and the rhythm instrument is an extension of the snare drum, with the hats tying them together.

The rhythm and music sections become one rolling, interconnected unit rather than separate entities. The kick emphasises the prominent bass notes, the snare supplies stresses on the upbeats and the hats emphasise the 'groove'.

I try to think of the beat in 'musical' terms, being inseparably woven into the musical phrases, not as standalone percussive hits. The whole thing flows naturally then.

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PostPosted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 6:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Veil wrote:
Interesting. I guess I've always thought of beat making in an old skool original rock&roll/jazz band way i.e. the bass instrument is an extension of the kick drum and the rhythm instrument is an extension of the snare drum, with the hats tying them together.


Good points. And it applies to classical music too of course. Rythm/beats or whatever.. you write this into all the parts and have the lot communicate and groove together.

It is a bit amazing how the so called beats or whatever in a lot of rap/hip hop is pretty much standing still and lacks anything even close to what I would call a groove. Shocked

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plagal



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PostPosted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 12:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Software that ties in the composition making process with the beat making process would be good, personally.
Last edited by plagal on Thu Apr 24, 2008 11:01 am; edited 1 time in total
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 3:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

What I use .
Not necessarily in this order.
MPC 500
Korg KO1,KP3 ,KP2,MS2000R
NI Massive,Reaktor,iDrum
Clavia G2X
Dave Smith Evolver
Electrix Repeater for constructing beat loops
Live 4
SCI T.O.M. Now for sale.(200.00 US)
I like making beats.

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 6:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

plagal wrote:
Software that ties in the composition making process with the beat making process would be good, personally.


I enjoy making drum beats with my Guitar Lab software that I wrote in ChucK. Based on Boolean Sequencing, the program has a 12 x 8 Logic Matrix of buttons and you click on the buttons to create a geometric pattern. A beat then commences when you click on the "play" button. All of the instruments including the guitars work this way, you just use simpler patterns for the drums. I could ramble on about it for endless paragraphs, but suffice to say it's one of the better programs that I've ever written and I like it a lot. Visit the ChucK forum if you want to read up on it or download it.

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Sam_Zen



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PostPosted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 6:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

The ModPlug Tracker is quite sufficient for my purposes.
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iPassenger



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PostPosted: Mon Apr 28, 2008 4:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Veil wrote:
Interesting. I guess I've always thought of beat making in an old skool original rock&roll/jazz band way i.e. the bass instrument is an extension of the kick drum and the rhythm instrument is an extension of the snare drum, with the hats tying them together.

The rhythm and music sections become one rolling, interconnected unit rather than separate entities. The kick emphasises the prominent bass notes, the snare supplies stresses on the upbeats and the hats emphasise the 'groove'.

I try to think of the beat in 'musical' terms, being inseparably woven into the musical phrases, not as standalone percussive hits. The whole thing flows naturally then.


I completely agree with this, the beats should fit around the music. I use drum machines (MachineDrum and Electribes) but quite often the stuff I write and program on those machines alone is not that suitable for tracks involoving other gear.

I need to re-write drum material specifically for each track.

I love programming beats and find i literally see the, majority of the time, exactly where the drum sound needs to go on the grid to fit the beat in my head. I can usually approximate tempo pretty accuratley, this is much like teh way a composer can see the notes on the stave before he has written them (I wish i could do this too). As mentioned here i think the key thing is practice. I have played with drum machines and groove boxes for so long that it is second nature, however i am still occasionally surprised by the interplay between the sounds and their placement within a rhythm, mostly I spend my time fine tuning the rhythm sounds.

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BananaPlug



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PostPosted: Fri May 30, 2008 2:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

When you say "beats" does that necessarily mean drum sounds only or are we talking about rhythm more generally?
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PostPosted: Fri May 30, 2008 2:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

BananaPlug wrote:
or are we talking about rhythm more generally?


I would not object to the broader subject.

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BananaPlug



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PostPosted: Sat May 31, 2008 8:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

-- I fixed the link --

This is nothing new but it is fruitful and works well for timing, pitch, etc.

Premise: The brain (mine anyway) is always looking for patterns and is easily amused by streams of input (e.g. notes or percussive beats) that are in the gray area between randomness and repetition. Stray too far in either direction and boredom results. The appeal of the Klee sequencer is this combination of predictability and surprise.

Helpful: Adding regularity to an essentially random source or adding irregularity to something repetitive. Poly-rhythmic combinations of repetition (a few LFOs perhaps) that are sufficiently complicated (add some division and logic gates) or have a long enough pattern that you don't easily notice it repeat.

Software synths have some advantages in this realm but great hardware modules are available which combine several circuits so that you don't have to use half your gear to get an interesting semi-random voltage.

A personal fave is the "2nd order frill." In other words adding some little embellishment to the patch and then modulating the embellishment. Think of a jazz drummer who aside from everything else is lightly tapping a cymbal and skips a tap now and then.

I'm playing around with a noodle (mp3) which illustrates some of this. The sample is hands-off during it's run.

Two clocks provide two streams of note triggers, one is half the rate of the other. One stream is selected to trigger the envelope by a comparator driven switch. The comparator looks at both a slow LFO and the pitch source. Either one alone would be too boring. Higher pitches will select the faster clock if the sum of pitch and LFO is above the comparator's threshold.

The slower clock goes to a divide-by-N module. The pulse from this and a wobbly random CV (from an A-118) are mixed with the pitch source and fed to the filter's 1V/o input. The same clock clocks a Blacet ID2510's sample and hold and the quantized voltage is our pitch source, feeding the VCO's 1V/o input. Goosing the filter with the divide by N pulse adds a little order.

Two boredom reduction LFOs slightly alter various parameters of the sound.

Where do your tastes lie on the chaos/order spectrum and what are your favorite ways of exploring it?[/i]

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blue hell
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PostPosted: Sat May 31, 2008 9:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

BananaPlug wrote:
Stray too far in either direction and boredom results.


Laughing I could have written that, as for me too noodling is about finding a balance between order and chaos.

The server where the mp3 resides seems to be down? will try again later. (edit: the url seems a bit odd http://onyx/ , would expect a .com or something in that).

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BananaPlug



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PostPosted: Sat May 31, 2008 10:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Doh! Sorry, that was the local copy. Embarassed
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PostPosted: Sat May 31, 2008 11:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

But it works now and it illustrates your point well. My personal balance tends go a bit more chaotic.
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PostPosted: Sat May 31, 2008 12:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

BananaPlug wrote:
Two boredom reduction LFOs slightly alter various parameters of the sound.

The chess-board-configuration-to-music-program that I have resumed working on for EM2008 has two boredom reduction LFOs for tempo and amplitude swings, but I am in the process of changing these LFOs from sine waves to waveforms derived from each respective player's move-time-profile. The time of each move adds another time segment to the player's profile, and the profile is the LFO waveform. It adds variability without arbitrary randomness; the unpredictability is still a function of each player's moves, in this case move time.

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PostPosted: Sat May 31, 2008 12:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Wow! What a project. That could get downright operatic.
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PostPosted: Sat May 31, 2008 5:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Acoustic Interloper wrote:
BananaPlug wrote:
Two boredom reduction LFOs slightly alter various parameters of the sound.

The chess-board-configuration-to-music-program that I have resumed working on for EM2008 has two boredom reduction LFOs for tempo and amplitude swings, but I am in the process of changing these LFOs from sine waves to waveforms derived from each respective player's move-time-profile. The time of each move adds another time segment to the player's profile, and the profile is the LFO waveform. It adds variability without arbitrary randomness; the unpredictability is still a function of each player's moves, in this case move time.


I'd like to see that done for the Fischer game that I memorized (but can't recall right now). It's a famous one from Fischer's youth where a Grandmaster had lost but continued to play just for the fun of allowing the young Fischer to enjoy playing out the game. That one would be a good test of the algorithm.

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PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 3:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

1. Get Finale or Sibelius.
2. Open 3 or more tracks for drums. (bass and snare on one track, hi-hat on another, ride on another ... you get the point)
3. Write what you want.
4. Export it to midi
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 19, 2008 12:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I mainly use ReDrum, I find it very handy for the kind of beats I like, plus the fact that I can sample anything I really like into the software.

I have worked with Ableton and that is almost easier, but I haven't spent enough time playing around with it to say that I'm really comfortable using it.

One question I have is how do you guys program extensive drums when you don't want a loop?

Sometimes I want constantly changing IDM styled beats and that just takes endless hours to generate a few minutes of track, which you then have to edit and play with until you like it.

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 19, 2008 1:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

for that I use random bits in my sequencer, or develop more complex logic structures.
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