Funk breaks to drum and bass

Elektron Gear Octatrack
1

Hey all,

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas and new years!

Quick question regarding chopping up original funk breaks to use in drum and bass.

Essentially I want to sample and rearrange a funk break but speed it up to 170bpm by slicing each drum hit at the original bpm to maintain its authenticity and sound.

How do people chop and pitch up there classic breaks other than simply increasing the bpm (which ruins the original sound and squashes the flow) or use the warp method in Ableton Live.

Iā€™ve tried slicing the break at its original tempo of 117bpm then sequence it at 170bpm. It sounds choppy and robotic and looses its original flow.

I know the drum and bass artist Paradox does it this old school way and his drum patterns speak for them selves.

Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers

2 Likes
2

I read a great interview with paradox where he shared the tip of recording the break at normal or slow speed with lots of compression sucking at the peaks. Speeding this up creates a nice sound.
I think this goes for all audio processing you can do to a drum loop before just speeding it up. Thousands have people have done the same thing with the same sample. How are you going to make yours different/more interesting/better.

If youā€™re then sequencing a human performance chopped to a strict quantised grid then you could be in trouble. Play it by hand or get timing microscopicallyā€¦.

7 Likes
3

If youā€™re chopping each and every individual note, you shouldnā€™t have a problem. You might need to apply an amp envelope to make it sound natural, you might also need to spread the kick snare and hats across different tracks on the OT so as to achieve effective polyphony.

If you do it this way, chop each individual note, BPM doesnt matter.

Pitching things up, to preserve groove, shuffle, or swing, is another matter. My own personal taste is to do it by ear. This means every break will have a natural limit, eg it might sound shit at 170, but great at 160, so that defines the final BPM of the track.

As always, there arenā€™t really any hard and fast rules, just do what ever works. The result is what counts, how you got there isnt really important.

4 Likes
4

Did you set TimeSTRetch to off ?

As said, enough chops, enveloppes, pitch by ear. Multiplying tempo by 1.5 correspond to pitch +7. If youā€™re going too high, it cuts the sound.
You can eventually use PIPO loop to avoid gaps.

Sometimes I prepare my loops with a daw, chops timestreched to the grid.

On OT you can also chop, increase tempo a bit to avoid gaps, resample the loop and apply a fixed grid. That way looped sliced are in time.

3 Likes
5

I agree with the prior posts on many points! There is an upper bound of tempo that any given break ā€œwantsā€ to be at. Above that tempo it will fall apart and not sound good.

I find that a combination of pitching up plus truncating the chops, as sezare said, often works best.

I also think folks over index on the idea of chopping every note. It can be really impossible to put the break back together musically if you do that. Lots of old school stuff has surprisingly few chops.

A technique that is somewhere in the middle can often help. I sometimes think of it as recreating the ā€œidealā€ version of a break. Often when you make a ton of very small chops there are some that sound like nonsense out of context, like very small ghost notes or kicks where the drummer flammed a bit, etc. One good way to deal with that is to sort of transplant the best examples of the type of chop you need to the places that arenā€™t working.

So for example if I chop something into 16 slices, maybe one of the snares sounds bad in isolation, one of the kicks is really good, and there are only 3 decent high hats. I might replace the snare that doesnā€™t work with one that does, redistribute the good hats throughout the beat, and replace a lot of the kicks with the really good one. So itā€™s the ā€œshapeā€ of the original break, but kind of a ā€œbest ofā€ compilation of the pieces.

As a beat gets faster, generally you want it to become more sparse, and you want it to shuffle less (drummers actually to play this way naturally, especially the latter point). So thatā€™s something else to keep in mind if you are trying to speed way up.

Finally, imo itā€™s important to remember that whether a break is ā€œworkingā€ is a musical judgment, and music working is frequently all about context. If you want a break to go crazy and fast, you will probably also want a complementary part (percussion, the bass line, etc.) to be relatively solid and ā€œhold it downā€. Similarly, if your break sounds rigid then you might want bring some shuffle or funk back in via another track.

In my experience there are very few breaks that all alone can hold down a track and be expressive at the same time. I think if you listen to all the classic tracks, itā€™s remarkable how often the track is actually being held together by something other than the break. Think tambourine alone (if thatā€™s your style) gets you a lot of the way there :sweat_smile:

Good luck! Let us know what you discover!

15 Likes
6

On the topic of surprisingly few chops - Iā€™m still learning to create jungle and jungle adjacent music but Iā€™ve had the best luck with think/ amen/ etc by chopping on eighth or quarter notes instead of chopping every hit, and then making occasional exceptions for specific hits or sections (particularly I like to also use the shuffle-y ghost note snare sections of the Amen a lot). This allows me to maintain some of the feel of the original break but gives me enough flexibility to be creative.

6 Likes
7

Yeah Iā€™ll only ever cut to 1/4 or 8th notes, never 16ths. You loose all the groove if you chop too tight.

Another fun thing to do is take a 3 bar loop, chop to quarters, and resequence that over a 4 or 8 bar phrase.

Or have the start point of the break be the snare instead of the kick, chop from that and resequence.

Endless possibilities.

7 Likes
8

Yup.

(Same principle on OT)

2 Likes
9

waftlord
Hey Waftlord, thanks for the reply. Oh, so sample at the standard rate, play with compression, speed up the sample slightly using rate, then resequence at a higher bpm?

Sorry, this is all new to me; Iā€™m used to chopping up premade drum and bass breaks.

I also read an interview with Paradox it might have been this one:

Lovely tune, by the way, the drums sound great, as if the drummer is originally playing at that bpm.

Microtribe
Great advice, thanks! As youā€™ve pointed out, some breaks sound great at certain speeds while others sound a mess, especially when the drum patterns are tight together and intricate. Iā€™ll have a play and see what works best.

I played around in Ableton Live and used the warp beats by transient, which sounded pretty good, but I wanted to see if I could do it manually.

Sezare56
Thanks for the tips. Yes, time-stretch is off. Can you explain what a PIPO loop is, please, Iā€™ve not heard of that before. Great idea about increasing the tempo to avoid gaps. That seems to be the biggest issue, it sounds a little stuttery at the moment.

Ptomaselli
Hey, thanks for the in-depth reply. I agree, the reason why Iā€™m using the funk breaks in the first place is because of how they sound. If I want to chop every drum hit and try and put it back together at a higher bpm then I may as well just use one-shots and midi.

I think Paradox, whose article I initially read, mentioned he would often replace specific parts of the break as they sounded like nonsense when speeded up, and he found other parts of the break to use instead.

Have you ever tried a third-party plugin called Addictive Drums? Iā€™ve used the drum kits a few times, but I can never get them to sound as good as a sample, nor do I have the knowledge to come up with intricate drum patterns. But as you say, itā€™s a learning curve, and Iā€™m happy to experiment and use my Octatrack daily.

m0ld
Thatā€™s a great idea! I have so many original breaks (see the links below to download) that Iā€™m just experimenting and finding out what works. Itā€™s a great idea, though. Are you chopping using a grid so the slices are even no matter how they fall on each drum hit?

Microtribe
Great ideas. Iā€™ve also been chopping specific chunks of a break and then resequencing to see what sounds I can come up with. Some really nice surprising results.

Sezare56
Thanks, for the link! itā€™s much easier to watch someone do it than try and picture it in my jumbled-up head.

If anyone is interested in a funk break library full of some amazing breaks, feel free to download the two links Iā€™ve just put up. They are available for a few days until the link expires. I canā€™t take credit for any of them as I found them on the Dogs on Acid site so respect to the original guy who posted them.

Again, thanks everyone for the massive input. Iā€™m off to push and tweak some buttons with my new found knowledge!

Cheers,

5 Likes
10

Of course dont forget slice to faderā€¦

Probably the most fun thing to do with breaks, live fills, like an actual drummer, sort of.

Hereā€™s one I did with a 6/8 feel.

14 Likes
11

@SoundToucher! This is absolutely the most fun thing to do in all of electronic hardware: moving through slices with the OTā€™s crossfader

1 Like
12

First off, heck yes Iā€™m always stoked to download new breaks!

As for the breaks: When I had a Digitakt the main thing I did was: I used Ableton to move what I refer to as structural hits (generally kicks, snares, crashes, etc) onto the closest 1/8th or 1/4 while trying to keep the hats and ghost notes loose. Then I transferred them over to the DT.

I also occasionally did this in the DT by chopping and resequencing on 16ths/8ths, then resampling the whole thing at the tempo I wanted to actually sequence at, but this usually didnā€™t sound quite as good and was more tedious.

Regardless, once youā€™ve got a sort-of quantized break with at least the major hits on the beat, you can go wild by sequencing chunks at the 1/8th or 1/4 scale and it will usually just work.

With my MPC I can do all of the above in one box, though itā€™s a bit slower than in Ableton.

2 Likes
13

Microtribe
And thatā€™s how itā€™s done: sipping tea while slicing breaks with ease. Iā€™ve not ventured into the crossfader at all yet. Iā€™m new to the Elektron system and have had the Octatrack for a few months. Iā€™m reading the manual and focusing on only a few things at a time.

Whatā€™s the synth youā€™re using in the background? Is it for atmospheric risers and similar sounds?

I recently bought a Roli Seaboard Rise 2. I canā€™t play the keyboard at all, but you can create some amazing atmospheric sounds just by moving your fingers around. I had one, sold it, and then realised I missed it, so I bought another.

malus_mons
Iā€™m yet to make it that level yet, but soon.

m0ld
Thats what Iā€™ve been doing, just getting everything aligned in Ableton first before transferring over to the Octatrack. I went back and resliced the break again, tight on the kick and snare and loose around the fills. Since there so quick I donā€™t need to speed them up. Its making for a less robotic stuttery sound. Still sounds like shit though ha. But were get there.

2 Likes
14

That track is all octatrack, just samples. Bits pulled from old songs I made years ago in Reason, with some drumbreaks and one shot drums.

The synth is a Moog Sub 37. Not in use during video, didnt use it for that entire OT project (which was a 1.5 hour ish live set)

1 Like
15

Legit track! Definitely reminds me of folks like Equinox, Breakage, Earl Grey, etc. Awesome to see the OT powering it as well :+1:

1 Like
16

Thanks, I dont know any of those artists. I made a ton of that type of stuff on my OT, never recorded any of it properly. It exists now only as crap quality youtube clips.

Deleted them off my OT ages ago.

1 Like
17

Really Interesting 6/8 approach @Microtribe. Inspiring.

:content: Great beginner keyboard !
(Off topic : If interested I can try MPE with OT and Linnstrument, 8 tracks).

A keyboard can be also used to trigger loop slotsā€¦
Breaks @2m08s

3 Likes
18

Microtribe
Thats more than impressive, a full on 1.5hr set. Iā€™d be happy with a coherant 3 minute track that didnā€™t sound like a blind one armed drunk drummer on a mouth organ.

sezare56
Yes indeed. The reason I got it was of its MPE capabilities. I can jiggle my fingers and get some great atmospheric sounds rather than knowing specific cords and have actual talent.
I love the slicing and dicing! Iā€™ve tried using the slice buttons to bang out a live beat, sadly my drumming skills are non existent, so I prefer to program them instead.

1 Like
19

Chop multiple breaks and what not, rearrange, resample, chop and rearrange again:

10 Likes
20

Thatā€™s a great interview with Paradox, thanks!

1 Like