yes, i’m currently working on my slicing chops. clearly i have a ways to go.
and yeah man i’m a slsk head for probably close to 15 years… never looked for breaks on there though, makes sense cause i remember lurking the jungle chat back in highschool and hearing stuff way over my head. thanks for the list, is that usernames or titles of collections?
re: radiohead, right on man, i’ve been meaning to sample the reckoner break actually. i love the odd syncopation and odd time stuff.
Paradox still uses an Atari St and Akai sampler. So nothing much modern there.
If you want to keep something of the vibe of old-school breaks, but find they overwhelm the mix, a common issue is the ambience in the original break, which (assuming its a break from the 70s) is often either natural room sound or plate reverb (e.g. the Lyn Collins ‘Think’ break has got tons of it). I find using a transient shaper (I like the one in Izotope Ozone best) to tame the ambience and bring out the actual drum hits can make it sound loads cleaner and more ‘modern’ - but watch out not to overdo it and kill the vibe of the break.
For my style of music I usually end up replacing the <200Hz part of the kick drum in old school breaks with a more subby/modern sample that matches the ‘thwack’ portion of the natural kick sound. Also normally use a bit of subtractive eq to tame any harsh frequencies in the hats/shakers.
Also, don’t use all the break all the time - some breaks are useful just for the kick/snare sounds, others just for the ‘chuka chuka’ interplay between the snare and hats. Play each break to its strengths!
Solid watch, by the time he throws alloy on it it really brings out a good modern sound. Nice one
two very basic, but effective tips for “clean”, snappy breaks are:
1.) slice and gate everything (to make it “tight”)
2.) tune everything up a few semitones
especially that last one I keep forgetting, and I always wonder why my breaks sound too “boomy” and fat to be clean… then I remember and turn that knob a bit… works every time.
on top of that, transient shaping like in the Icicle video works a bunch, but you can also get similar results by using envelopes to shape your samples playback and maybe add a filter envelope as well.
I think what makes it sound modern is the use of reverb and delay over the entire track, which gives it some nice stereo imaging. You shouldn’t focus entirely on the breaks themselves.
To me, the stuff on Goldie’s Timeless sounds as “modern” as those 2 tracks and you can tell the samples didn’t have the cleanest signal path.
Some things that might help: