So you want to learn how to bend space time and reality. Because really, that is what you are doing. You are taking a beat that was recorded at 130 bpm and then some how, with a little bit of magic (time actually), making it faster. I am going to tell you how I do it since I have been cutting up breaks in the emu by hand for several years. I have even developed some techniques that go beyond in what some of the software applications like recycle do, I believe. So here we go.
In order to get your break going faster, you need to cut the break up. I will also post some examples of what I have done, just goofing of with some of the breaks you have listed. But first we need to get the steps out so you will hopefully understand what to do.
1.) sample the break. Right, seems brain dead but this is the most important part of the whole break cutting process. If you mess up here, you end with with junk. How can you mess up? Easy. You sample the break in stereo. Here are some of the things that makes things a bit difficult. If you where to try to cut up a break in stereo you might find that it's a bit difficult to cut because one side varies to the other side. So you might have a clean cut on one side but a missed zero on the other side. So you end up with artifacts. Also, if you sample the break in stereo and manage to cut it up decently, you are also using two voices for that one sample. Stereo takes two voices away from polyphony while mono only takes one voice away from polyphony. Most use breaks in mono.
So right now you are thinking that sampling in stereo might be okay, then convert to mono. No. you don't want to do that. Because the emu actually combines the stereo fields, the left and right channel into one channel, you have a chance of losing some of the sound due to phase cancellation. I noticed this big time with the think break. I listened to it and felt like I needed to pop my ears, it sound like it was underwater.
So, now, you are thinking... okay sample in mono... No.. you can't really do that either. If you sample in mono you will get only one channel playing the break. Like the left side for example. So your break is going through the left speaker only. I suppose you could pan the sample but you might have issues with that. It might not sound right.
So... now your going, well how do you sample a break? Well, here it is: I sample the break in stereo. Yeah, I know... I am serious. I have a patch bay that I patch a cd player or record into and from that I patch into the emu. Here is the trick... I pull the plug of the side I don't want from the emu's input on the patch bay. So the emu is only getting one channel in it's stereo sample. And the plug is pulled from the emu's input and not from the sources output, this insures that you don't get any atmospheric feedback or anything. If you touch a cable that goes into your emu you will notice that sound is created. That is called biofeedback and we don't want that.
Now here is the fun part... I sample one side, in stereo... so you think I will only have one channel, like sampling mono right. But here is the thing. When I convert to mono, it actually kind of converts to stereo but not really, because it's mono, but going through both speakers. See? Sample 1 channel in stereo, convert one channel to mono, both speakers get the same image.
2.) Now you have the break in the emu. You need to make it as tight as possible. You probably sampled some of the music before the break and a little after the break. What I will do here is take the end point in the cutting section of the tools and move it until I find the first beat. I will then play the sample several octaves below origin to make sure that I am as close as possible to the start of the first beat. You need this to happen because the beats sound sloppy if you don't cut it proper. At origin, it will sound like you are right on, but if you play several octaves below, you will actually here dead space and then the kick or snare. You will shave 0.02 seconds or so off the break and that may not seem like alot but it makes a big difference.
3.) Beat munger comes in... not for what the other poster said, you still hear artifacts if you apply any type of pitch adjustment or tempo adjustment, but for bpm count. It's pretty spot on.
4.) You have your bpm... get a calculator out. What I am going to do is now is calculate the length of one beat. Say your break is 130. Take 60 and divide that by 130 and that will tell you the length of one beat. The answer here is 0.46 so on and on and on.
5.) You want to keep your break in it's original form at all times. You mess up, you have to sample all over again. You may even want to place the sample below where your break hits will start to be placed. So we are not going to cut the break, but copy the break. That value you got that is 0.46, go a head and move the end point to roughly that same time and see how close it is. You are going to copy the first beat of the break. You will more then likely find that it's not going to be exact. That is alright. Lets pretend that the first beat is a kick. Move the end point about half way into the snare and start backing it back untill you stop hearing it when you play the sample. Play the sample a few octaves below to check for sample accurate placement of the copy markers and make sure you don't hear any missed zeros. If you don't hear missed zeros at four octaves under the origin, your not going to hear it at origin or higher. So you have the start right at the start of the kick and you have the end point right at the start of the snare now right. DON'T COPY YET. Move on to step six.
6.)Get a legal pad and pencil or pen. Write the start and end points down that you think sound the best. Write the start point on top and the end point underneath it. Bracket it on the paper and label it as one. Something like this:
.....1400565
1{
.....1685522
Why are you doing this? Well, if you mess up 50 pieces in and you decide you don't like how the break sounds cut up, you can refer to this piece of paper and go "Okay, I have issues with sample 15 and 16 and those pieces are in beat 4 and beat 4's start and end points are X and Y. You copy it again from the break you have left alone and do it agian. Also, this allows you to take a break because cutting up a break can be time consuming and you might get tired. You can come back later by refering to this chart you will be making and lo and behold start again.
7.) Copy that beat. Place the beat. Call it 1 or whatever you want to. I use numbers, it's quicker that way. Place it at C0 and move on to step 8.
8.) Now, we are going to cut that beat down. Look at the sample length of the first beat. Divide that number by four and you will get a rough idea how how long your pieces are going to be. We are going to cut the break up into 16ths. This will give you incredible flexability with editing and rearranging and also will allow you to retain the original feel of the break. You will retain alot of the sounds. What's really happening when you speed up a cut up break is that the last parts of each sample are not being played because the length is shorter. By cutting the break up in this manner you will retain alot more of the orignal sound.
This is how I cut the beat up. I move the end point to that value you got when you divided the sample length by four. I play the sample several octaves below, make sure I am as close as possible to the next cymbal, snare, kick, or whatever and then of to the side write the end point value down and then move the end point all the way to the end of the sample. I then move the start point to that value, double check for closeness and accuracy and then cut. You leave the first 4th alone at C0 and then you move the 3/4ths to the next placement on the keyboard and repeat until you got the break cut up. So you are always leaving 1 piece behind and moving the larger peice that is getting smaller forward. You will find that the value you got is just a suggestion. It's alright to devaite from that vaule by a little. But you might find that if you follow this you might end up with a ghost snare (amen in particular) that will land 0.02 seconds behind the start point. I will address a solution for this in a second. You do not, under any circumstances cut that piece smaller. You want all pieces about the same length.
9.) Test. You take the first four pieces and get your sequencer to loop that beat. You want to add about 5 to 10 bpm's to the original tempo. If you don't hear any gaps then you are cutting good. At 170, it will sound clean. If you play the break that the original tempo you will more then likely hear gaps, where the pieces are too short. That is alright. It doesn't matter too much if that happens because we will be programing the beat at 170 bpms. But if you hear a gap at 140 or 150, you have an issue.
Repeat until you are done.
About that problem with some of the pieces being way too short. I cut up the amen and found that some of the ghost stroke snares came really late. If I cut them at the length you would think, then I would have gaps. If I cut them with the snares coming late, it lost the urgency with the break. It sounded sloppy, dopy. So how do you fix it? Easy. You cut it where your suppose to cut it. You will have that dead space before the ghost snare. But what I am going to say will change the entire placement of that dead space.
You take your end point and move it to the point where the ghost stroke starts. Play several octaves below, checking for closes and most importantly zero crossings. Write that end point value down. Move that end point back to the end of the sample. Now move your start point to that value that the end point was at. Now, are you ready for this?... You REVERSE that part of the sample. Now play the sample, you want to see if you can hear any artifacts. You don't need to play the sample at any strange pitch. Normal will do. You want to hear if the forward dead space flows into the tail of the reversed snare perfectly. If you hear a click, undo and try again. If no click. Put the start and end points at the start and end of the sample and REVERSE the entire sample.
What has just happened here is that you kept the sample the proper length. No gapping. You have the snare hit on grid. No sloppiness. And no one will ever know that you have a part of the sample running backwards. When you listen to my amen track and Funky Drummer track, especially the funky drummer, you will hear a lot of this technique being applied. You wont be able to tell.
Hope this helps you out alot man. If you have questions. Send me a PM. Here are links to my drum demos for you to listen to. You will be able to hear all sorts of things you can do with this type of cutting. All sounds are from just the breaks themselves. No fancy effects where used.
http://thewickedshade.istemp.com/music/amenbreak.mp3
http://thewickedshade.istemp.com/music/ ... rchoon.mp3
The funky drummer break... I start it out at close to original tempo, cut up and rearranged just a bit, to give and idea of how close I can cut the breaks up by hand. So it will play at original tempo and then will low pass out and go dnb speed. You will also here me strip pieces away toward the end untill I just have four pieces per measure or so.
snh
Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2005 1:10 am