LOOPING DRUMS - advice needed

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weird question here, i've found a great drum break that i love but it has this Rhodes piano solo all over it. it repeats 30 or 40 times in the originating track, but never cleanly by itself.

i know i could chop a handful up and reconstruct the clean parts with each other, that might work. i thought of another approach this morning, what about taking 10-12 perfectly cut repetitions of the break and stacking/mixing them on top of each other so that the drums are at 100% volume and the piano sounds are greatly diminished. i know there would be an underlying cloud of notes -- and just now realize they might add up to a very audible unholy mess. bad idea?

what's a better approach?

― the kwisatz bacharach (sanskrit), Thursday, 8 February 2007 15:16 (eighteen years ago)

I would say:

1) isolate smaller parts of the break and try to piece it together
2) work the rhodes into your track
3) find another break

But then again I might not be very good at this stuff.

― Jordan (Jordan), Thursday, 8 February 2007 15:55 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, the stacking won't work.
A real drummer's time's not perfect, that accounts for the 'feel' factor of the real deal.
Even if he was amazingly perfect, the tracks would phase. Freddy Mercury was so accurate when he sang layered vocals the tracks would do that.
Sounds cool. Not what you want on drums.

― Lukewarm Watery G. Tornado; Less sick than before (The GZeus), Thursday, 8 February 2007 17:53 (eighteen years ago)

#2 is the best approach. ask DJ Premier

― TOMBO7 (TOMBOT), Thursday, 8 February 2007 17:55 (eighteen years ago)

"this jean jacques perrey number has a great break but it has this bubbling moog solo all over it"

― TOMBO7 (TOMBOT), Thursday, 8 February 2007 17:56 (eighteen years ago)

#1 is fine too but better if you just like the sounds of the drums, not the groove going on

― TOMBO7 (TOMBOT), Thursday, 8 February 2007 17:56 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, #1 will wind up losing or at least warping bits of the groove. But if you like the sounds of the drums, you might get a lot of ideas out of slicing up the hits, Amen-style, loading them into a sampler / drum machine, and reprogramming rhythms to see what comes out.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 8 February 2007 18:11 (eighteen years ago)

Recreating the break in a machine's not a TERRIBLE idea, either.
Sample them beats.

― Lukewarm Watery G. Tornado; Less sick than before (The GZeus), Thursday, 8 February 2007 18:13 (eighteen years ago)

1) isolate smaller parts of the break and try to piece it together

the primary problem with this approach is the inevitable inconsistency between slices from one measure to the next. eg. beat 2 in bar 1 is not identical to beat 2 in bar 12.

you could use something like beat detective to do the sample slicing for you. then take the pieces and put the dry ones together.

once you've got that conform the slices to the closest mean tempo, then do some crossfades and merge them.

that's what i'd do.

― pabs (Pablo A), Thursday, 8 February 2007 23:10 (eighteen years ago)

Sometimes it can sound cool when you mix up a sequenced beat using the individual sounds from a break with slightly longer bits of the break itself.

― Jordan (Jordan), Thursday, 8 February 2007 23:37 (eighteen years ago)

I think that the original stacking idea, with all its imperfections, might sound really interesting, but perhaps not be the "clean" sample you'd dream of.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 9 February 2007 02:34 (eighteen years ago)

I've tried the stacking thing with what sounded like 100% identical repeating sampled loops and not managed to get them in sync enough to cancel/stack, so there's no way it's going to work for a real live drummer. Which is not to stop you trying it, since like everyone said maybe it'll sound cool, but, uh, I'd be surprised if it did.

As long as most of your samples are longer than single hits then #1 may not have the original feel but it'll have something of the drummer's groove still in it, especially if you keep the original timing when you replace unusable hits and vary the mix volume a little. Try layering sounds too, like instead of pasting snare hit #1 at 100% volume, put in snare #1 at 80% and snare #2 at 20%. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it sounds bad. Experiment.

I do not have the patience to do this at all any more because it always takes far longer than I think.

― Rebecca (reb), Friday, 9 February 2007 03:58 (eighteen years ago)

yeah my advice generally is that anything beyond the three options Jordan posted always ends up being totally not worth the effort, when you could have been spending your precious minutes on something else (like finding that other break that doesn't have piano on top)

― TOMBO7 (TOMBOT), Friday, 9 February 2007 16:17 (eighteen years ago)

This thread title is the name of my next track btw.

― A cookie has no soul, it's just a cookie (Jordan), Friday, 9 February 2007 16:33 (eighteen years ago)

Have a look through this thread on Dogs on Acid which is an interview with a producer called Paradox, who is something of a master at extracting breaks from soul/funk tunes and recreating them 'cleanly' while maintaining their feel. His tunes have arguably the most well sequenced breaks in dnb, and in that thread he explains exactly how he does it.

― Andrew (enneff), Friday, 9 February 2007 23:07 (eighteen years ago)

OMG

― Jordan (Jordan), Friday, 9 February 2007 23:12 (eighteen years ago)

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