dnbbeats.com

Mr Carbone Returns

Mr Davide Carbone is back with another Drum and Bass sample pack called S:amplify brought to you by those lovers of everything sampled Loopmasters.

I knew something was cooking when Mr Carbone himself asked a few questions to the “Gridsters” on DOA about what he should include in the “next” sample pack. This Is a smart man I thought to myself, getting user feedback is so important in today’s day and age and more producers/companies should take notice.

Its clever and makes a hell of a lot of sense. So without further ado:

Check Out Samplify HERE

Loopmasters Samplify- What’s on the inside?

Well, to start with, you get 1.4gb of samples. Which lets be honest is plenty. I prefer quality over quantity and S:amplify doesn’t disappoint. All the major formats are covered from Kontakt, EXS24, Reason Refill and Ableton Live so it really doesn’t matter if you’re a Cubase, Logic or Reason junkie, Davide’s got your back.

Inside you get bass loops, drum loops, keys and synth loops, musical loops and percussion loops. Drum Hits and Bass Hits and FX all in 24bit 44.1khz quality.  All the loops in Loopmasters Samplify sound great, are well eq’d and compressed and come prepared so that all you need to do is drop them into your sequencer of choice. You don’t know how much faster this makes the whole tune making process! This leaves you with more time to think about the all important creative stuff.

One criticism I have of Loopmasters Samplify is that there is way too many Sax and Heavy Metal Guitar loops. Sure they sound good but I few different sounds would have been nice as well. Also, there could have been a few more Ride Loops, Conga Loops and the definitely more stabs! You can never have too many Stabs in your personal sample library! So, moving on then…

The Ableton Live test…

I fired up my trusty Ableton Live  and set the tempo to 174 and got busy. First things first,  I started by  looking for a vibe-y atmosphere sample that I could work from. Loopmasters Samplify has quite of few of these types of sounds so what ever genre of Drum and Bass you make you won’t have a problem getting started. However, there is a lot of sounds geared towards the lighter side of drum and bass so “liquid lovers” have got it good here. Maybe a few too many keys for my liking but hey, you do what you can.

Anyways, I found a nice energetic keyboard loop easy enough and found a nice sax loop to go over the top. Next, I added some nice shakers and tambourines. The Perc Loops are pretty damn good. They fit well in the mix and have all the bottom end taken out of them which saves you so much time! Just wish there was a few more!

Drums- Its all about the drums…

Moving on I found some nice punchy drums that had the energy I was after pretty quickly. The drums in Loopmasters Samplify are great quality. They hit hard and sound good in the mix. I then applied a little high pass with my trusty Cambridge EQ to give the Sub a little room to breathe. You don’t even need to get all crazy with a hundred layers of beats. Just 2 was enough to take care of the rhythm section. That’s when you know the beats are slamming!

The Bass…

The first Bass loop i tried was a little disappointing. It sounded great but It was severely lacking some proper low end. I tried everything to get some low end action but came up short so I picked another sample. No problems. Loopmasters Samplify has loads of quality bass loops for you to use. So, what next?

The Rest…

Now that I had the main idea/theme down finding the rest of the samples was easy. The folders are well organized and the files are conveniently marked with BPM, Key Signature and Type. Sweet! A grabbed a couple of sweeps and a couple of hits, applied some FX. It couldn’t be easier.

The final thing to do was a quick arrangement, add some effects like delay and automation and perform a quick mixdown and voila!

Complete.

From start to finish it took me 3 hours which isn’t it too bad.

In Conclusion…

Loopmasters Samplify is spot on. You get great beats, bass and fx and all the samples are high quality and should be a part of your personal sample library. The musical loops are great because you really can find that bit of inspiration quite quickly and get moving on a tune fast!

The samples are really well produced so you don’t have to worrry about all mucking about with compression or eq but most importantly the beats are phat! Whack them into your tunes for that instant dance floor pressure. Mr Davide Carbone and Loopmasters have done it again.

Check Out Loopmasters Samplify HERE

So, are you ready for part 2? The first part was really well received and to be honest I was blown away by the interest in the Q&A session. So, thanks for popping in to have a read and if you haven’t had the chance to check out the LP Cocoon by Chook then click the Album cover on the right there and have a listen. Its 100% quality all the way!

Also, if you have questions to ask or want to make some comments don’t be shy. I would love to hear what you think.

So, on with the show then…

11. Your favorite key to write in?

it’s all about E inn’it

12. Do you use any hardware?

The Virus Ti is the only Hardware i can say I use a lot. It’s got a very powerful sound and the possibilites are just endless with it.

13. What do you put on your master buss? Why?
1. Gain, which I trim down about 5 db so that my master is not clipping even with no limiter on it.
2. A Cambridge EQ, with a Hi pass set at 25-30hz to get rid of unwanted rumble A 2 db increase with a high Q at around 60hz, that pushes the bass and the kick a bit
3. Sometimes I use the SSL bus compressor on the master but not always.
4. Always the Sonnox limiter with the input set between 3 and 6 dnb and the enhance on +-40%
I always have a limiter on the master throughout the whole production process. I find that if you only add it at the end your mix might be pumping or distorting.

14. Do you master your own tunes?

Don’t master the tunes myself. I’ll leave that to a professional.

15. Do you like to colab or write by yourself?

I haven’t released many collabs but I like both. Sometimes I wish I had a permanent collaborater to speed things up a bit.

16. Your music education?

I went to SAE in London in 2002. Fuck that’s ages ago.

17. What other types of music do you make?

I’m also working on some Techno and Tech house projects. I’m hoping to have a few decent tunes ready by the end of the year. I guess The Cocoon Lp reflects the stuff I like quite well.
I’ve also written soundtracks for short films, which was fun. I might be working on a new film soon actually.

Where do you call home right now?

I live in Luxembourg in a village not far from Luxembourg city. For those who don’t know Luxembourg is a country and it’s capital city is called Luxembourg as well. It’s right in between Belgium, France and Germany.

That wraps up the Q&A with the mighty Chook but I think you’ll agree that he really knows his stuff. The insight into what he puts on his master buss was worth the price of admission alone! Stay tuned as I’ll have another Q&A with another Drum & Bass Superstar soon!

See you on the dance floor.

Dauntless

P.S. I’m serious, check out the album Cocoon right now and give it a listen. See ya.

This is my personal Novation Nocturn review. It’s hard to believe that the Nocturn has been around now for a couple of years but its easy to see why. Its a solid bit of kit for a fraction of the price of a regular controller. However, does this little price come at a cost? I wanted to find out so I managed to get my grubby hands on one for a test drive.

==>>Check Out The Novation Nocturn HERE!<<==

Novation Nocturn Review Hands On

First off the unit is obviously small and comes in a stylish black finish. You can see in the photo that its about the size of an Ipad. Its build quality is pretty good. It has solid buttons and the eight endless rotary encoders feel pretty comfortable on the old fingers to turn. The cross fader is reasonable build. Its not a Vestax or Pioneer but then again its not trying to be. To finish off the description the Nocturn has a couple of soft pads on the underside for grip when placing on your desk or synth etc. Okay, so moving forward the unit is easy enough to install. Just stick a USB cable into the side install Automap 3 and away you go. Okay, maybe not that fast. You should “automap” a few of your favorite plugins or VST instruments for use in your DAW and read a few instructions because each DAW is slightly different. Ableton Live 8 was my DAW of choice for this test so I popped open an Ableton project and started to tweak like mad. Well not mad but I was surprised by how fast you start controlling stuff.

Nocturn In Control?

Now, listen here. I’m not a spring chicken when it comes to Automap because I have a Remote SL37 so I know how good the system works and the Novation Nocturn is no different. Intuitive and very functional which makes the Nocturn fun to use and more importantly makes you “want” to use it! Its not all roses though is it? Well, no. For the life of me I just couldn’t get to grips with the speed dial. The speed dial is the rotary encoder in the middle. It controls whatever your mouse is over. Good in theory but what I found out was when you tweak with the encoder you end up messing up the value by moving the mouse! Frustrating. Yes. So I dropped the use of it all together. Lucky the buttons and other 8 encoders made up for it because they work so great!

In Conclusion

All in all the Novation Nocturn is a little knock out of a controller. Its compact but packed with just enough features to keep you reaching for it over and over to use in your tracks which is a hall mark of a good controller for your studio. You can pick up the Nocturn for around 10% of some of the big name controllers out there so you can see its an absolute steal!

Check out some more info about the Novation Nocturn HERE

Hey, how you doing? Today I got a real nice treat for ya. DJ Producer and Label Boss Chook has agreed to give us the skinny on how he makes his beats so phat and what gear he uses in the studio.

If you have no clue as to who i’m talking about than click here.

Now, if you’ve been into drum and bass for a while then you’ve probably heard of the name Chook and Full Force Recordings. You’ve probably even been witness to his skills behind the “steel” and boogied to a few of his tunes on the dance floor.
Well, Phillipe is good friend of mine (even though he uses Logic!) so I asked him if he would do a Q&A for DnBBeats.

So, check it out.

1. What software/hardware are you using?

I got a mac pro 2.6 eight core, with 4 tera hd and a raid card, + 12 gig of ram.
I’m using Logic pro as a sequencer. Other than that I have a Virus Ti, UAD Quad,
SPL VItalizer and Charisma, A mackie 24 vlzpro and a dbx 1066 that i both wanna sell if anyone’s interested. I use a pair of mackie hr 824′s a monitoring system.
Plugin wise I mainly use the UAD’s and Sonnox as well as the SPL bundle which I just discovered and love, Spectrasonic Trillian and Omnisphere. NI’s…

2. How to make your basslines?

There’s no big secrets about them. I like to use a good synth like the virus or trillian. I use it on two seperate tracks. The first will be used as the sub, which i tend to cut between 70 and 100hz. The second track will be used for the midrange and will be cut somewhere between 100 and 300hz. I generally use the cambridge eq to do this. I then draw a filter automation on the midrange track generally using the cambridge’s low pass. In case my midrange goes down to 100hz I’ll make sure to get rid of resonances in the low mid area.

I might use the grm tools or logic’s space designer to further process the midrange. SPL’s charisma or twin tube for a bit of saturation. That’s it. I guess the most important thing is to get a groovy filter automation going on your mids the rest is just enhancing the whole thing.

3. How do you make your drums?

I’ll use one good sounding kick and snare both are going to my drum bus.
Then I might use a few chopped up breaks always taking out kicks and snares though. I like to keep everything as clean as possible. I’ll also quantise all the elements.
Then I generally add some hats and rides and some percs which are going to a seperate bus with the breaks, which is then again going into the drum bus. This bus is probably the one with the most processing. It might look smth like this:
Eq (generally a filter at 100hz and possibly one at 17 khz depending how sharp the top end of the hats etc are. I’ll then use a 1176 and a LA2A in series for the compression. I’ll then add some reverb and maybe some limiting.

The main drum bus will be eq’ed, slightly compressed and limited with the Sonnox Limiter. If I can’t get the drums loud enough I’ll also use the Sonnox Inflator on them.
Oh and one thing I forgot is that I’ll always cut out resonances around 250hz on the kick and the snare before they go into my drum bus.

Towards the middle of the production I’ll use parallel compression on a separate bus for my drums with very high compression levels. I’ll then pull up the level of that bus until it blends well with the original drum bus sound. As the mighty mastering engineer and producer Rob Acid put it:
This will give your drums some balls! Definitely check out the his interview. You’ll find it easily if you just Google it.

This generally works well for my midrange bus as well.

4. Where do you get your samples from?

Most of my sounds are made from synths. I buy my samples at soundstosample or loopmasters. I rarely buy dnb sample libraries though. Most of them suck I find. Same if you use a sound in a synth called dnb or smth similar it will almost always be shit.

5. How long have you been producing?

I started producing right after I got back from the Red Bull Music Academy in 2001.

6. Was it hard setting up a record label?
Setting it up wasn’t so hard. We got picked up by St Holdings right after we sent them our first release. I’d say it was easier back then than it would be nowadays. Selling a 1000 records back then was easy even for an unknown label.

7. How long was it before you first release?

I think the first release was in 2004. It was under the name full force on FF recs. It was the first release on our label. The flip was a remix by D Pulse and Xplorer.

8. What 3 plugins are your favorite?

My favourite plugins would be the Sonnox limiter, cambridge eq, and Logic’s space designer especially with it’s new warped reverbs.

9. How long do you spend on tunes?

I do spend quite a lot of time on tunes. It all varies though. Some tunes I finish in a matter of a few days, some i spend weeks if not months on them. I think i spent 6 months working on Trainspot. I like to make a tune and leave it aside for a few months and come back to it to finish it.

10. Do you write every day? How do you stay motivated?

No, 3 days a week i work as a dj’ing and production teacher in a highschool in Luxembourg.
Then there are the gigs, sports, girlfriend etc… the time left I spend in the studio. I’d say I spend between 2 and 4 days a week in the studio. Over the summer I’ll probably be in the studio a lot more. I get frustrated if I don’t come up with new tunes regularly so staying motivated to write tunes is not much of a problem. What is harder is when you don’t have any inspiration. That can get me really down. I find a run in the woods will almost always solve that problem though.

To be continued…

Hey, thanks for stopping by and checking out the Chook Q&A. This is only part 1 of a 2 part interview. I’ll post up more juicy drum and bass production secrets and tips from the one like Chook later this week. If you haven’t had the chance to check out his album Cocoon then give it a listen soon. The production quality is A1 and will keep you inspired to keep going with your beats.

hope to see you on the dance floor.

Dauntless

Why review the Zoom H2 Handy Recorder?

Well, a friend of mine was looking for a field recorder that was portable and easy to use. He wanted it to be fully featured but most importantly he wanted it to be under $200.

Well that’s easy I thought to myself, there’s loads of recorders out there!

Wrong.There isn’t that many portable recorders out there that fit the bill as I thought and the truth is most of them are pretty bad. However, the Zoom H2 does all the above quite nicely, read on to get the lowdown.

Check out some more information about the Zoom H2  here

Sample time with the Zoom H2

I’m a big fan of sampling. I think sampling adds that personal touch to a tune and makes your tracks that little bit more unique then a person who just uses samples taken from a sample CD. Now, don’t get me wrong here. I love sample CD’s and they definitely have there place but if you want to stand out you need to get your hands dirty and sample some vinyl or some sounds outside your window or down the street!

Now, I’m a lazy sod. Probably just like you and so sampling just seems like a big giant time guzzler. First you got to get to the shop, then you have to search through all those records and find the good ones, then you have to… you get the picture. Well, you can’t avoid all that hard work at the start but at the end you can and I’ll show you how the Zoom H2 saves you time!

What I do is plug the Zoom H2 into my mixer. (my new Allen & Heath Xone 42 BTW). Then, I’ll get a good level and record all the vinyl snippets at once. I just let the Zoom H2 continue recording whilst I play each and every bit of vinyl that I may have purchased or have lying around. The great thing is because I have my CDJ’s plugged into the Xone 42 as well I can sample from soundtrack CD’s etc. That’s great but…

Zoom H2 meet Mr Wavelab

Won’t I have a really long messy file? Yes, its true. You’ll end up with a pretty big file to deal with but that’s where my secret weapon comes into play. Wavelab 6. I download the file onto my computer using the USB feature of the Zoom and load it up into Wavelab. Then I use Wavelab’s Split Silence tool to chop up all the bits for me. Easy as that. Wavelab will even put all the files neatly in one new folder for me. I can then apply fx or eq or what ever I want directly onto the samples no worries.

Zoom H2 and No Frills Drum and Bass

I’m also using the Zoom H2 to record my Drum & Bass mixes and the results have been great. Because of its ability to switch between from .WAV to .MP3 I can record a No Frills Drum and Bass gig no problems what so ever! That’s over 5 hours of music, brilliant! However, the fun doesn’t end there. Because I’m recording at 320kbps the sound is very very good!

Check out the video below on how easy it is to use!

Features of the Zoom H2 I love

There’s a whole bunch of stuff I love about the Zoom H2.

• It’s small enough that it fits in the palm of your hand. Its a little bulkier than an Iphone but compact in design so you can take it anywhere without it being a hassle.
• The Zoom H2 takes a standard SD Card which is great because they’re so dirt cheap now its unbelievable. The unit takes 2 standard AA batteries which is great because I hate buying weird batteries that cost a fortune. AA batteries you can find everywhere and really affordable.
• One of the great features of the Zoom H2 is the one click record function. Just 1 click to arm the unit and then another click to start recording. Its as easy as that. You can instantly get recording with literally 2 clicks of a button. This is why the Zoom H2 is so intuitive to use.
• The Zoom H2 has 4 microphones that are built into the Zoom H2. This is how the unit is able to record 360 degrees. Absolutely perfect for recording a band or in an interview situation.

What others are saying

With over 468 reviews at Amazon with an average review of 4.5 out of 5 the Zoom H2 is killer!

Here are some of comments to date:

• “As good as the Edirol R-09 for about half the price!”
• “Much better and easier to operate than the Zoom H4″
• “H2: Great little recorder”
• “Take your new podcast to the next level”
• “Awesome Quality and Price”
• read more review here.

How much is the Zoom H2 going to cost you?

It’s hard to give you a price on the Zoom H2 because prices can and do change all the time. However, currently right now at Amazon the Zoom H2 is going for around $150. Which is over 56% off the retail price which is an absolute steal.

Anyways… if you want to find out more about the Zoom H2  or read some more review click here.