New Drum n Bass Production Standard?

Logic Audio was always a favourite DAW for drum n bass production but does Logic 9 stand tall?

Its an interesting question since I’m a die hard Cubase user, however,  every now and again I find myself wandering around and checking out what’s happening with the other sequencers out there. I find it refreshing to explore other DAWs and experience a different kind of work flow (or pull my hair out in frustration trying to figure them out!). This helps the creative juices flow a little more readily which could only be a good thing. I managed to finally get a copy of Logic 8 when I purchased my wife an Imac24 a year ago, so I’ve had some time to dig around a little and get my hands dirty. Well I must say that I wasn’t at first really impressed with what I saw, so it was back to Cubase land for moi! I found the audio editing to be “illogical” and some of the work flow to complexed.

Then Logic 9 came out and to be honest I wasn’t fussed at all with its arrival.

I mean, the feature list basically put it on par with the rest of the other DAWs. out there. However all was not as it seemed for lurking in the program lay some very cool new features/plugins just perfect for drum n bass production.

1. Amp Designer – Very cool plugin allowing you to mix and match 25 amps, 25 speaker cabinets and 3 mics you can place around the speaker cone. The sound of the amps are brilliant. All of them have there very own flavour and all very very useable.

The cabinets and mics sound great as well. Insert the Plugin on your bass channel and volia! You have instant access to a wide variety of sounds and textures at your disposal. I found the plugin perfect on my mids (reese bass) and awesome on my sub bass. I’ve yet to put it on my drum buss but I have all the confidence in the world that it would sound great.

2. Pedalboard – Here you have a collection of 30 stompboxes from all over the place! Fuzz, Delay, Chorus, Flanger, Treble, Wah, Overdrive and Boost. The pedals themselves sound wicked, alone or joined up together. The majority of them have a real analog sound to them. The developers over at Apple didn’t hold back on these ones. Even though we have the likes of IK Multimedia Amplitube and T-Racks and Peavey’s Revalver I do wish these plugins were available to everyone! Damn you Apple! In particular the chorus, phaser and flanger pedals sound best. Really lush sounding and warm. Quality all the way!

3. Convert to Sampler Track – I’m not really sure if Logic was listening to us drum n bass heads or not when they implemented this one but its just what the doctor ordered. Mucking about with Recycle and the EXS24 was down right CRAP! So I’m really glad they took the bull by the horns and did something about chopping up beats!

They really did a nice job of it too! Except they should have given you the option of having a multiple out EXS24 when you sliced up the audio track. This would have made more sense but hey, lets just cross this bridge first. This little feature makes chopping up old funk breaks just perfect for drum n bass or any other breakbeat orientated music. The EXS is a very capable sampler even if its a bit long in the tooth now! This feature alone is going to save you plenty of time! Trust me!

4. I wont go into detail about every new feature but some other worthy of mentioning are:

Bounce-in-place. I say FINALLY! EPIC WIN!

Flex time – Not bad at all.

Selective Track Import – very interesting.

Drum Replacer – Could be interesting

All in all the new Logic 9 is a nice surprise. Its not say, perfect but no DAW out there is. I still love the automation system in Logic and I personally still love the way it looks and lets not get me going about the awesomeness of Logic’s Space Designer Reverb and Delay Designer! In fact I would say that it has never ever looked and sounded so good! Plenty of top notch drum n bass producers cant be wrong! Now get over to the Apple store and check out the videos if you haven’t already. Definitely worth a look.

See you on the dancefloor.

dauntless

No Frills Locus Sydney

P.S For some great Q&As with big Drum n Bass artists or some general chit chat head over to sydneyfriction.com.

I regulary post and hang out there.

Peace

Howdy, I’m back with another drum n bass production video golden moment. This time from the man of the moment (some would say for all the wrong reasons!) Mistabishi. Regardless to the goings on to what he has or has not done his 4 part drum and bass production special for Computer Music Mag was choc full of brilliant tips and insight. If you don’t know what I’m talking about check out  DogsonAcid.com. As a drum and bass artist he is definitely one of  Hospital records up and coming superstars. I really loved the way he describes how he uses reverb in his tunes. How lush does the TC Electronic ClassicVerb sound? Well wicked! Anyways.. Just makes me want to rush out and buy one straight away! Which of course is well dangerous for my health (my wife would kill me) and my bank balance! I’ll you check out the rest of the video, enjoy.
Cheers
Dauntless
No Frills Locus Sydney

P.S I haven’t had the chance to check out the new sample pack Mistabishi has created for Loopmasters. I’ll

hopefully review it soon. Pop back in later to see my review.

Howdy, I’ve got to make this drum n bass production workflow tips brief as I have 100 things to do today so I’ll just blast you with some cool bulletstyle points about how I’m getting down right now!

1. If you don’t have an idea when you sit down to right a tune, GET ONE! That’s right, go out there and start sampling or listen to some music etc.

2. Focus on getting all the elements of your tune together first! Don’t spend time on compression or effects or whatever. Get your musical elements down!

3. After you have all your bits booming/smashing up the place and your dancing around to your own tune like a mad person, start mixing down. You want to start mixing down after you have all your elements because when it comes to EQ or compression its all relative to whole track! For e.g. Why boost the snare at 200hz if the tune requires a tight little pokey snare? Listen first to the WHOLE tune then make the call. Same goes with compression etc. Don’t forget when your mixing down to leave a little headroom. I’m mixing my kick to around -12db. This seems to be working okay for me right now. Why -12db? Well I was originally mixing to -6db but I found out quickly I was running into the red too much. So now I leave a little room for my compression/eq/limiter.

4. I’ve also been spending some time making Kontakt instruments/banks/presets. I’ve found this to be so important when your writing because you have to work fast when inspiration strikes. Kontakt 3 is awesome for this as it has the cool quickload feature and a very good search function. I’ve also discovered Chicken Systems Translator Pro to help me with converting samples into Kontakt instruments. Very very handy indeed. Works great as well!

Well, only a quick 4 points on how to improve your drum n bass prodution but hopefully you got something out of it!
See you on the dancefloor.
Peace
Daunltess
No Frills Locus Crew Sydney

P.S. I would to hear your feedback/comments about how YOU work etc.

The Power of DrumnBass Drums

DnB Drums! Who doesn’t love them? Nobody that’s who! Whether it’s the funky shuffle of a funk break sped up to 172bpm or the fierce and chaotic rhythm of the Amen break smashing up the dance, nobody on this god given earth could deny the raw and awesome power of dnb drums!

At its birth DnB (or Jungle as it was known in the mid to late 90′s) was actually created at a slighty slower bpm then what we find today around 160bpm in most cases  and in some cases slower even still! However I don’t want to fill your head with the history of DnB, that’s for another article. You want to know about how to make these most powerful of drums of which I speak!

Its All About The Layers

First and foremost I think its important to know that it doesn’t matter what style of drum n bass you produce all styles use plenty of layers in there drums, and when i mean plenty, i mean PLENTY! Get used to it. Get used to hearing the term layers and get your head around the fact that in order to get your drums to sound right, your going to have to start to use layers. Now, I’ve written another article about dnb and layers here. So check that out when you can.

A Quick Note To Self

You can’t just go and rush off and layer up 13 different types of drum breaks on top of each other… it just doesn’t work like that! Careful selection of layers is crucial. I hate to say it but with time you get better picking which layers will go with what. Some people like to layer up different drum breaks by the sound of the break , their character if you will. Maybe a crusty floor funk break on top of a punchy drum machine style break perhaps? Which ever way you go about it, think about what you are trying to achieve first. Get used to using a Spectrum Analyzer when working on your drum breaks. My favourite as analyzer is called Span and its made by Voxengo.

Getting Busy With The Drum Breaks

There is  a few methods that I have personally tried when it comes to creating a break.

Method 1. All audio. Cubase is well known for its ability to manipulate audio and its real strength shows up here when it comes to creating tight beats. Cubase even comes with its own audio slicer tool built in. Very much gets the thumbs up from me!

Method 2. All midi. Normally load the breaks up into a sampler like Native Instrument Kontakt 3 or Battery 3 or Logic’s EXS24 and get cracking!

Method 3. Combination Style. Sometimes I’ll mix it and combine the two styles together. Mainly because i’ve got a huge collection of kicks, snares and hi hats etc to beef up any breaks that need “beefing” up.

Noticed i haven’t mentioned the word REX anywhere? Now, in the past I’ve been guilty of staying up all night “recycling” my breaks to the break of dawn. Its a practice i rarely do anymore. I’m really comfortable chopping drum breaks now in Cubase so by working strictly with audio it’s one less chore i have to do now.

Take your time whilst learning how to layer properly. It will take time my friends and that’s no doubt. Stick to one of the methods and check the results to see if that style of writing drums agrees with you. If not, then move onto the next method. Rinse and repeat. Oh and also, “have fun whilst your doing all of it! It’s meant to be FUN!”

Hope that helps.

Peace out

Dj Dauntless
If you get a chance check out the Snowball USB Microphone by Blue. I love it for recording podcasts and guitars or whatever.