Howdy, I’ll get straight to the point because I have not one sample cd to review but two!

1. Loopmasters Bop – Minimal Drum & Bass

2. Loopmasters A Guy Called Gerald – Deep Techno Sessions

Loopmasters Bop

I’ll start with the the Loopmasters Bop sample CD. Minimal drum & bass is all the rage right now so it comes as no surprise that we see a sample cd emerge from the ether. This time Russian producer  Bop has been given sample cd duty after a string of high quality releases on Hospital records and Med School.

The Sample Pack is the usual affair:

# Over 570Mb of content
# 460 Wav samples
# 216 Loops
# 245 Single Sounds.
# 33 ready to play Reason NNXt, Kontakt, Halion and EXS24 Patches
# Apple Loops, Reason Refill or Ableton Live Versions also available

How does it sound?

Positives: Great selection of minimal drum grooves. Definitely 100% authentic sounding. Great Kicks, Snares, Hi  Hats Awesome synth loops – light/airy/dreamy/vibey loops and great pad/atmos/glitch loops.

Negatives: NOT enough instruments patches and the instrument patches that are there are boring and not very inspiring.

Look, if you want to write in the minimal drum & bass style and are having some troubles then Loopmasters Bop will definitely help you out loads! Check out the samples HERE.

Loopmasters A Guy Called Gerald

A Guy Called Gerald is a pioneer in electronic music and I for one was keen to hear this sample pack ever since his Future Music interview. GCG has carefully sampled all his vintage gear and created his own refills. In his own words:

“My aim is to give you all a deeper understanding with as much enjoyment as is physically and mentally possible using the three elements more frequently missing from this music – the basis of all dance music : RHYTHM, MELODY and BASS.

The sounds herein contain patterns that create specific air movement sequence in earth atmosphere used at the correct pressure.  The sounds will transport you to the groove simulator 1st level : the holographic key to die hold activation.

This package is an attempt to capture some of the sounds and loops so future generations can attempt to connect to the mother groove.

Enjoy!

Anyways, this is a TECHNO sample pack but I wanted to see if we could draw some inspiration from the sounds. Generally I find Techno/House sample cds a waste of time but hey I was willing to give this a shot because it was Gerald!

How does it sound?

Well, er… no. I was right in thinking that this was not going to work for drum and bass production. The drums are all wrong and the bass loops are boring or not usable. In fact this was the general theme for the whole sample pack.  Sure there was the occassional sample here or there that “had” something but they were few and far between.

The drum samples were the usual suspects( Drum machine style and vinyl  samples). So the usual 808′s and vintage breaks kicks, snares and hats.

The Bass instruments were solid but pretty much only came in one flavor which is that House bass style. So nothing new there and certainly nothing that you shouldn’t have in your Sound Library already.

So, I couldn’t and wouldn’t recommend Loopmasters A Guy Called Gerald if you want to make drum and bass. I think its strickly for the House/Techno peeps. I know you are a hard headed lot so if you need to check it out click HERE.

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

I keep getting asked all the time, what do I need to get started if I want to write Drum n Bass? The answer is never simple but I’ll try my best to explain to you some of the pros and cons of certain setups. There is probably one crucial factor if when your starting out and ask the same question all the time, are you using a Mac or a PC? This question has become important since Apple took over the reigns of Logic back at version 6 making the software available to Mac users exclusively. This meant that if you were a PC user and Logic was your sequencer of choice you either had to buy a Mac or put up with v5.5 on the PC for ever. Not a good situation of PC users you would agree. Some would argue a great move on Apple’s behalf but that’s another blog post. In the meantime whilst all that craziness was going down Steinberg (creates of the hugely Cubase) was getting taken over by Yamaha but unlike Apple, Yamaha decided to keep the dual platform sequencer the way it is and not divide the camps so to speak. So, if you got a Mac probably stick with a Mac and if you got a PC stick with Cubase. Now this is a very broad generalization here so don’t bite my head off.

So now that we have divided you into Logic users and Cubase users. Let us continue on. Oh, I’m going to stick with the main sequencers here so if you are using Sonar or Ableton please don’t send me hate mail and that you think I should die. I just stuck with what i believe are the main sequencers. Ableton and Sonar are both excellent music producing tools in there onright. Cubase just happens to be my sequencer of choice because i’ve used it for so many years. Infact  I started to use it way back when there was Cubase VST then Cubase SX etc.

Okay, so what next for making cutting edge classic drum n bass? Well, your probably going to have to get  a soft synth or two and here you most definitely spoilt for choices. To start with I would probably recommend a versatile synth like Rob Papen’s Albino 3 and the lovely sounding Arturia‘s minimoog. When it comes to sampling the choices narrower but the clear favourite here is Native Instruments Kontakt. Hands down Kontakt is a superb sampler and Kontakt 3 is no exception even if the filters are a bit on the naf side of things. I totally stay away from the Kontakt Player, I just don’t see the use for it especially if your using Kontakt already. Native Instruments have been leading the way in making some of the most breathtaking plugins for a long time now so do yourself a favour and check all their plugins out.

So there’s a few instruments there to get you going but what about equalizers and compressors? Well for years it was all about the Waves bundles. Then Waves came out with the SSL and API bundle and this catapulted them into “must have plugins” status. Things have changed somewhat now as major  companies have jumped on board and started to make plugins themselves Sony Oxford, SPL and Abbey Roads and Focusrite to name a few. The Sonnox Plugins are exceptionally brilliant! I really rate the Dynamics and EQ plugins. Other companies like Voxengo and Sonalksis produce a variety of plugins for all occasions so make sure you check them out, some are even for free! Like Span which I mentioned in one of my earlier blogs.

One more thing i should mention to you when concerning writing dnb. Don’t go to crazy with adding plugin after plugin to your plugins folder. Get to really know what each plugin does and how it works. Play around with them, automate them learn them inside out. It can take years to fully understand what each and every plugin does. Take the time and start slowly, drum n bass ain’t going nowhere. Believe me.

Peace

djdauntless

http://myspace.com/dauntlessdnb

http://sydneyfriction.com