[Clip&Carbine]

Generally, I've found that producers either work in a loop based format or a drum machine based format when composing their breaks and beats. I've synthesized the two on occasion, so they don't exclude eachother necessarily.
My question to you, the producer, is- what are the benefits and drawbacks to each respective method for rhythmatic composition?

[the_Archangel]

Using breaks has the strength of history behind it.

Using breaks gives you that human "edge" of cadence.

Using drum machines can give you extra beef.

Using drum machines can make you feel relevant.



I almost only use breaks.

Most d&b producers, even the techy guys, still use breaks, but payer them with a billion other breaks and machine drums, too.

There's a lot to be said for both.

Dubstep sucks.

[djredshift]

I use them both. Drum machines get robotic sometimes unless you have control and some kind of ability to shape the drums and the flow (turn the swing to MAX on your casio). Getting a groove is a lot easier with sampled breaks, imo. But there is something to be said for synthesizing your drumz. You can't get robot noises out of a regular drum kit. Even if your drum kit doesn't have grooves you can still get a groove if you have delay and sends. But then, hey you can use a drum machine to control a sampler, so you can chop any breaks you want and sequence them with a machine. And I'd also like to add: boogers!

[JBostron]

chop breaks
add single hits

i dont use midi for drums, audio processes much quicker

loops of what? loops of drums
only for amens....

[JBostron]

benefits for rhythmic composition.......

loops are recorded and therefore can have shuffle and looseness as recorded

single hits placed on a grid are going to be robotic, unless u play about with the placement of the samples to make it feel more "real" (turning off quantize / grid and moving in and around where they "should" be)

[djredshift]

There is only one way to hit a drum.

[JBostron]

mr purdie disagrees....

[steve gritty]

Do u mean midi??

D&B is not made on drum machines ...It is made out of sequenced chopped and layered breaks...and mostly audio

Up to 10-15 layers actually ..Mebe 2-3 classic breaks filtered at different freqs and almost always an amen..layered with hits to achieve the right sonic dynamics... Modern uk jungle/d&b has to have heavy clear drums otherwise ur tune aint gonna get played...Even the stuff they play on the equinox show is layered to fuck to get the width in there..

I dont even know what kind of music uses drum machines.(like techno orsquarepusher??)... Though I would use a synthetic hit like to get a dancehall feel ...

[Commie Dread]

programming also has the advatange that u can control the individual drums, not like with loops, where u have to change every drum on a beat if u wanna change the groove/rhythm pattern
e.g. my track blood an faya, has an amen, ode to billy joe and programmed beats (tho in parts used like a loop)

[dubious]

choppin loops for me. I use drum machines when I'm working on hip hop and random isht but for the jungle I compress the hell out of loops and rip em apart.

[djredshift]

Do u mean midi??

D&B is not made on drum machines ...It is made out of sequenced chopped and layered breaks...and mostly audio

Up to 10-15 layers actually ..Mebe 2-3 classic breaks filtered at different freqs and almost always an amen..layered with hits to achieve the right sonic dynamics... Modern uk jungle/d&b has to have heavy clear drums otherwise ur tune aint gonna get played...Even the stuff they play on the equinox show is layered to fuck to get the width in there..

I dont even know what kind of music uses drum machines.(like techno orsquarepusher??)... Though I would use a synthetic hit like to get a dancehall feel ...

Yeah alright but if you use a drum machine to trigger samples you can write your drum loops on-the-fly, live. Somebody's gotta write some fucking breaks sometime.

[steve gritty]

Yeah alright but if you use a drum machine to trigger samples you can write your drum loops on-the-fly, live. Somebody's gotta write some fucking breaks sometime.

I never said they didnt write fucking breaks... They fucking do but it aint realy done on fucking drum machines and the new pattern is fucking just about always fucking layered with fucking filtered breaks..

Even if you are gonna sequence with a drum machine or whatever u still gonna make ur break first on a sequencer.

So erm(edit) ..observe..

[Clip&Carbine]

redrum/battery is what I mean by drum machine, btw.

[the_Archangel]

redrum/battery is what I mean by drum machine, btw.

I knew that's what you meant...

[JBostron]

yea we figured u meant a drum player vst rather than a traditional drum machine (909 202 etc)

same applies tho, i just dont like doing my drums in midi, easier to load the kicks snare n hats direct into the seq than using midi chanells for kick snare n hats..... after your done with the midi you just need to render it to wav anyway so why bother..?!

[longbongsilver]

This kinda split into two different queries...

If you're talking breaks vs single-hits, I tend to use both, & emphasis one or the other later depending on how the rest of the track goes.

If it's MIDI vs Audio...MIDI, all the way. Crazier stuff seems to come naturally for me programming a sampler.

[djredshift]

I never said they didnt write fucking breaks... They fucking do but it aint realy done on fucking drum machines and the new pattern is fucking just about always fucking layered with fucking filtered breaks..

Even if you are gonna sequence with a drum machine or whatever u still gonna make ur break first on a sequencer.

So erm(edit) ..observe..

Goddamnit I'm so tired of flash not playing through my soundcard. What gritty you gonna start playing drums or something? It's 2009 for fuck's sake. People already played everything in the fucking 70's and shit.

[steve gritty]

well I can tap my foot whilst spankin the monkey. Is that good enuff ??

[Reggaecide]

Yeah, chopping breaks(or messing around with the play-position of the looped break-sample) and then use layers of drum machine hits is pretty much the way to go for me. i was pretty much amazed by Bizzy B production and got a whole lot more inspired by that to make drumpatterns that are complex and intresting enough to have that jungle quality but just as much punch as a drum and bass beat. Its a whole lot more work to dub your complex linear jungle-sequensing with drum machine samples, compared to hip hop or drum and base. But its realy worth it since it gives you that edge in comparision to the newbie jungelist that will mean that could mean the diference between your tune being worht a buck or not, and (i think) its a lot of fun to. It also gives you a good insight into the mashes you are doing. Since even if you have 2 bars of a break playing at a position, will you still have to find out where the hihats, etcetera is in that part. You will also be able to do a bit more of remastering of the drum. the alternative would be to do it like Photek. Hire a studio-drummer to kick out some jams and then sample parts of that and chop them up(since you have then recorded snares, hihats, etcetera on seperate channels). You could in such a situation get a lot of clarity and punch out of your drums even without a drummachine. but i would not mind using a drum machine or samples of one in a situation like that either.

[djredshift]

The whole thing with art is that the hardest thing to draw is a vagina. It's damn near impossible. You have to decide which piece of equipment is going to be the digital vagina and then sculpt out all the pieces and render off the fat with precise drum blows. This will create a reasonable facsimile of what people have always been trying to draw but never quite get it right.