Making Music
  Computer Music Software and Hardware

A peg to hang your loop on

Although you can record your own samples and make your own drum loops, most people probably start their search for good loops with a walk through sample city - loop CDs - in the hope of finding something ready-to-go off-the-peg. If the question of originality bothers you, worry not because you can still customise commercial loops to add your own musical stamp to them.

But there are two potential problems with off-the-shelf loops. While many sample CDs offer a range of loops created from the same sounds - thus ensuring cohesion - the patterns may not cater for all the variations you require. You may have discovered a fantastic groove, ideal for the chorus, but is there a slightly lighter version for the verse, Are there suitable intro, middle eight and ending loops and do any of them contain that magic sprinkling of percussion runs around the kit for the drum fills?

In most cases the answer will be No. And even if there is a selection, you'll either have to be very lucky or very easily pleased to find so many patterns which slot perfectly into your song.

The second problem is that the groove may be superb but one or two of the drum sounds are not ideal. If only you could change them.

Well, you can with the aid of software known as beat slicers. These divide a loop into its individual hits and allow you to perform such miracles on them as was never before imagined prior to the development of digital editing.

The drummer and the song... Most songs are divided into sections such as intro, verse, chorus, middle eight and outro. You will probably want slightly different drum patterns for each section (although the outro could be an extension of the chorus, for example). In addition, there's usually a drum fill between sections to 'lead' the transition into the next section, and there may be a smaller fill every eight or maybe four bars. This is mainly to break up the pattern and add interest. The small fills can be as simple as adding one extra hit to the main pattern. In addition to that, you might also want to vary the verse or chorus patterns as you move through the song so the verse 2 pattern, for example, may be a little bit busier than the verse 1 pattern and so on. Also, remember that drum patterns do not have to be one bar long. Many are two bars long and some are four bars long. All this adds interest to the drum part so, when working out how many different drum patterns your song requires, you may find you need more than you first thought. You can use a sequencer or audio editor to create the patterns but you may find the process easier with a beat slicer.

Slice and dice

The first beat slicer was probably Steinberg's ReCycle, developed by Propellerhead. Other programs you should look at include Button Productions' Zero-X BeatCreator and Native Instruments' Intakt.

Using ReCycle as our example, the program looks for peaks in the audio waveform and positions markers at those points. As software is not yet intelligent enough to be able to extract individual drum sounds from an audio file, the program is simply marking 'hit' points rather than individual drum sounds but this, as they say, is near enough for jazz.

You can change the sensitivity of the peak selection, add and remove markers manually (for those quiet hits the program will inevitably miss) and you can lock markers into position to make sure specific hit points are not removed.

Once a loop has been sliced into its component hits, they can be moved, edited and processed in all manner of ways.

One of BeatCreator's most interesting and addictive features is the ability to rearrange the slices - and the most oft-used button in this section is undoubtedly the one marked Random. It's amazing how many musical and downright groovy grooves can be created simply by shuffling around the existing hits in a drum pattern. Not all hit the mark - sorry! - but it would be surprising if you didn't discover a least a couple of good alternative loops with this method.

You can also move slices manually, taking the element of serendipity out of the hands of the muse, and there are options to mute slices and replace them so you have a lot of control over the loop creation process.

BeatCreator has several other excellent features such as the PCP (Pattern Controlled Processor) which lets you apply a range of filter, EQ, overdrive and reverb effects to the slices. The Slice Processor processes each slice individually, applying various filter controls to them, and it has the all-important Random button, too.

In esreveR

Virtually all beat slicers have a reverse function and you'll find this in most audio editors, too. You can use it create the infamous reverse cymbal effect, but in a slicer it can be applied to individual slices within a loop which can create many highly distinctive patterns.

While you can slice up loops in a sequencer or audio editor and do your own processing and manipulations, slicing software makes the process much easier.

If you have a busy chorus pattern, you can create less-busy patterns for the verse by muting some of the slices. If the busy pattern has, say, two hits on the third quarter beat, you could mute one or remove them both and substitute a slice containing a single hit. In this way you can create alternative patterns from a couple of loops and maintain cohesion between all the drum sounds. Of course, you can still be off-the-wall and throw in an oddball drum sound every now and again if you wish, to add interest to the pattern.

<< Previous    1  [2]  3    Next >>