Swing/groove and making tracks less rigid

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bennytwohats
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Swing/groove and making tracks less rigid

Post by bennytwohats »

So i generally produce alot of 4/4 kinda stuff and getting groove in my tracks is one of those things i seem to struggle with. It also seems like one of the most important parts for techno flavoured music. So.....

Where to start!

There are the obvious 'turn quantise off', 'do what feels right' etc. While i'm not dismissing these i usually end up putting everything back on too the grid because things sound awkward off it. Maybe i'm doing too much, but often if not that, i can't really hear much difference and feel like i'm moving things for the sake of moving them - not because it sounds better.

I've found loops i like the sound of and tried to analyse hit placement etc. but often there are too many layers to pick out the sounds you want, and with stuff like shakers that don't always have fast attacks it can be hard.

I've seen people talk alot about groove templates? Seen alot of talk about renoise or mpc groove templates helping them - presumably this is something that could be replicated in midi files and such, does anybody have any? I'm using reaper if anyone knows if there is anything comparable i can do in that?

I suppose really like anything else it will basically come down to a case of do what feels right, no hard or fast rules etc. but it would be good to have some understanding of things on some kind of level so that i'm not merely moving things around for the sake of it and hoping something good comes of it.


One thing i have found is that there is obviously alot more to groove than just timing of the notes. Changing velocities and the envelops on the hits can really make alot of difference. I used to often throw bits in and go with the 'i'll sort that out in a bit' mindset, but after adding a few things it can get quite hard to get it all flowing together.

I think this can really make the difference between a track staying interesting or gettign stale and boring quickly so its something i want to get better at.

Any tips or advice or pointers to thigns to read etc. would be much appreciated.
swarlied
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Post by swarlied »

some practices which possible inspire you:

- could be that you know this one, but just to be beware of: the basic "shuffle" (dont know the exact musictheory-term) is just to delay every second 1/16 note a little bit. it works on almost every percussion. i personally prefer delay-values between 10 and 30 ms. on a 4/4-stepsequencer its like delaying 2 and 3:
original:
1--2--3--4--1--2--3--4
shuffled:
1---2-3---4-1---2-3---4

this structure just feels "solid" meaning you cant do something wrong with using this groove template. and it does not sound awkward ,-) anyway the deeper view of it is that its not a very common way of humanize, but you also open new holes for your transients. because you leave the rigid timins where other elements hit with their transients too which are not shuffled. you can adapt this on to any line you are programming. meaning you just look for the notes "2"and "4" in your lines and just groove them that way. no matter if the element is played permanently or just once every 32 bars. the groove ads nicely everywhere.

about the transient-concept its all about filling holes which are not used by other elements. this open possibilities for mixing too, because elements dont stress each other that much when no stacked on top of each other (especially drum-transients!), besides of panning, shuffle is the key to mix elements dry. and also this means that groove comes out of contrast. have some elements humanized together to elements which are played tight.

- other big part is offcourse micro-automation. while it can be a huge pain in the mouseclick-ass to programm velocity to decay-automations (for example) in my opinion its allways worth to do as much automation as possible. stars like extrawelt or minilogue have loops which are allways moving and never sound the same within each bar. just a little bit automation here and there and this brings me to the next point...

- leave the programming-mouse, setup controllers and make recordings with a lot of variations in your hands. you can use the mouse for post-editing of what you have recorded. i know we are all lazy but to setup a controller-spot for recording/automate drums/whatever is allways worth it. same goes for using your hardware-synth for drums and playing with the parameters while recording. good benefit because its amazing how long you can play a loop which is allways changing compared to a rigid one without getting boring.

maybe you know this all in advance but hey, allways looking forward to share something :-)
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Phase Ghost
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Post by Phase Ghost »

Honestly dude, I think you already know what to do. Adjusting a midi note off a little either way coupled with velocity adjustments is where it's at really.

This assumes you are talking about a steady 1/16 or 1/8 note pattern. Some programs have built in groove functions to take care of the offset for you.
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Post by ::BLM:: »

For me the groove is created by the what sounds I use. They for me define my groove rather then the placement of the notes.
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Post by Phurniture »

From my experience the use of different velocities for volume (and perhaps filter cut-off to a lesser extent) can take you far in terms of improving a stale groove. It seems that you are already aware of this.

Note length is another factor that I often play with, especially for hihats. Also, as you said, changing the envelope. I might program a hihat pattern where the hats on the off-beats (like your typical techno/house hihat beat) are the ones with the quick attack transient, while the other hats have a slower attack.

I think all in all it's important that whatever you do, you do it with intention, meaning don't program something randomly just for randomness' sake. It won't necessarily sound any better. You want to purposefully accent or de-emphasize a drum hit to create a certain groove.

Oh, one last quick tip. Something I almost always do now is to move the snare/clap that falls on the back-beat a few ticks ahead of the kick (if a kick falls on the same beat, such as on a 4-4 house groove). I think it adds a nice bit of funk to things.
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Post by pafufta816 »

i don't use a sequencer for my drum patterns, i plot them directly in the recording software. if i want swing or a more natural feel i place drum beats slightly before or after the beat.
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Post by gowans »

one thing that helped me out alot was messing about creating hip hop, broken beat and jungle. another thing ive noticed when i record a straight 4/4 2 bar loop from my MPC 60 into ableton for say 4-5mins then create a 4/4 in ableton and compare the two waveforms, if i analyse the ending of both tracks the MPC is completely out of wack with the other waveform so its continually shifting forward as the track goes on which is adding the swing. envelopes on hats is a good tip mentioned here.
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Camel
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Post by Camel »

This may or may not be very useful to you, but I found it quite inspiring. Burial claims he uses soundforge when arranging his tracks so he doesn't use a grid at all and manually places every drum sample as he sees fit. Doesn't necessarily have to be soundforge, most DAWs enable the grid to be turned off.

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/electron ... iques.html

If you listen to his music you can hear it has a cool unstable groove to it. Not very DJ friendly though, if you care about that stuff. :)
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