grooving mnml...
-
chucklechops
- mnml newbie
- Posts: 65
- Joined: Wed Jul 25, 2007 9:59 pm
-
thomasjaldemark
- mnml maxi
- Posts: 2675
- Joined: Mon Mar 07, 2005 1:29 pm
- Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
- Contact:
with what tracker and how? i really don't think i'll go back to using a tracker, but the idea is still interesting...thomasjaldemark wrote:you can nowhydrogen wrote:Thats what I always hated about using a tracker back in the day... i could never build shuffled grooves with it...steevio wrote:hard quantising to 16th notes is not an option, unless you want people to dance like robots.
------------------------------------------------------
http://soundcloud.com/kirkwoodwest
http://soundcloud.com/kirkwoodwest
absolutely, infact almost every aspect of every sound has to be right for a groove to work, its why i said just experiment, i think its wrong to say this or that is how to make a good groove, if the velocity of one tiny sound in the groove is wrong or a note a millisecond too long or late, or an envelope slightly the wrong shape, it can completely ruin a groove.chucklechops wrote:Don't think anyone's mentioned playing with the duration of your hits. I think this can be as important as timing in trying to get a groove going.
thats why it's actually very difficult to get a fresh interesting groove happening and why not everybody can do it.
One approach I like to build a solid groove is to not reinvent the wheel for the basic groove. Use a strong but standard element as the backbone, in techno for example this can be boom tss clap tss boom tss clap tss . slight shifting of elements can be ok, but can be dangerous as well. I love to shift the claps around by a 16th note, for example. But basically, the backbone has to be as simple as possible. You move the bassdrum one 8th note for example, and you have ea breakbeat backbone.
Now tweak the parameters on the hits in your basic groove to give it some personality. For example, change the sound of the first hihat, so it goes
booom tshhi clap tsss boom tss clap tss
Vary the sound of the claps as well, maybe by layering a weird reverb on top of the last one every four bars. The key here is spacing, make the sound variation either subtle, like a vocal line or someone speaking, or add stronger accents but keep them sparse, for example once every 4 bars, once every 2 bars, so the listener doesn't "remember" them as part of the groove, but is looking forward to hearing them.
Then, start adding elements that will support the groove, that means you can remove them, and the groove will still be there. I love using reverse sounds going into the claps, or maybe putting ghost hits on hats and snares. These supporting elements you can movein and out to make the tension grow for example. So you could have for example 8 different patterns of supportive reverse wiiishh sounds. However, the groove will stay the same.
Also, you can add additional eleemnts, for example a hat on every 16th note. That's still a pattern that supports the groove.
Now comes the interesting part. Make parts that "communicate" with the groove, that go against it, that rub it the right way. An easy way to do that is to layer simple polyrythms on top, for example 3 against 2. You can think of the bassline as one of those patterns too. Go mad here. However, it's not a part of the groove as such, it's an additional groove on its own. So you can let it run alone, it sounds great, and then kick the main groove back in. Latin clave patterns are great for that kind of stuff, weird synth experiments too. The reason why you're so much more free is that the main groove (that will determine if the song is techno or minimal or house or whatever) is independent from what you add here.
Finally, what I call the incidentals, which happen to be a very important part of minimal producing these days, I think, is the incidentals. Weird accents with weird sounds, weird rythmic shifted layers, but that won't necessarily repeat or position themselves with regard to the groove. go even weirder here, play with effects, automation. That's a part I really have to explore yet, so can't say much about it, except that LFOs and cut-up samples are very cool cause they allow you to go a bit loose with regard to the tempo.
Now tweak the parameters on the hits in your basic groove to give it some personality. For example, change the sound of the first hihat, so it goes
booom tshhi clap tsss boom tss clap tss
Vary the sound of the claps as well, maybe by layering a weird reverb on top of the last one every four bars. The key here is spacing, make the sound variation either subtle, like a vocal line or someone speaking, or add stronger accents but keep them sparse, for example once every 4 bars, once every 2 bars, so the listener doesn't "remember" them as part of the groove, but is looking forward to hearing them.
Then, start adding elements that will support the groove, that means you can remove them, and the groove will still be there. I love using reverse sounds going into the claps, or maybe putting ghost hits on hats and snares. These supporting elements you can movein and out to make the tension grow for example. So you could have for example 8 different patterns of supportive reverse wiiishh sounds. However, the groove will stay the same.
Also, you can add additional eleemnts, for example a hat on every 16th note. That's still a pattern that supports the groove.
Now comes the interesting part. Make parts that "communicate" with the groove, that go against it, that rub it the right way. An easy way to do that is to layer simple polyrythms on top, for example 3 against 2. You can think of the bassline as one of those patterns too. Go mad here. However, it's not a part of the groove as such, it's an additional groove on its own. So you can let it run alone, it sounds great, and then kick the main groove back in. Latin clave patterns are great for that kind of stuff, weird synth experiments too. The reason why you're so much more free is that the main groove (that will determine if the song is techno or minimal or house or whatever) is independent from what you add here.
Finally, what I call the incidentals, which happen to be a very important part of minimal producing these days, I think, is the incidentals. Weird accents with weird sounds, weird rythmic shifted layers, but that won't necessarily repeat or position themselves with regard to the groove. go even weirder here, play with effects, automation. That's a part I really have to explore yet, so can't say much about it, except that LFOs and cut-up samples are very cool cause they allow you to go a bit loose with regard to the tempo.
i agree.habitueE wrote:i find these topics a bit.. dunno, feels like everything is getting overanalysed, takes away a bit of the romance and mystery of it all tbh.. just make a fucking beat, if its cool, its cool, if its not, try again
when i'm making beats - the word 'quantise' isn't considered.
i generally have my snap-to grid set to 192 (as free as it gets in logic). I will say, since I've got into gating / step-sequenced gating and sidechaining I've done a lot less staring at grids and coloured blocks and everything has started to groove a lot more. Just the way I had always planned it to sound. Much more organic, fun and effective.