WELCOME ALL

The purpose of this blog is to provide step by step instructions on how to make your own Breakcore tracks. If you're unsure as to what Breakcore is, think crazy speeded up Drum n Bass breaks, intense Gabba kicks, insanely thick basslines and a host of cheesy pop culture samples, all thrown into a supersized blender and mashed up to the point of oblivion. Obviously that's not to everyones taste, but it's certainly to mine. The lessons here should also be applicable to various styles of music, with Drum n Bass and Gabba being the obvious ones, but they should also be usefull to those creating IDM, Techno, Glitch or any other form of 'edgy' dance music.

If you're curious and want to hear some Breakcore, check out some of these artists: DJ Shitmat, Ebola, Venetian Snares and DJ Scotch Egg. You may want to head over to www.wrongmusic.com to check out some of the free net EPs they put out on a regular basis.

So where to start? To get going you're going to need a computer (laptops are just fine), and a decent-ish soundcard (you can get going with any soundcard but one that supports ASIO, a sepecially designed driver for Windows is reccomended. More on this later.) The last thing you're going to need is some multi-tracking software. This is basically a computer equivalent of the mixing desks found in big studios. Even the largest proffessional studio now runs on software, and prices can range from anywhere between free and millions of pounds. For the purposes of simplicity, I'll refer to this software as a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), which is the industry standard term.

These lessons are going to start as simply as possible, and with little or no knowledge of formal musical training. My apologies to those who are familiar with musical terminology, but I hope this blog will be accessible to all. The complexity of the lessons will develop, and I will be rating them on a scale of 1-5, with 1 being the simplest to give you an idea of the difficulty of the lesson.

So that's the intro over with, let's start having some fun! The first lesson concerns choosing the right equipment, and after that we'll move on to creating the heart of a Breakcore track, the breakbeat.

Happy Breaking!