A Guide to Breakcore Production

Lesson 3 - Getting Started on the Break

2007-09-14T09:27:00.000-07:00

So, here we are, ready to get started on that crazy breakbeat. The break is going to provide the driving force and energy behind the song, and is perhaps the single most important part of a Breakcore track. The techniques we're going to be using to create it hark back to the days of hardware samplers, such as the Akai MPC2000. In the early days of Jungle and DnB, these provided a way to cut up and rearrange samples of beats from records, and it was a lengthy and time consuming process. Fortunately, nowadays a break can be created in a relatively short time using your DAW. In this lesson, and all the subsequent lessons, I'll be using Ableton Live, but the methods used are applicable to just about any DAW you might have. Where possible, I'll briefly discuss the differences in how each DAW achieves a given technique.

Step 1 - Selecting the Break.

A break beat is essentially a small snippet of a song, usually a drum solo that can be sampled out, rearranged, sped up, mashed up with FX or have just about any process you can dream of applied to it. Many of the more famous Breaks are sampled from old soul and funk records; James Brown records are a particularly popular source of Breaks, although anywhere you can get a snippet of a funky drum solo should suit you fine. The most famous and most used Break comes from a relatively obscure B-side by The Winstons, from the song Amen Brother. It is commonly reffered to as 'The Amen Break'. This is the break I'm going to be using in this example, and I would reccomend any budding Breakcore producer familiarise themselves with it, it is the bread and butter of many Breakcore artists. This break can be downloaded from many sample sites, though a good place to start would be www.junglebreaks.co.uk This site has many Breaks as well as the name of the song it was taken from, and examples of songs it has been used in. I would also reccomend getting a copy of Amen Brother so as to hear it in context, it's a damn funky song and well worth a listen.

So now we have a Break, where to from here? The first thing you'll want to do is get a good loop going. You will notice that the first and last bars of the Amen Break still have some of the orchestration in them, so we probably want to avoid those. To get a nice tight loop, you want to start on the first beat of the second bar (the kick drum) and end nicely just before the third bar kicks in. This takes a bit of practice, and is all about using your ears to determine when it is looping smoothly. In Ableton, this is usually quite easy, given its automatic tempo definition and looping abilities. This is reffered to as 'Warping'. In Cubase, the 'Time Stretch' feature will help you to tighten up your loop and adjust your tempo. Sticking with Ableton for the minute, you may have to adjust your warp markers a little to ensure the loop starts and ends in the right places, as shown in the screenshot. There are plenty of good guides on the internet about how to use warp markers, so unless I get a lot of requests, I'm not going to get into that too deeply here. Suffice to say that a lot of breaks will loop with 95% accurracy from the off with Ableton. Now we have our Break looping nicely, it's time to start having some fun with it.

Step 2 - Isolating the Hits.

Before we start mangling our beats crazy style, it's a good idea to separate out the parts of the loop onto different tracks, so that they can be processed independantly. For the Amen Break, I'm going to split my loop across three tracks, one for the kick drum, one for the snare drum, and one for the hi-hats and cymbals. This will allow me to give them a bit more character and definition later in the mix, for example, I might want to put a little distortion on the kick drum to fatten it up a bit. By selecting the hits so they go yellow, I can drag them around onto different tracks cut and paste style. This is a nice quick way to do it, and one of the reasons I prefer Ableton for quickly editing a beat. Users of other DAW's may need to go for the more traditional approach of selecting a beat, then cutting and pasting it across other tracks. As a simple rule of thumb, kick drums tend to look medium height in the waveform, and quite thick, while snare drums have a very high bit at the start of the wave which tails off in a long triangle. Hi-hats look like smaller versions of the snare drum, and are often grouped in small, busy sections. I'm going to seperate out these three main types of beats before I go further into processing them. Once we've got the parts spread across our tracks we can start to have some fun.

Step 3 - Rearranging the Break.

Now comes the really good bit, taking that beat and creating our own, unique, crazy break with it. And better still, this is really, really easy. All were going to do is change the order of the beats across our track. Start by copying your loop to make four bars. Now cut out a couple of those hi-hats and copy and paste the snare to fill in the gaps you've left. Starting to hear it? Try the same with the kick drum so that it has two kicks at the start of the bar. Sounds pretty good doesn't it. You'll want to have some fun experimenting here, so copy and paste parts all over the place to make that toe-tapping Breakbeat come alive. A useful tip to remember is that in DnB, the kick is on the first beat, and the snares are one the 2nd and 4th beat. If you keep to roughly that structure, you're already winning.

Lesson 2 - Selecting a Multi-Tracker, or 'DAW'

2007-09-12T11:14:00.000-07:00

The DAW, (Digital Audio Workstation) is basically a piece of software that allows you to compose and arrange audio, a kind of virtual studio on your PC. Modern DAW's are incredibly flexible, and often come with a host of built in effects and editing tools. The most popular DAW's for Windows are Cubase, Ableton Live, Reason and Pro-Tools. These all cost money, but there are free versions out there such as Audacity. Each DAW has its' own merits and drawbacks, and the prices are varied. For Macs, Logic is the DAW of choice.

For the purposes of this blog I will mainly be using a combination of Ableton and Reason, a combination that proves popular with many dance music producers. However, if you choose a different DAW, all of the techniques discussed here will still be applicable, you might just have to click a different icon or go about things a slightly different way. Here's my rundown on the basic features of these DAW's.

Cubase: One of the oldest and most established DAW's, this is now on version 4. Cubase is made by Steinberg, who have been at the cutting edge of computer music since the 1980's. Its' main features are audio editing and arrangement, MIDI capabilities (MIDI is a language that allows instrument and computers to interact, as well as providing graphical editors for writing and arranging music) and a host of built in effects and software instruments, including synths and drum machines. Cubase is an all in one DAW, meaning that it can be used in all stages of making a track, composition, editing, arranging and mixing can all be done in Cubase without the need for any extra software.

Ableton Live: A relative newcomer to the market, Ableton is aimed more at Dance music production than other styles of music. Again, it comes with audio/MIDI editing capabilities and a host of built in instruments and effects. One of Ableton's main strengths is that audio that is imported is automatically tempo detected and adjusted to the tempo that you are working at. This is fantastically usefull for anyone that plans to use samples, or mash-up existing songs. Ableton also comes with a unique 'Live' window, that allows you to layout a bunch of clips and then 'launch' them individually or together. A little confusing to explain that one, but suffice to say it is great for live performance and on the fly remixes, and remains the feature that separates Ableton from other DAWs.

Pro-Tools: Another grand old beast, this is aimed more squarely at producing more traditional styles of music such as rock and blues, and more closely matches the environment of a traditional studio. Not commonly used for Dance music, this one is best avoided unless you are planning to produce a variety of styles and need to record lots of live instruments. Also very pricey owing to the fact that dedicated hardware is needed to run it.

Audacity: A great free option that has all of the tools needed to produce music, audio editing, MIDI capabilities and bundled FX and instruments. Although it lacks the features of the paid for DAW's, it is definately worth considering for the casual or beginner user.

Logic: The only Mac exclusive on this list, this has all the features of the other DAW's (excepting Ableton's 'Live' window) as well as in depth tools for creating MIDI instruments and FX. As a windows user there's very little else I can say about this one, but if you use a Mac, it's definitely one to check out.

Reason: Not strictly a DAW in the truest sense, this is a collection of instruments and FX that run in one program, with a window to layout and arrange these tracks. It supports MIDI input and can be run standalone or in 'ReWire' mode. ReWire mode basically means that the program can run alongside other DAW's enabling you to record Reason's instruments through other programmes. The biggest drawback of Reason is that is does not support audio importing or recording, which basically means that you have to have another piece of software if you want to include samples or 'real' instruments.

Lesson 1 - The Equipment

2007-09-12T10:38:00.000-07:00

First of all we're going to need a computer. As you're probably reading this on a computer, it's safe to assume you already have one, or at least access to one. Almost any modern computer can handle music production, albeit with varying levels of success. A minimum spec requirement would be a processor of 1.5 ghz, at least 1 GB of RAM and a 50 GB hard drive. The higher your specs, the more virtual tracks, FX and software synthesisers you will be able to run at once. For this reason, PC's and laptops aimed at the gaming market are ideal, as they tend to be fairly 'pimped out' on the CPU and RAM side of things. One thing you wont need however is a fancy video card, pretty much anything goes here as this kind of software is fairly basic with its' visual needs.

The second thing we need is a soundcard. Pretty much every computer these days has one, but sadly they're not all created equal. You can make music with just about any sound card, but with the cheap ones installed as standard you'll soon run into problems. Firstly, they will only be able to handle playing a limited number of tracks at once, and secondly they will have very poor latency. Latency as it refers to computer music is basically the amount of time between say, pressing a key on a keyboard, or turning a virtual knob, and the note or effect being audible. For example, lets say we've plugged a USB keyboard into our computer and loaded up a software synthesiser. With good (low) latency the sound will ring out at almost the instant the key is pressed, so soon in fact that you'll hear it simultaneously. With bad (high) latency, the key is depressed and the sound may take a second or more to play. This makes playing an instrument virtually impossible. The latency will also affect the time it takes for a movement made with the mouse on say an effect knob or volume slider to register audibly. This can be frustrating at the writing stage, and completely unuseable at the performance stage.
To counter these problems were going to need a soundcard that supports the ASIO driver. This is a specially designed driver that runs with very little latency and supports high numbers of virtual tracks. These start at as little s £50, and run into the thousands depending on quality. For begginners, I would reccomend something cheap and cheerful, as long as it has ASIO you should be onto a winner. If you're using a laptop, you will probably need an external card that plugs in via USB or Firewire. These start at around £100. If you're planning on playing real intruments through the soundcard, you will also want one that has audio inputs. Pretty much any ASIO soundcard will have these, but again the quality varies with price. For guitars and mic's the best option is to go for something with a built in preamp. If you're just planning on using a keyboard, USB options are available that require no audio input, at a very reasonable price. For the purposes of these lessons however, I will show you that no external instruments are required at all, as everything can be 'programmed' in with the mouse. It is also worth noting that modern Macs use the ASIO driver as standard, so if you're a Mac user, you're alredy winning!

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly is the actual software were going to use. This is SO important I'm going to devote an entire post to it, coming up.

2007-09-12T10:15:00.000-07:00

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!