Amen chopping question

stigma

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Jul 12, 2012
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Motherland
Cheers guys! I was wondering how certain producers (DJ Future, Relapse for example) do these crazy amen phrases, like:
and
Are these done with vst plugins like Livecut and Glitch? Or maybe they are Ph.Ds in 'breakbeat science' and do these by hand?
 
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It's called choppage because of the focus on sequencing individual hits. I would guess for the most part it is hand done with sampler/effect automations and bussing certain hits through very short delay (on the order of a few milliseconds), filters, timestretch, reverb, and/or distortion. Maybe with the occasional resampling of a processed hit.
 
Chop up your break, make each sample unique, process individually, bus to single channel, process all at once, automate filters and effects, boomting! You've got yourself a proppa amen tearout an ting init!

A few things I like to do:
- Make a new copy of your break, send to its own channel and then bus that to the main breaks channel. Add HP and delay, only play like a single snare hit of it near the end of your 8 or 16 bars or wherever you feel like dubbing shit up a little, cut the other drums or low pass them back in.
- "Fake" delays by repeating a certain phrase from your break while applying more and more low pass (or high pass).
- "Fake" a reverse delay by doing the same thing, but opening the low pass (or high pass).
- Apply a little high pass with little to no knee and add a flanger for those warping beats (Again; use this occasionally and dynamically - in other words musically, don't flang the fuck out of your breaks through the whole tune, it's going to sound really crap.)
- Make a unique snare hit with a little delay and a big verb on it, chuck this in instead of the last snare before a breakdown or wherever it fits in to create massive atmosphere, experiment with a compressor after the verb to make the tail nice and long and audible, fade in some kind of atmospheric sound as it disappears and you've got yourself an interesting soundscape right there.
- Low pass your break, then layer another high passed break over it for interesting hats and rides and things.

Experiment, use plugins like stutter edit and things occasionally, in between the "manual" choppage and you'll sound a little more pro because it will be harder to make out what trick you've pulled on each edit.
 
Hi there, NicTVG alerted me to this post...Contrary to my username (signed up so long ago I'd forgotten I had an account here), this is relapse. Thought I'd pop in and offer what help I could.

It's been well over a year, maybe two, since I made Probability...And I'm just trying to work out how I did some of the sections. All of it is manual processing basically. I started off using Dblue Glitch years ago, and reverse engineering each effect, figuring out how best I could replicate it. From there, it's just practice practice practice. An important thing to remember, that I somehow forgot when making that tune (Probability...), is that all drums are in mono - there's FX like snare reverbs that hit in stereo and it's a bit off putting (maybe it's just me, but I find it massively noticeable and quite a mistake on my part).

Some tips...

Don't be afraid to experiment...Something that initially doesn't make sense (like chaining a kick drum to a delay) can have very interesting results.

Make sure your drums are in Mono!

Remember it's still 4/4 (for the most part) dance music. Make sure the edits fit the framework (My track Sharkfish sounds terrible because I went nuts and there's edits all over the shop)

If you're using FLstudio (which I am), get to know the Granulator (*Edit: Granulizer) plugin intimately...You can make some incredible stutter edits and fake delays with it, and although it's got a steep-ish learning curve it's well worth persevering with.

Get a decent arsenal of plugins you can trust. There are few things more important than a well constructed plugin...So things like Reverb, Delay, Flange, Pitch shift, Filter.

Use your imagination is certainly one of the most important - Putting a massive reverb on a snare and then delaying that reverb can sound incredible once you've tweaked it.

This is all I can think of for now, if there's any questions just ask, and I'll try my best to answer them.
 
AlbinoRhino said:
Join Date Mar 2004

Are you kidding me! You have an older account than I do. :lol:

AlbinoRhino said:
Make sure your drums are in Mono!

I would say mostly mono. I like hats and snares to breath a bit on the sides. Kicks are very noticeable if they are not almost precisely mono. (* only really matters for headphones)

AlbinoRhino said:
Remember it's still 4/4 (for the most part) dance music. Make sure the edits fit the framework (My track Sharkfish sounds terrible because I went nuts and there's edits all over the shop)

Great advice (although I really like Sharkfish).
 
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