Ghost Snares/Shuffles

Phat_Sam

Phat_Sam

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OK... Been looking for a good description on these for quite a while now. I want to make a shuffle between the snares and kick. I've read thousands of things on how to put delay on your snares, how to change the velocity and countless things on ghost notes (and i still dont quite understand what they are) and reh reh reh... but I cant seem to get my head around it. I'm probably being really thick but I just cant get it clocked.

How do I create a shuffle thats Winston worthy with out cutting out the shuffle from a sample? My beats never have much groove because this is something I seem to be really terrible at making.

Im on FL studio seven.

Peace brothaaaaas! (and sisters)
 
best advice i could give you, is don't bother. work from breaks. take the snare and kick out and just use what's left. i know it's ghey, but it works and the best bit is people never realise you've plagerised someone elses break :cowbell:
 
nothing wrong with using pre programmed breaks as long as you're creative.

with hats and rides, it depends. i have a lot of decent samples already but if i just want a simple hat loop, then that's easy to do.
 
usually i have a main kick snare an hi hat, the rest i fill out with breaks, as he said take the kick an the snare use the rest, but dont have it empty where the kick n snare would be, just carry on the flow of the break with the hats in the break, if that makes sence.
Also shorten the decay of the break loops to get that tappy feel inbetween notes.
 
Phat_Sam said:
(and i still dont quite understand what they are)
Click to expand...

ghost strokes are drumhits with a lower volume than the normal hits. and that's it. not more, not less (y)
shuffle is a particular rhythm especially used in blues and jazz. BUT that's not the hsuffle that dnb producers are talking about. here it's (mostly) alternating between the ghost strokes and hats.

in this typical DnB pattern H =hats, g=ghost's,...
the H-g-H-g thing is the shuffle:


H---H---H---H---H---H---H---H---
---------------g---g------------g-
---------S---------------S--------
K---K----------------K------------


Try programming this pattern and makin it flow. vary the volume, cut off, etc. of the ghosts to make the whole thing roll.

probably i got your question wrong and that information isn't very useful for you or i myself understand the whole shuffle thing wrong, but at least i tried to help :teeth:
 
Its amazing what you can do when you set grid snapping off in your favorite sequencer for ghost hits and align it 'by ear'. Have the snare and kick on time but play with the rest, have it trigger just before time, just after time, or anytime for that matter. Brings incredible mpc-like live feel to it.

Also when slicing breaks, cut it down to size so it's exactly 1/2/4 bar(s) long, because fruity slicer has the option to cut it every 1, 2 or 4 beats. That'll keep you the groove that the break has. Dont bother cutting it to bits, you'll loose the funk.

When you've found a break youre moderately happy with, but it has a rumble for example that becomes real evident when you play it in slices: Make 3 versions of it and put them all on separate fx channels. fx 1 & slicer 1 would be the kicks. All different kinds of kick sounds that you have. Remove everything else from the piano roll of that said slicer. 2nd slicer and fx for snares, do the same here. 3rd for hihats. Ghost hits you can do your own fx, but usually they can be put with either the snares or hihats. Now you have 3 or more fx channels and you can process them separately, for example if theres a rumble that can be heard of the HH but you like how it sounds on the kick, you can get rid of it in the hh channel and leave the kick rumble in.

Exporting the result as a wav file, opening in recycle and exporting as a soundfont will tidy things up a bit but is not necessary.
 
How do you construct your beat as a whole?
Eg: program it all up from one shot samples and a sampler/piano roll...........or program some and use some sampled breaks?
And if using breaks whats cool? I feel like a thief if I chuck a whole break loop under my kick/snare/hats, but at the moment that's the only way I can get anything that sounds like 'real' dnb. (like the shuffle we talking about in this thread)
If I write my own shuffle/ghosts/syncopation (using Battery) it sounds amateur as.
Just wondering where the line is between layering sampled loops and just ripping off someone elses loop.
 
I would'nt normally use someone elses whole loop... not straight off the bat anyway.

For my beats I normally process my kick and snare, do a couple of hat and precussion layers and then fill it out with breaks...

I find the best thing to do is find a break you like and then edit it from there, it will normally need a bit of eq to sit well with your other elements.
It depends on the actual break to what I do with it, a lot of the time if you just drop a whole break into your other beats you will find some bits conflict either in frequency or there general positioning. So its sometimes good to chop the breaks up, take the bits you need and take out anything that doesn't sit well... you have to be careful with this though as you can sometimes loose the original feel and energy of the break if you cut it up too much or in the wrong places.
 
I'm stuck on this aswell... I'm trying to steer away from layering breaks over my drumloops though, and I've tried putting in single hit snares on the offbeats to give it that shuffle, but it just sounds really mechanical and doesn't seem to give it that natural flow. Spor's 'The Eyes Have It' has a really nice shuffle to it, which I'm pretty sure isn't achieved with layered breaks... Anyone know the technique he used for that song?
 
somaru said:
ghost strokes are drumhits with a lower volume than the normal hits. and that's it. not more, not less (y)
shuffle is a particular rhythm especially used in blues and jazz. BUT that's not the hsuffle that dnb producers are talking about. here it's (mostly) alternating between the ghost strokes and hats.

in this typical DnB pattern H =hats, g=ghost's,...
the H-g-H-g thing is the shuffle:


H---H---H---H---H---H---H---H---
---------------g---g------------g-
---------S---------------S--------
K---K----------------K------------


Try programming this pattern and makin it flow. vary the volume, cut off, etc. of the ghosts to make the whole thing roll.

probably i got your question wrong and that information isn't very useful for you or i myself understand the whole shuffle thing wrong, but at least i tried to help :teeth:
Click to expand...

Some good info here. couldn't get more straight to the point on that reply. even drew it out!

cheers
 
I've read somewhere that you need to take your main snare drum and Pitch it up or down, How much I have no idea, then mess with the ADSR. Basically you want have a slow attack with a short decay and release, by how much I have no idea. Also, possibly start the sample late. If their is 12000 samples that make up the snare drum then maybe start the "ghost Snares" at 8000... I've messed around with the EXS24 in logic8 and got only crap!

The thing is..... These ghost notes that I think most people are referring to are in fact NOT ghost notes. They don't even sound like a REAL ghost notes. I've searched High and Low for the answers to the real question being asked. I actually found some of the answer on another forum and I can't remember witch one, however, on that forum someone had uploaded an example of what "these sounds" sounded like really slow. I will attach the sound example so you can load it into your favorite DAW, set the tempo at 170 then Isolate the first 4 bars and loop. Then you can really see where "these sounds are placed!"

The Author of this little snippet said that all the beats used were from the main snare.....

Please post any findings! :wave:
 

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rob909e said:
I've read somewhere that you need to take your main snare drum and Pitch it up or down, How much I have no idea, then mess with the ADSR. Basically you want have a slow attack with a short decay and release, by how much I have no idea. Also, possibly start the sample late. If their is 12000 samples that make up the snare drum then maybe start the "ghost Snares" at 8000... I've messed around with the EXS24 in logic8 and got only crap!
Click to expand...

try to imagine a real drummer and how he plays a ghost stroke.
usually he won't hit the middle of the snare drum, because there it is much harder to play a stroke with low volume than if you hit near the rim.
if you hit there the sound is compared to a hit in the middle of the drumhead:
- more quiet
- higher
- will have less "noise" because the snares won't start to swing

and there you see why you normally
- lower the volume
- pitch up
- set the filter cutoff a bit down

however just use a sound that fits (sounds pretty easy if i say it like that, hmm?).
mess around with envelopes, pitch, etc. and don't think that you have to use snare drums as basis for your ghost strokes! sometimes for example it flows much more if the ghosts sound more like hats than snares. or like something totally different. even noises that really just don't sound like drum hits if you hear them alone can fit perfectly.

aah and sometimes it's the best to make them really quiet. you won't really hear them anymore as single hits but you will feel how the groove improves
 
Yeah I'm hearing that. I think when I listen to some of the first tracks I made I have everything coming through clear, like I was thinking 'I'm spending all this time getting this sound and pattern down right, so I want to hear it clearly.' And it sounds like a robot playing drums or some rubbish.
One tutorial I saw was good, they had these layers that you couldn't really hear but it just fills out the sound and gets the shuffle feeling. That's what I try and do now anyway.
I agree about the snares not having to sound like snares off the beat. Some of the good sounding grooves I hear, I'm thinking 'what is that sound in there'.
Nice thread anyhow.
 
somaru said:
try to imagine a real drummer and how he plays a ghost stroke.
usually he won't hit the middle of the snare drum, because there it is much harder to play a stroke with low volume than if you hit near the rim.


aah and sometimes it's the best to make them really quiet. you won't really hear them anymore as single hits but you will feel how the groove improves
Click to expand...

You are 100% correct about ghost notes. creating ghost notes is actually pretty easy, even for the beginner, me, lol. However,.....

I think you misunderstood what I was talking about..... No biggie.....

If you listen to the file I uploaded you can hear 4 different sounds that are NOT ghost notes. From everything I know about ghost notes, drumming, and even what Somaru say's the 4 sounds are not ghost notes..... atleast not the kind I've made..

(Load the mp3 in a audio editor and zoom in only on the 1st bar so you should only be looking at 8 transients)

Kick Snare ghost1 ghost2 ghost1 ghost2 Kick Snare

I know the "ghost sounds" are not quantized, probably on a swing and they don't sound anything like the snare or kick at a lower velocity. ghost1 almost sounds like a hi hat in reverse or something....


I'll attach a pic.
 

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as for the layering of drum kits and breaks.. i dont ever take out the kick or snare from a break. i just kill the low end, that way you still have some of the original kick sound from the break and it adds a little to your snare. thought id share that
 
DOnt necessarily use same snare.
Also if your on about the same problem I had the way i overcame it was to be brutal in changing the velocities of the ghost snares. Ghost snare almost as low in velocity as possible
 
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