Shuffle

[mini_molko]

Anyone know the best way of achieving that shuffle effect when making breaks? My breaks just sound empty at the moment.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, listen to Block Control or Cubic by Prode... They've both got this really nice shuffle in the breaks that carry the rhythm along really nicely.

 

[filtersweeperVC]

my suggestion would be to have your main kick and snare, and then begin layering different snares at different velocities and different pitches. The different velocities makes it sound like the drum stick is bouncing off the snare, so like a realistic touch to it. Also add a % of swing to your beats so that it doesn't sound like a robot played it. This gives it the "human" played sound. On the MPC I put 53% swing on all my drums, but when I'm quantizing stuff on cubase then it's something like 12% or something. Also adding "high passed" crash/smash and ride cymbals behind the drums give it that "amen" type sound. This also "speeds" things up a bit, and can give you a fuller sound. It's all about trial and error, keep adding snares in different spots of course until it sounds "shuffly" . I don't know if that helps....

 

[mini_molko]

Cheers! I'll give that a try... How exactly do you put swing on instruments in Cubase?

 

[filtersweeperVC]

Cheers! I'll give that a try... How exactly do you put swing on instruments in Cubase?

Not sure, but check youtube. There's usually a demo on anything.

 

[Ketz]

ez mate, yeah defo keep practising, everyone has subtly different ways of makni their own beats, but obviously once u got ur main kick and snare pattern, decide where u want ur main shuffle, u can try some low pitched hihats (and use 2 keys one high one low only need to be one key apart really eg C2 and C2 sharp will do) like filtersweep said put some hjighpass on em and adjust the filter cut off to taste (to acheive that "shiny" sound on the hats) sync the lower key hihat to ur kick always helps and keep on adding layers to accentuate that shuffle, make sure ur individual one shots are nice n short (adjust your ASDR) as DnB is fast, if you dont it can sound a bit messy lol

anyways my 2 cents worth, hope it was of some help!

 

[logikz]

yeah just keep trucking basically is all it is
if youve got a good alias free sampler, resample everything at c3 and pitch it up in the sampler, its cool mang

 

[Greg P]

This Sub focus video is really good, he talks about how he makes bass, then drums then lead pattens - he uses loads and loads of layers in his drum loops, including lots of ghost hits to creat the "shuffle"

http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=26003931

EDIT: for some reason it doesn't work for me from here, but the vid is embedded on his myspace page too http://www.myspace.com/subfocus

 

[sam the dnb man]

find out for yourself..maybe u will invent a new shuffle..call it the truffle shuffle or whatever