The Amen break and Live

F

fistikuffs

New Member
Joined
May 11, 2009
Hi all,

Only found this forum recently and i have to say i love the vibe of the place top respect to all for making this place what it is.

Anyway, one thing i never tire of is crazy fucked up Amen brakes but i've only (sorta) learned how to do it recently. I open the wav in Live, slice it to 1/8 or 1/4 and then simply re-arrange the sliced midi clip to come up with a nice rolling break and then i further re-arrange a few copies of this for some variation. Finally i add the midi plugin "Random" with low settings and automate this on and off for further variations as needed. This seems to work well, going by the big cheesy grin i get listening back to it.

Just one question: it seems a bit easy. Am i cheating?

Also i haven't read up enough here but what's the take on the Amen around here? I'd imagine there's plenty people who'd be happy to never hear it again. I can't resist it, especially finely chopped with a sprinkle of grit!!!

Peace...
 
it all helps for learning bro, heres a rough timeline of how i've made my drums:

1 amen loop
-
loads of kicks, snares and percussion (too much and the samples were shit anyway)
-
2 or 3 breaks with loads of percussion and a few kicks and snares
-
2 break with 1 kick, 1 snare and a few layers of percussion
-
and i now currently (literally for about a week) create my own breaks with a fair bit of percussion and usually 2 kicks and 2/3 snares. i then save these breaks out and slice them up, i will then add a shit load more to get some really fat drums, this will leave me with too many layer.. so i then save out the percussion and slice it up again. eq'ing plays a major part too (y)
 
nuTEK said:
it all helps for learning bro, heres a rough timeline of how i've made my drums:

1 amen loop
-
loads of kicks, snares and percussion (too much and the samples were shit anyway)
-
2 or 3 breaks with loads of percussion and a few kicks and snares
-
2 break with 1 kick, 1 snare and a few layers of percussion
-
and i now currently (literally for about a week) create my own breaks with a fair bit of percussion and usually 2 kicks and 2/3 snares. i then save these breaks out and slice them up, i will then add a shit load more to get some really fat drums, this will leave me with too many layer.. so i then save out the percussion and slice it up again. eq'ing plays a major part too (y)
Click to expand...

Too true, i've tried dropping some breaks over an amen but i reckon it takes a fair bit of work to get more percussion layered on top . Everything i got was basically noise with a few decent bits here and there. The amen is so dynamic you'd need to be handy with an eq just to get it all to sit. I'll keep trying tho!
 
Yup, it's a progression. Nu-tek summed it up probably. When you feel like you're cheating is when you're probably ready to move on and learn to do a bit more from scratch.
 
subprime said:
Yup, it's a progression. Nu-tek summed it up probably. When you feel like you're cheating is when you're probably ready to move on and learn to do a bit more from scratch.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the help all. Looks like it's time to learn some new chops!
 
man, i'd love to create some drumfunk soon. that really helps you learn more about drums. it takes so much time to make but the outcome can be beautiful and sound really human.

lately though i have been using a load of one hits backed by a simple tighten up loop like:

kick = synth + kick + hat
snare = synth + full body snare + snapping snare
hats = really tightly shaped samples + processing
loop = chop bits out you dont want + processing + compression

then i'll route them all through a final channel that i add further compression to (2:1 or something low that sounds right) then make them sound like the are all in the same room with some stereo work
 
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