Hour Long Drum 'n' Bass/Metal epic + other electronica

sebovzeoueb · Post by **sebovzeoueb** » Fri Dec 29, 2006 3:21 am

Check it out on my myspace: http://www.myspace.com/s2belectronica . My new epic track along with 8 other tracks can be found in the Bio section of my myspace page. Please give me feedback!

sebovzeoueb · Post by **sebovzeoueb** » Fri Dec 29, 2006 6:32 pm

feedback?

Inner Loop · Post by **Inner Loop** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 6:43 pm

Interesting stuff man. I like the metal beat on Dagger. I sent you a friend invite on Myspace.

check out some of my latest vids if you want.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKicPytnxPA

sebovzeoueb · Post by **sebovzeoueb** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 9:33 pm

I have accepted you on myspace. Thanks for the feedback. I took a look at your video, very nice to see some live music! I like the beats.

sebovzeoueb · Post by **sebovzeoueb** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 11:53 pm

in a last attempt to get some feedback here is a quick bumping of my post before I let it sink into oblivion...
As mentioned above: there is a 1hr long Drum 'n' Bass epic up for download, plus 8 other electronica tunes with quite diverse influences including quite a big metal influence.
I play electric ukulele and fretless bass...

http://www.myspace.com/s2belectronica

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 1:35 am

u need less druqz or i need more.

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 1:39 am

oh spotted the dnb mix down the bottom.

i think u got good ideas in there but the beat is too intense. and a bit too dominant in the mix.

i noticed in your other stuff that the low end of your bass drums were pushing your top level compression into mushing the rest of the sound a bit.

some high pass filters or sub cuts wont go astray in cleanin ur mix a lil

sebovzeoueb · Post by **sebovzeoueb** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 2:10 am

Well, intense is the aim....
I have to say production is not my speciality but I'm working on it... I'm not new to music or computers, but I am fairly new to computer music, especially the production side of things.
thanks for the feedback.

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 2:56 am

sebovzeoueb wrote:Well, intense is the aim....
I have to say production is not my speciality but I'm working on it... I'm not new to music or computers, but I am fairly new to computer music, especially the production side of things.
thanks for the feedback.

the feeling of intensity can also be achieved by depriving someone of something and giving it to them at the right moments only.

compositeone · Post by **compositeone** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 1:34 pm

What bpm are you running at?

I liked some of the ideas of mixing up the 2 genres, but I just didn't like your beats. There didn't feel like any human element to them which I find important when listening to and making drum and bass. I guess they are all totally programmed rather than actual breaks? I just felt like I was listening to a constant hum of the beats rather than individual hits with a little space in between, which is why I asked what tempo you are runnning at.

On the production side the headphones I'm using at work right now are ok but I don't like to trust any mastering/engineering decisions to any set of headphones no matter how good, so I don't think it would be fair to feed back about that.

On the whole I think you are going in a decent direction, even though its not quite to my taste.

EDIT: Dropped you a friend request btw.

sebovzeoueb · Post by **sebovzeoueb** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 4:14 pm

191bpm, I know, quite an insane bpm. The drums are indeed all programmed, but I quite like the mechanical aspect, but I can understand that it may not be to your taste. What ways of creating human sounding beats would you recommend?
As for the headphones thing, all my stuff is mixed on headphones, so I don't know how good this sounds on speakers...
bpm-wise there is also a section in the middle which is 150bpm.

compositeone · Post by **compositeone** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 5:12 pm

Get hold of a load of old funk 7inches and sample the drum break. Then get the quantise using something like Recycle and when you open the midi file in live you will notice that the blocks are never bang on, they will be slightly off and this is the thing you want, the human element. No drummer no matter how good has digital timing.

You can then add you own kicks, snares hats etc and move them around a little (to make the exact beat you want) just make sure that you keep them off time by the fraction that they were so that you keep the shuffle in there.

Also you could use the thing in Live to get the shuffle (dam can't remember what its called, I'm at work at the moment). I have used values up to about 35 before.

You could just slow down the tempo a bit though, 191 is crazy.

I think its that really that gave me that "totally programmed beats" feeling.

sebovzeoueb · Post by **sebovzeoueb** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 5:18 pm

I presume you're talking about the Groove function. This only seems to have swing settings, no slightly random type settings, and swing will just end up with a triplet feel won't it?

compositeone · Post by **compositeone** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 7:42 pm

Yeah you are totally right. I just like putting some real subtle swing in I think it makes it sound a bit less mechanical maybe, that along with having everything else straight gives it a different feel. Altering the groove between loops gives you some variation again but IMO it has to be subtle, I don't think its something that you instantly hear but something that is added to the over feel maybe. I could be talking absolute shite right now though trying to explain why I do it.

This is just a feel that I like with my stuff its not going to be to everyones liking in their own music. I think now maybe I do it almost automatically which can't be a good thing. :/ A bit like me not liking headphones to make the tunes on cause for me the resluts I think I get on speakers sound better accross different systems than the results that I got on my headphones before I had speakers. I'm sure many people would think the opposite though.

Oh yeah I read my post back and 35 is way to high, I think my brain was hurting from the first week back at work. 10 - 15 is probably better. :s

What ever you do though with loop based music its gunna be hard as even with sampling a real drummer you are still using a loop so you still have the mechanical repeats of the same thing. I have done some editing of the loops before and just picked some basically random bits to move around very slightly but that was a pain in the arse, time consuming and no good really if you are using session view as you'll end up with a shed of clips that clutter everything up. :/

Like I said in the other post I think just slowing it down would make a bigger difference than any thing else I have ranted on about.

sebovzeoueb · Post by **sebovzeoueb** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 7:51 pm

Yeah, clips with slightly different Grooves playing together might be interesting, I'll have to give it a try. I'm considering getting something with finger pads for doing drum parts as well. That could be good for human feel.
Well, I'm going to request some random Groove in the feature wishlist.
I do all my drum parts on Impulse by the way, although there are 3 kits in my piece...