Ableton Forum

Been trying to nail this sound http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJZLnhSZRyc
I wonder if anyone knows exactly how those drums can be made.. at times i think he programs it offbeat but then other times i think he does it freehand.. If anyone can shed some insight it would be very much delighted. And Happy New Year to everyone on the Ableton Forums

MasterWok54 wrote:Been trying to nail this sound http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJZLnhSZRyc
I wonder if anyone knows exactly how those drums can be made.. at times i think he programs it offbeat but then other times i think he does it freehand.. If anyone can shed some insight it would be very much delighted. And Happy New Year to everyone on the Ableton Forums

turn 'record sync' off when recording...then listen and move stuff around..
quite simple...but hard work non the less..

another way to do it is to use an algorithmic midi generating app..
this is an awesome way of getting consistent loops with odd timing..

my guess is that is a sampled drum loop that has been warped a bit

Another possibility is sampling drumbeats that are a different tempo, and sampling more than Just one hit, maybe 2. Then using those in a sampler

Should give you all sorts of, beyond your control FUnk

Thank you all for your replies. I shall try this out soon

Master. Thank you for opening up a gateway for me of some much neglected musical exploration haha. I checked his stuff out and it is really quite lovely! And fun!!

Also, now that I know a little bit more about his circumstances, I feel I have a slightly (but still nowhere near full) better understanding of how he gets that stuff together.

Being a turntablist, a lot of his cuts/elements are based off of the idea of slipping pieces of record audio in and out in rapid succession. (also interesting is that maybe he uses a live drummer on some tracks?? the reverb is insane for sure, as if he played the entire album out of a guitar amp in a garage while re-recording it. haha)

The best way i'd attempt to emulate this is, instead of using pieces of beats with SHARP attacks, grabbing the beat Before the beat even attacks, and throwing a few of those around.. so instead of "|>~ " as an attack it would be more " -|>~ ". As you will notice, there is a bit of space prior to the attack (if that ascii even makes sense!). Then you try to force it into a standard beat, but of course groove it out a tad. Probably use two instances of a sampler of some sort, and fade-cut between them. hahah.

groove pools and restrained use of randomization are a quick shortcut...

I would bet money he's using an MPC. Just chop up the sounds imperfectly as suggested earlier in the thread. No idea how to make those synths. I'm a big fan of H.M., his essential mix was off the hook! I was trying to replicate one of his synths on the virus earlier today... no luck though.

Most of his synths sound like FM stuff, like you would get from Operator.. I can't say for sure, but they have that vibe about them really bright!

his drums sound like a Linndrum... a la Prince...

in interviews he claims he does everything in FLStudio - have a feeling hes just not quantizing and he has really good taste to know when it works....

Check out Mike Slott too - there's quite a few guys doing that super lo fi unquantized freak out hip hop right now and those are 2 of the best...like anything else I think its easy to do it poorly - really hard to do it well. Also check out Nosaj Thing.

Ross doesn't fetishise the latest soft synths or Logic plug-ins. Instead he makes field recordings on his mobile phone or digital camera. "That's why a lot of the stuff sounds really rough, there's not much care taken in audio quality. I'm just trying to create sounds that aren't familiar to the ear."

(Pinched from a rather interesting Guardian interview http://www.guardian.co.uk/urbanundiscov ... on-mohawke)

Im not really sure how that offbeat groove is created, it sounds pretty random yet still very rhythmical and catchy. I think Flying Lotus' sound has that same broken beat quality to it.