question re: old skool drum n bass production

i against i

i against i

Bluelighter
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anyone know how 20 years ago or now for that matter, they'd have produced a track like this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxxHfFxAPbA - specifically, the grinding snare. i guess 20 years ago they didn't have DAW's, was all that programmed into a drum machine bar by bar or was it added with a delay and nobs or something during recording? this is my fav dnb tune (walked around brighton one morning with it on repeat doing lines of speed waiting for my train..) and it's been annoying me how it was produced.
 
This is a pretty good question. Honestly, I have no idea. But that wasn't programmed on a drum machine. It was sampled from the amen break. I believe they just cut up the sample and sped up some parts.
 
in an old copy of mix mag i had from back around this time there was actually an article on how aphrodite builds a track in the studio. was pretty str8 forward. took a 12" of some random hip hop stuff, sampled stuff he liked and fed it into a sampler slicer prog, and built it up from around there. i used to have one called recycle that was popular and you could do rolling snares and crazy drum tricks like this track. to this day one of my fav tracks is come on my selecta by squarepusher. has those super fast glitched out drums. def ahead of its time.
 
StarOceanHouse said:
This is a pretty good question. Honestly, I have no idea. But that wasn't programmed on a drum machine. It was sampled from the amen break. I believe they just cut up the sample and sped up some parts.
Click to expand...

i don't think that is the amen break sampled, if it is there has been a load of eq on the parts and its just been split into it's separate parts, the snare is too snappy, the kick too hard for the amen. plus there is no characteristic "tic ah tic ah" or "chooooosh" from the amen. it's not hard to create drum tracks from each individual snare kick hihat from the amen break, on a computer.
 
Yeah, I see it now. Still, I'm almost certain it was sampled from somewhere and just cut up as shown in the link above. Most old school jungle tracks are sampled.
 
yea, it probably was. but the "vrooooom" of the fast repitition of it, and changing volume, isn't sampled. that's wizardry and what i want to know how to do. i haven't yet tried doing it in reason, i don't have any hardware and find software really annoying, and am new to electronic music production but have played bass in bands for yeaaaarrrsss.
 
that fast repetition can be done by copying the snare into 1/32 or 1/64. notes. and either move the notes closer together as time goes on or vice versa . depending if you want to go from slow to fast or fast to slow.

first: get a drum and bass sample on dr.rex and copy it onto a track. Then cut up the snare into smaller pieces like so ->

jif89d.jpg


See how I cut the snare into smaller bits? The snare will increase in speed as time goes on. If you do the opposite (small to large) you get some cool effects as well.
 
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its sample based, not sequenced. Prob done an AKAI or something. Its probably a MIDI sequenced sample or a recording of a sampler. Most of the stuff is just the sample being cut into 1/8,1/16,/1/32 sections ... like the Jet effect on Pioneers CDJs. Prodigy was making tracks around then FOTL came out in 97. So production was pretty advanced just really expensive. Most of the 80s gear was really great, just needed to toss some new ideas at it. I'm talking specifically about the drum track itself.
The whole production is multitrack of course.
 
Around that time, there were lots of Akai S series and Emu samplers being used...possibly sequenced with something like an Atari ST...The Zplane filters on the emu were extremely popular, and great for making those sick basslines...S series samplers were quick and easy to map drums on and slice drumbreaks... a combination of those two gave you plenty of output options, and i'm sure a whole bunch of tracks from that era came out of a combo similar to that....
 
I'd say that's definitely an amen. Choppy choppy. I'd guess cubase or some tracker program. Amazon ii (Aphrodite) kicks ass "music's hypnotizing" one of my faves
 
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