Source Direct: Ninja Level Break Processing (Pt.2)

[@junk06]

The processing is such an important part yet I've never been able to find tutorials and videos talking about it. Thank you G for giving us the honestly incredibly informative tutorial!

[@groovining]

Thanks for the comment smjunk! The processing is sometimes the most important but its also very subjective. Everyone has their own workflows and methods so I thought it might be really helpful to highlight all the tools you have at your disposal ":)✌️🥷

[@mrmuyagi9907]

Your channel is an absolute gold mine. Thank you for taking the time to share this information

[@groovining]

Appreciate that mate! I love breaking down these artists and all there techniques also!✌️🥷

[@TheStephenHall]

Great vid! I liked it all but I thought the section on compression was particularly good. You really packed a lot of good info in there in a really informative yet concise manner

[@progressiveoverload7320]

I have been struggling with this mix I’m working on, and I went through and tried your suggestion of putting a highpass on my break layered with a separate kick. It helped so much with letting the bass come through in the mix. This is really great info

[@groovining]

Cheers mate, Yea that's a great technique I use all the time. Making space for things with filters is quite simple compared to using EQ but is often all you need to get a lot of clairty in the mix. 😊✌️

[@newtype-tv]

Dude, such a great video. This channel has helped my production so much since I found it, thanks as always.

[@groovining]

Thanks for all your comments mate! Stoked that i've been able to help you with production also. So much I want to do this channel over the next year or so. Lots more to come! ✌️🔥

[@bubaondesign]

Enorme, as usual! big ups! You are a master, my friend!

[@groovining]

Thanks THFLW. Hope your well brother! ✌️🥷

[@abdulhamid9605]

As always, great video, love watching them and always learn something new. Youre doing a great service for the community, thanks!

[@groovining]

Thanks friend! I learnt so much exploring all these great artists also. 😊✌️

[@RickRubinTheOtherOne]

Thank you for your tutorials!

[@GregDixson]

Solid stuff G. Really good to have so much of that info in one place. cheers

[@groovining]

Thanks for the comments Greg. I though it might be useful to give a nice overview of break processing rather than just jump into my specific workflow on this one. Going to go deeper on the next with lots more cool tricks! ✌️🥷

[@tragicwill]

All your videos are amazing

[@groovining]

Thanks so much Will! Been putting a lots into them over the last year or two! Heaps more cool stuff on the way. ✌️🥷

[@AudiovisuelleDroge]

I really enjoy your breakdown series! Looking forward to each new upload. :) (This one feels like such step up in production quality, lighting and everything. Thanks a lot for all the effort you are putting in.) One trick you didn't mention is putting a filter with highish resonance, automating it and tweaking its envelope. Try for example a K35 HP in Renoise on a kickdrum. The highpass will act like a volume envelope, so it will sound a lot tighter and the resonance will enhance or alter the fundamental without it sounding too unnatural. Any plans on a discord server btw?

[@groovining]

A discord server would be a cool idea! I'm super busy with everything at the moment but as the community grows it's definitly something I will set up :) Really appreciate your comment also, I'm really trying to expand this channel into something amazing and make a carrer out of it, so giving it my best shot! Regarding that filter trick, is the filter sweeping upwards so that the resonace drifts up? I've used a standard High-Pass filter without an envelope before to boost the fundemental of a kick, but its a cool idea to use it with a envelope to control the enitre signal. ✌️🥷

[@Heathen_Lew]

You’re doing gods work with this

[@groovining]

Thanks Heathen! They were such mad artists, was really fun to do a deep dive into all the techniques and workflows! ✌️

[@dfh658]

Great info!

[@RoofLight00]

Great video, we used to do a lot of this in hardware samplers. My choices were Akai S5000, EMU E4x turbo, Roland VP9000. With those we had much of what you’ve done in the DAW there covered. Unless you had software editors doing all of this through a small LED screen was time consuming. But fun. The downside of DAWs is they don’t sound anything like hardware.

[@groovining]

Yes I have an Emu E5000 Ultra and an Akai S1000 now! Love them both. I agree for sure, the hardware has something special. You can get close with plugins like decimort or RX950 but its never quite the same 😊✌️

[@deepzone31]

This is great. I learned some new Logic tricks! I use NI Transient Master for freeform EQ noodling on breaks.

[@groovining]

Nice, glad you enjoyed deepzone! Logic is dope although I couldnt care less about the new update. Yea for sure, NI Transient Master is great for controlling breaks. Very useful tool for how simple it is to use. ✌️😊

[@TheODCUK]

Gold mine of info! Thank you!

[@groovining]

Thanks Oliver, glad you've been enjoying this series! Just working on the next part on classic jungle pads atm ✌️🥷

[@focusdecorating3637]

Atari ST & Cubase 2.0 with MIDI and Akai Sampler they used my friend.

[@Gosha1992]

Thanks a lot!

[@groovining]

All good Gosha, glad you enjoyed the vid! :)

[@cclark8088]

great video senpai :)

[@carllewis6745]

Head and shoulders above the rest!

[@groovining]

Really appreciate that Carl! Excited for the rest of the series✌️🥷

[@Strafuzz]

Bro, you're now obliged to cover Hidden Agenda, Jonny L, Boymerang, Dom etc etc.! Great stuff.

[@groovining]

Hey Strafuzz! They would all be dope. Especially Dom & Roland would be an epic breakdown. I've added them all to my list for my Patreon's to vote for in the future! Cheers mate✌️🥷

[@ghal3on]

@@groovining JOnny L was truly next level. would love to see that

[@groovining]

Jonny L would be perfect! ✌️🥷

[@diyandochev1354]

This is great

[@groovining]

Cheers brother!

[@oferoner321]

🙏

[@ghal3on]

yes my guy!!! cant wait to dig into this one :) will report back

[@groovining]

Thanks Ghal3on. Yea absolutly, let me know if i've missed anything out! There are a few more technique I show in the next one also. Especially how to get those really knocky/whacky snares which punch through. Time to edit now :)✌️🥷

[@ghal3on]

@@groovining fantastic recap of techniques I must say. Glad to see you included the EMU tricks. Recently been digging into that myself! Gain, exciter, resampling all hugely important and very recognizable EMU flavour. No thard to see why a lot of guys would do sound design inside the EMU, then kick everything over to an akai to handle the playback

[@groovining]

@@ghal3on Thanks mate, I actually saw you got your hands on an Emu! Was it a standard 6400? I'd love to know if there is actually any real difference in sound from the EIV, 6400 to the ultra series. I love mine anyways. Exciter is amazing. Gain is super cool to play with. 1, 2db on breaks is actually not bad. Filters are fantastic also. Chorus also epic! I'm just in the process of getting a new custom rack off Etsy so I can have my EMU right next to me. I'm definitely still learning it beyond resampling but I'd love to do a vid in the future.✌🥷 Also just out of curiosity (and also GAS!) what are your thoughts on Akai S1000 vs S3200 vs S3200xl?

[@ghal3on]

@@groovining yup 6400 classic. actually got it awhile ago dirt cheap! Hauled it out to use it in the latest madlabz challenge (use your unsed gear) Wondering that myself. Theres audio from a few sampler shootouts around, but I think the difference are subtle enough that I'd want to play around with the machines myself in my own studio to tell a difference. Everyone says the older machines sound better! And that classics sound darker than the ultras. These things are DEEP and im just scratching the surface exploring the filters. Akai 3000 series def do not add much to the sound. what goes in is what comes out, which can actually be desirable! S1000, S1100, S950 def have thier own vibe, IMO it is not that subtle a difference between those models and the 3000's. The way the older ones handle timestretching, pitching up/down, and grit from sampling hot is much more desirable. For ease of use the 3000's win all day long

[@groovining]

@@ghal3on Nice man. They're actually all shooting up in price atm, seems like they're coming back into fashion. Especially the Akai s950 $$. I've got a little GAS to get an Akai not gonna lie but I love my Emu and Renoise so don't really need one as such! s1100 seems amazing but they're very hard to find. More s1000 around these days. I've heard about the older Emu machines sounding better but my E5000 still sounds great. I do agree is hard to ever do a real comparison without having two side by side. Filters are crazy, try jacking up the gain massively on the peak/morph filters and then map the cutoffs to mod-wheel. The pitching on the emu vs all in the box samplers is also very different. Whatever it's doing with the interpolation and coloring just sounds better to me. The best thing about getting stuck into hardware samplers was now I know what they sound like so I can more accurately get there in Decimort 2 etc.

[@Endle185]

If u cut to the grid, surly the ghost note bits will have clicks and pops as it’s cut in a weird place?

[@groovining]

This stuff is quite hard to explain in writing but i'll do my best :) Generally its best to program you kicks and snares dead on the grid. This is both for Dj's who will need to beat match your tracks with others but also for your own programming/layering. You can however offset the slice points of the shuffles so they play later and are swung. The idea here is that you can introduce note offset through moving the slice points rather than nudging the midi around. In this way you can still program your midi to the grid in an quantized fashion even though some of the hits are always going to play late. There are still problems that you often run into where the ends of hits will catch with the start of new ones. This can create wierd flams etc. The best thing to do here is to use the C0B command in Renoise. This basically cuts the end of the previous note off just before the next one hits. For the pops and clicks the can occur from not cutting at zero crossings, I very rarely experience this in Renoise and often don't snap my slices to zero crossings. You can always use a small 0.1/0.2ms attack to remove any clicks like this. I'm a big believer in programming dead quantized but I like having some natural feeling in my drums also. In my opinion, offestting the slice markers is the best way to go about this. The other method is to cut your break up into longer slices or 'phrases'. This is the Photek technique where he would cut at the kick, snare and shuffles. By programming slightly longer sections, the first hit is always quantized but the rest left natural.✌️🥷

[@Endle185]

@@groovining got you, thanks for the explanation. It’s all about playing with things till they work for u. I thing the phat fx is a bit under used. It’s a great plug in. I see u r starting to use it

[@groovining]

Yea exactly, all the techniques have pros and cons attached to them. You just have to figure out your own path through it all :) Yea I like Phat FXs but its got quite a dead UI compared to CamelPhat which makes me forget it! Logic X has loads of great native stuff in there. ✌️🥷

[@johncitizen8828]

This might seem like an obvious question, but why would you put a reverb on a sample/recording of a breakbeat which would already have the natural reverb in the sample itself?

[@groovining]

No its actually a great question! As were chopping the break up at different points, even though there is the natural room sound and decay in the hits, it often gets cut short by the next chop of the break were playing. The main reason I would use reverb here is to slightly camoflage these edit points where i'm chopping the break. To me, a sutble reverb with a low dry/wet mix and a short decay can add a bit of glue to the break and make it sound more cohesive and less choppy. The counter point to this is that is can also dull or damped down the break & smudge the transients to much. You can also alter the tone of the break with different reverbs - i.e plate reverb can make the break sound a bit more metalic.

[@johncitizen8828]

@@groovining sure - that totally makes sense, I often use reverb to soften abrupt ends on samples and sounds.

[@mranchovydrumbass]

Cool one G :-)

[@groovining]

Big Ups Mr Anchovy!✌️🥷

[@focusdecorating3637]

Not as good as you though Mr Anchovy !

[@hucky29]

Can you do a video on how Sully does his breaks in Renoise? Your content is dope.

[@groovining]

Yea for sure mate. I will definitly be doing some more breaks stuff coming up in the next few weeks 😊✌️

[@futureworldmachines4407]

👍