Journey of a drum & bass track: part 6
In this series Ben Kama takes us on the journey of a drum and bass track from start to finish. Throughout the process he will explain everything he does, the instruments and VSTs he uses, and share with us the various highs and lows of putting a piece of music together.
Follow the entire series here:
Last time I left the track with an interesting paradigm. I got some good vocals running and All that was left was to start thinking about the track structure and arrangement. Where I left off last time (2:13 long clip) wasn’t going to make for a 4-5 minute tune. I really had no special ideas about any fancy intro, amazing lead-ins or larger-than life build-ups, so I just aimed towards something that was easy for a DJ to mix with other tracks – a clear and simple intro and a 32-bar structure.
First 32 bars are the intro without bass, and a slight change and bringing in more elements at 17th bar. When the bass drops at the 33rd, I just switched off the vocals and lowpassed the melody synth. This will enable the DJ to keep mixing another tune and bring this up more slowly, while still keeping it interesting enough to listen to on it’s own because of the change-ups. At 65th bar the vocal comes in, still with the’ radio’ filter as I want to build the tune up slow. After 96th bar I felt like I could bring in the tune full swing. In the clip above the emptiness of the 33rd bar felt a little empty so I put a long delay on one of the vocal samples.
I reinforced the break in the tune a little with some rolls and 16th hits. Not just to make it bigger but to variate the rhythm a little every 8 or 4 bars.
The structure was indeed taking shape but I felt the tune needing a bit more flare and dash when I listened through it. At the “full swing” part from the 97th bar on the tune already started sounding dull. I started experimenting with the melody synth and came up with something good just by testing different chords to go with the flow. I have no deep understanding of music theory (chord relations are like rocket science to me), I have no idea on where to start looking when I want to build a melody, but just following the key of the track sometimes pays off with a little luck. I did change the riff just a little at a later stage, but the base remains the same.
I inserted the new melody at 2 places. 1st time it appears from the 33rd bar to 63rd and has a gradual, slow filter movement on it. Second time it appears at 97th when the tune is supposed to hit full speed. It instantly made the track much more vibrant and pop-like. The earlier 1-note melody still appears in the intro part. Another change was made to the shaker. It sounded good and brought the tune to life when it came in, but I wanted to make it move a little more, be able to change it for a tiny amount at each turning point in the track. I used Mobilohm VST (an expanded chorus/phaser/flanger plugin) and put some filter feedback on the track, coupled with automations to the bandpass and mix level with each change to the tune. I also created new automations to the bass lowpass filter to give something new to the tune at the 97th bar, and sliced another drum roll to make more interesting drum fills. Oh and finally tuned & turned down the bass fills.
All of the above was done pretty quickly, in the course of an hour or so. I was pretty happy with the structure and the changes so far and it was clearly time for a well earned 4:20 break. I noticed a few clear errors (wild level fluctuations, hits in wrong places etc.) but that I still wanted to keep moving forwards and fix the errors in the mixdown stage where I usually do some more audio editing.
I thought to use some kind of riser first and some more clips from the acapella. I started with the same free synth, TAL Elek7ro.I recorded the A note a few times, through different FX channels already in the project. Combined together, stretched to 200% and with some filtering they sound much more like a atonal sweep. Not really what I was looking for but kept it in nonetheless. One of the channels I resampled the sample through has a side-chain compression. so I just cut out 1 pulse and stretched it to 8 bars to make it blend in the background a little.
Above: The original synth sweeps with sidechaining -> both through different FX and timestretch -> cut out 1 bar of the final sound and gave a huge timestretch.
I also quickly chopped a few “ooh” and “ah yeah” phrases from the vocal track that I’ve been using. Many of them didn’t prove to be useful because the pitchshifter/male-a-nizer plugin couldn’t handle very complex stuff like backing vocal harmonies. While I played with those I got the idea of sampling the first few hits from the original Syleena Johnson song, and using those in some sort of a quick and short breakdown in the middle of the tune. That idea sounded good in my brain but as soon as I heard it in the tune it was straight to the bin with that. I wasn’t even going to try and fit it in.
That put me off but I still pushed on! The simplest thing that I came up with was to clone the padsynth and play with that. I eased the attack from the synth and made a little variation to the melody and passed it through a filter to fade it in. (The wobs at the end are a mistake, the high bass channel was left on by accident).
The riff is not very different to the original, but it still forced me to change the bass and the original pad synth too. As the bassline was in audio and not midi, it took some guesswork to get it right. Beats for the breakdown I borrowed from the intro, plus a few crash cymbals on layered top. To me the middle part or breakdown as most call it, shouldn’t be just a crippled or stripped down version of the main loop/theme. Using something that is new to the tune and only appears that once, can make it much more original and surprising. Here the bass does a big change from a 1 note bass into really supporting the rest of the track. I intend to try and use the changed bass for the rest of the tune as well. Making a bigger change at the breakdown can make the track much more interesting to listen to – in too many tunes where the first drop is just repeated again. This breakdown still needs some minor work but all the blocks are already in place.
Technical notes: I added a PSP Xenon (limiter) to the master track just to better compare it against other stuff in my mp3 player. It squeezes the track 2 or 3 dB’s louder. I will take it off at the mixdown stage. I also cut the reverb on the bass highs to half to give room for the vocal. Just before exporting the session result FL Studio lost the settings of the original padsynth and I had to recreate it from the one used in the breakdown.
More about Ben Kama
Follow the entire series here:
- Part 1: The pain of creation
- Part 2: The beat generation
- Part 3: Makeover
- Part 4: I am not a machine
- Part 5: Hook and line
- Part 6: Organized chaos
Last time I left the track with an interesting paradigm. I got some good vocals running and All that was left was to start thinking about the track structure and arrangement. Where I left off last time (2:13 long clip) wasn’t going to make for a 4-5 minute tune. I really had no special ideas about any fancy intro, amazing lead-ins or larger-than life build-ups, so I just aimed towards something that was easy for a DJ to mix with other tracks – a clear and simple intro and a 32-bar structure.
First 32 bars are the intro without bass, and a slight change and bringing in more elements at 17th bar. When the bass drops at the 33rd, I just switched off the vocals and lowpassed the melody synth. This will enable the DJ to keep mixing another tune and bring this up more slowly, while still keeping it interesting enough to listen to on it’s own because of the change-ups. At 65th bar the vocal comes in, still with the’ radio’ filter as I want to build the tune up slow. After 96th bar I felt like I could bring in the tune full swing. In the clip above the emptiness of the 33rd bar felt a little empty so I put a long delay on one of the vocal samples.
I reinforced the break in the tune a little with some rolls and 16th hits. Not just to make it bigger but to variate the rhythm a little every 8 or 4 bars.
The structure was indeed taking shape but I felt the tune needing a bit more flare and dash when I listened through it. At the “full swing” part from the 97th bar on the tune already started sounding dull. I started experimenting with the melody synth and came up with something good just by testing different chords to go with the flow. I have no deep understanding of music theory (chord relations are like rocket science to me), I have no idea on where to start looking when I want to build a melody, but just following the key of the track sometimes pays off with a little luck. I did change the riff just a little at a later stage, but the base remains the same.
I inserted the new melody at 2 places. 1st time it appears from the 33rd bar to 63rd and has a gradual, slow filter movement on it. Second time it appears at 97th when the tune is supposed to hit full speed. It instantly made the track much more vibrant and pop-like. The earlier 1-note melody still appears in the intro part. Another change was made to the shaker. It sounded good and brought the tune to life when it came in, but I wanted to make it move a little more, be able to change it for a tiny amount at each turning point in the track. I used Mobilohm VST (an expanded chorus/phaser/flanger plugin) and put some filter feedback on the track, coupled with automations to the bandpass and mix level with each change to the tune. I also created new automations to the bass lowpass filter to give something new to the tune at the 97th bar, and sliced another drum roll to make more interesting drum fills. Oh and finally tuned & turned down the bass fills.
All of the above was done pretty quickly, in the course of an hour or so. I was pretty happy with the structure and the changes so far and it was clearly time for a well earned 4:20 break. I noticed a few clear errors (wild level fluctuations, hits in wrong places etc.) but that I still wanted to keep moving forwards and fix the errors in the mixdown stage where I usually do some more audio editing.
I thought to use some kind of riser first and some more clips from the acapella. I started with the same free synth, TAL Elek7ro.I recorded the A note a few times, through different FX channels already in the project. Combined together, stretched to 200% and with some filtering they sound much more like a atonal sweep. Not really what I was looking for but kept it in nonetheless. One of the channels I resampled the sample through has a side-chain compression. so I just cut out 1 pulse and stretched it to 8 bars to make it blend in the background a little.
Above: The original synth sweeps with sidechaining -> both through different FX and timestretch -> cut out 1 bar of the final sound and gave a huge timestretch.
I also quickly chopped a few “ooh” and “ah yeah” phrases from the vocal track that I’ve been using. Many of them didn’t prove to be useful because the pitchshifter/male-a-nizer plugin couldn’t handle very complex stuff like backing vocal harmonies. While I played with those I got the idea of sampling the first few hits from the original Syleena Johnson song, and using those in some sort of a quick and short breakdown in the middle of the tune. That idea sounded good in my brain but as soon as I heard it in the tune it was straight to the bin with that. I wasn’t even going to try and fit it in.
That put me off but I still pushed on! The simplest thing that I came up with was to clone the padsynth and play with that. I eased the attack from the synth and made a little variation to the melody and passed it through a filter to fade it in. (The wobs at the end are a mistake, the high bass channel was left on by accident).
The riff is not very different to the original, but it still forced me to change the bass and the original pad synth too. As the bassline was in audio and not midi, it took some guesswork to get it right. Beats for the breakdown I borrowed from the intro, plus a few crash cymbals on layered top. To me the middle part or breakdown as most call it, shouldn’t be just a crippled or stripped down version of the main loop/theme. Using something that is new to the tune and only appears that once, can make it much more original and surprising. Here the bass does a big change from a 1 note bass into really supporting the rest of the track. I intend to try and use the changed bass for the rest of the tune as well. Making a bigger change at the breakdown can make the track much more interesting to listen to – in too many tunes where the first drop is just repeated again. This breakdown still needs some minor work but all the blocks are already in place.
Technical notes: I added a PSP Xenon (limiter) to the master track just to better compare it against other stuff in my mp3 player. It squeezes the track 2 or 3 dB’s louder. I will take it off at the mixdown stage. I also cut the reverb on the bass highs to half to give room for the vocal. Just before exporting the session result FL Studio lost the settings of the original padsynth and I had to recreate it from the one used in the breakdown.
More about Ben Kama
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100robots on Tuesday 11th October 2011, 7:04pm
Good work. Really like the way you've documented the process. |
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What a TUNE! bro, really feelin it, nice one.