Please help with the dnb timing riddle

Hello!

I try to make drum n bass. While i listen a lot of it, i can imaginate a lot of patterns, i pre-make them with a drum kit, then i split some of the notes into the next track. But i cant manage the timing. If i live record my notes, they never fit to the BPM i set. At the end i have always a note to much or to less to make a smooth cycle over 64 steps. Its never round. Whats the trick to get this in rythm? Its frustrating.

Please advice!

Respect for trying to record d&b speed drum patterns, enabling the Q button to quantize the input might help, but why not program the note events without the pattern playing?

Or record it half-speed at around 90bpm… and play it back to it origin 180 around…

or contact hire jojo mayer…

and this one is f**** groovy:

Set your pattern playback at double speed (not the bpm)

make sure you get low latency as possible, im often recording jungle style breakbeats in realtime, best results yet i got with 16lpb and Q = 4 lines also drumkit is set to mono for recording in 1 line of track, if you want add some groove to your beat add some random values in delay column of track, works vey wall with paradiddles, double kicks and other 16th notes

huh, live dnb drumming input? Tried using the metronome or a straight hihat track as counterpart, so you stay in timing while hammering keys/pads?

I rather always try to program them. It’s like you see a progression of beats with the lines being an even submeasure, and you can count in your head while imagining drum hits. Like count 1…2…3…4…5…6…7…8 over and over again, and do oof…ik…tekk…ik-ta…ik-ki…oof-do…tekk…ikk-ta and so on in that timing. I often make a base beat, and do stuff like ghost snare hits, hihat variations, less dominant bassdrum hits as an addition to that more simple groove. Doing this very often can give you a feel which line a drumhit from a rhythm in your head would correspond to, so you don’t need to count any more, you’ll just know roughly where that note belongs to. Takes practice.

I’d first get some classic breaks (amen, apache, funky mule etc.), sync them to your bpm and do some basic chopping using the 0Sxx command. After you develop a feel for how rhythms work, you can do more fancy stuff using slices, phrases etc.

Record whatever you’re able too and then fix it later with a sample editor. or spend several years becoming a pro drummer and then record it.

many thanks for all responds!!

Please don’t be afraid to venture of the ol 4/4 thing please…

I personally play with 5’s since we have 5 fingers not 4, and the pentagram has 5 points which measure out to be mathmatically compatable with the golden ratio or phi. This is one of my main “turn on’s” to renoise… Other DAW’s fail to give you total control of time and measure You can think in terms of 4/5 rather than 5/4

If ya wanna hear some interesting time signatures try listening to Glen Velez, or Venetian Snares

Gotta remember too a lot of that dnb stuff is time warped in some way or another.

@ Woodpecking Mantis

Jojo Mayer Rocks!!!

I think it depends what you compose your stuff for. Uneven rhythms are interesting, yes… but much stuff (also dnb) is composed with a dancefloor in mind. Europeans can often hardly handle to dance in sync to 4/4 (hueheheh), many need some time to get used to 4/4 dnb rhythms when only knowing OonzOonzOonzOonz before. Now let’s imagine a bunch of people on a dnb party trying to “move” to 7/8 beats with 2 5/8 patterns in between now and then…many of them be pretty pissed of being unable to step in sync and boo the dj bad time.

One nice trick to make uneven beats danceable is layering them above 4/4 rhythms, to the whole thing flows in a sync every x bars. Then the uneven stuff is rather like an added dimension to the flow, syncopating around the even main rhythm. And you can still trance the shit out of your head dancing to the stuff.

And don’t tell me dnb is just for recreational listening on a sofa. Some is, but enter a jungle/dnb club/party and you know what it was invented for.

Track I made in 4/10 https://soundcloud.com/psynapsex/drones-in-orbit

Track I made in 4/10 https://soundcloud.com/psynapsex/drones-in-orbit

What do you mean 4/10?

in 4 and 10?

usually the top number in a time sig is the number of beats per measure and the bottom number is the note value that is counted as one beat, i.e. 2, 4,8, 16, etc. only on the bottom.

Like most vsnares tracks are in 7/4. seven beats per measure, counting a quarter note as one beat…

BTW, glen velez rocks!!

@hEx EyE 10 LPB and 8 Beats per pattern. So what ever that translates too… And that exactly why I get soo frustrated with the mainstream DAW’s

OK, so 10 LPB x 8 would be like working in 4 or 8, but you have access to quintuplets, etc.

Yeah man, love the flexibility of renoise for sequencing.

I’ll sometimes use 7 or 9 or 15 LPB for a very off kilter feel, but usually use 16 for the trance stuff I’m working on.

You can think in terms of 4/5 rather than 5/4

Wut.

5/4 = 5 x ♩ (1/4 notes) per bar
4/5 = 4 x ?? (there isn’t even a symbol for a fifth of a semibreve…) per bar

4/5 would sound indistinguishable from 4/4 until you came to write it as a score, when it would be impossible.

I have a riddle for you:

I have 24 LPB with patterns of 132 lines, 24 lines per beat to easily do duets or triplets… What’s my time sig?

Put the Riddleman picture’s here.

eleven

11/8 more specifically.

Wut.

5/4 = 5 x ♩ (1/4 notes) per bar
4/5 = 4 x ?? (there isn’t even a symbol for a fifth of a semibreve…) per bar

4/5 would sound indistinguishable from 4/4 until you came to write it as a score, when it would be impossible.

20ths??? Thanks for making me feel super human!!!