When using multiple drum breaks what processing do you use on individual breaks, compared to your breaks inside of a group.
For instance, I have a group track where I keep all my breaks, and then individual tracks for each break. On my group track I will have a high pass filter to keep space for my bass, and I will also use a compressor to glue the breaks together (I guess… I just kind of wing it when it comes to compressors).
On each individual drum break I will have things like repeaters, comb filters, reverb etc. I will toggle these effects on and off throughout the track to get that typical intricate Drill n’ Bass sound.
Just curious how other producers of this type of music do things. I get overwhelmed when I have too many tracks and have to scroll left and right to see everything. I’m always looking for ways to be more efficient.
Any tips for gluing breaks together so everything sound cohesive.
As I said before when it comes to compressors I just wing it. Is a compressor all you need to glue breaks together? Would EQing the group of breaks as a whole also help to achieve this sound?
FInally, would someone be so kind as to share a .xrns file where they have a lot of different breaks and effects used so that I can see other peoples workflow?
I take the same approach as you, group all break tracks, process each track as needed, and add some gentle compression to the group to even things out. I tend to get a bit crazy with all the processing in the individual tracks, so I may rely on a limiter or clipper of some sort in the group, depending on what I am after or what sounds good.
A good starting point for group compressor setting is to use an RMS style compressor; I think the Bus Compressor qualifies. I use a gentle ratio, like 2:1, set the threshold so that I’m compressing around 1 dB of gain, maybe 2 dB, and play with the attack and release at low-medium to medium settings.
EQ on the group track can also help. I try to do all that type of processing in the individual tracks first, get does right, before I consider tweaking frequencies out of the group track. My mentality is “fix the source first” not “patch the sources together” if that makes sense.
Groovin in G (user @GroovinG) has some great renoise you tube breaks tutorials. Highly recommend checking them out if you haven’t already. Especially one called “the secret of it all” or something like that
I will definitely make a video about more conventional Drum Bus Processing in The Future!
When using multiple breaks together I will typically just use a small amount of Filtering/Transient Shaping/EQ/Saturation on the individual Tracks. My main goals here are trying to remove any super harsh resonances/ cut muddy low end/ Control the Peaks/Transients/ Level Balance.
Don’t overthink it at this stage.
One thing that’s very important when using multiple breaks is phase alignment. Getting two breaks really tightly aligned by nudging slice markers around is probably the most important thing when trying to glue breaks together.
