ghost snares

Hello everyone,

I was browsing the ihatebreakcore.com site… there was a breakcore tutorial in the forum. In an article it says that…

“Placement of hihats are simply to fill the dead space of the break, if you have a space between the kick and snare, add a hat, or even make a shuffle using the hat, and ghost snare…”

What is a ghost snare?

And could someone please show me an example of a ghost snare using the renoise?

Thanks in advance…

A ghost snare is simply a hit with less velocity than your “main” hits. Try going on YT and check out some videos.

A ghost snare is simply a hit with less velocity than your “main” hits. Try going on YT and check out some videos.

you mean volume-wise less volumed snares in between two main snare attacks? Something like that?

It sounds different when you hit a drum very softly, so it’s not just the volume. If you have a good drumkit with several velocity layers (like the Yamaha drumdrops you may get for free) then you’ll have proper sounding ghost snare sounds on the lower velocities.

It sounds different when you hit a drum very softly, so it’s not just the volume. If you have a good drumkit with several velocity layers (like the Yamaha drumdrops you may get for free) then you’ll have proper sounding ghost snare sounds on the lower velocities.

Thank you for the info… I wanna ask you something… Is it possible to create the amen break like yamaha dropdrums with several velocity layers? If so, how can I do it? Can you lead me to do that by telling me where to start doing that in renoise?

Thank you for the info… I wanna ask you something… Is it possible to create the amen break like yamaha dropdrums with several velocity layers? If so, how can I do it? Can you lead me to do that by telling me where to start doing that in renoise?

I’m not shure if i understand what you want to do, but my immediate answer would be no. Of course it’s possible to simulate it, but that wouldn’t be very easy to do very convincingly.

It’s not very easy to make a proper drumkit out of a loop sample, because when hitting a drum you will get a long sustain. In a loop the sustain of a drum blends in with the other hits (or is muted by the drummer).

But for making breakcore i don’t believe this should be a great concern because you probably don’t want much sustain in the drums anyway. I don’t know a whole lot about the genre, but i think i’d just start with the amen break and some different percussive sounds and go by trial and error. I also think you should get friends with the repeater. :slight_smile:

Okay. I’ll try that…

Thank you so much…!!!

:slight_smile:

It won’t have the lofi grit of the amen because it won’t be sampled from a record, but you can certainly copy the pattern. There is even a tool (have to search the forums for it) that can render slices to a pattern. So you can take the amen, slice it, use render slice to pattern, and use that as a guide to place the hits for another drum kit. I’d use a higher than 4 lines per beat for this to make sure you have high enough resolution.

Of course it won’t be a perfect solution because of multiple drums hitting at the same time in the break, but you should at least be able to rip the kick-snare play.

Here’s a collection of breaks that should be good to use as a starting point: http://www.junglebreaks.co.uk/breaks.html

It sounds different when you hit a drum very softly, so it’s not just the volume. If you have a good drumkit with several velocity layers (like the Yamaha drumdrops you may get for free) then you’ll have proper sounding ghost snare sounds on the lower velocities.

I am about to purchase the yamaha hybrid kit but I am not sure which one is that I should purchase for my renoise use…

kontakt pack

or

multi-velocity pack

???

What do you recommend?

Btw, I do have Kontakt software…

There is a free version of the Yamaha kit btw, though it only has 3 velocity layers and the others have 12-16 layers. If you want to mangle the samples with Renoise pattern effects I’d recommend the Renoise version. If you just want super realistic sounding drums, the MV and Kontakt packs are the way to go. The Kontakt edition is the best edition. Not only does it have velocity layers, but it has round robin samples which further increases the realism, and I think it includes some impulse responses too built right into the interface.

I wouldn’t spend money on drum samples for making breakcore at all, there are plenty of free loops and samples for it already that probably will give you a better result than using a single real sounding drumkit.

You could try out thehttp://forum.renoise.com/index.php/files/file/205-easter-egg-drumkit/ , it has a few beats already that might be useful. It’s not designed for breakcore though. I think i’d add some rimshots and such and either layer them with the existing drums or swap them.

Get classic breakbeat samples from somewhere (I think there’s plenty links/discussions in this forum, more so in others). Learn to listen deeply into them, maybe as opposed to breakcore sound in lower pitch (slower) than in higher/faster. Or both alternating to get ideas on how it sounds. Then go to the sample editor and crop each drum hit (may it be sublte or what, no deal…) to an individual hit, keymap them. Yeah, really collect those hits from a breakbeat sample! Then you have dope material for making breakbeats that won’t sound weak like “normal drumkits” and have the proper grit. Good way to naturalise is to have multiple similliar (but in detail different) hits and not only let velocity or some random fashion choose them, but your ears and your fantasy on how the sound “works out right”. Yes, variations in drum hits can be used as deliberate rhythmic element. It is even more pronounced when distortion fucks up the drums. And it’s not like Hihats are just fillins, they have charakter of their own too, can be varied in velocity to get grooving, and you can have more pronounced, sharp hits as upper end rhythmical elements. Listen to your favourite tunes deeply and try to analyse what/how is done there instead of believing strange tutorials.

If you have a breakbeat, like “Bop-Ik-Thresh-IkDaIkDa-Bop–Thresh-”, the “Da” parts are the “ghost snares”. Those are often hard to isolate from breakbeats, often weak and muffled beneath other drum sounds, and need extra attention to sound strong enough in the custom kit. Funk(y) beats sport them like mad. Some snare rolls are a good place to isolate weak snare hits of different charakter. Like the fucking military drumming.