Jungle Snare Decay...

Hey I was wondering if someone could help me here. I have started cutting up breaks and I want to make some break based music. I particualry like the oldschool jungle sound… here would be a good example:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XEEPXMlqxJ0&…feature=related

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=gbUu-oIM6uM&…feature=related

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=pFQrczPyDac

I just love the decay in them snares. i ahve compressed my beats seperately in sound forge and noise gated them a little. also time stretched them a bit… backed the attacks up with another amen attack… I have a really hard attack down on my snares but they sound too flat and i would like to achieve a similar sound to the amen break snares in those songs. I would be really grateful for any help you can offer ;) thanks!

do you have an example of the stuff you are doing?

many times it’s your compression settings, also the choice of compressor. there are also many different eq’d and compressed amens.
for this you may want to use something that came straight from the vinyl. i’ve heard some people run the amen through an external poweramp to give it an added presense. i haven’t tried it personally but i’ve heard good things about doing so. if i did try it i would take the master amen i am using and resample and then make the edits after i have it back in the computer. for stuff like Kemet Crew i would cut everything into oneshots, Remarcs stuff i believe is resampled combinations of oneshots.

BIG UP!

Im more into breakcore and stuff like that. Istari lasterfahrer, FFF, Main$tream, Hinder Ect…

I heard this guys music and I know he uses renoise. Ive seen some of his posts here as well

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea…endID=288132588

I like these attacks he has on his snares

Im thinking that maybe my attack is not as solid as I first thought… It could be because my attack isnt hard hitting it may mean the decay is not as prominent as it could be… I suspect it may be the compression… Im chopping my beats up from the break I got from junglebreaks.co.uk. I chop them into 4 single hits… Kick, snare, hihhat and ghost snare. Then I EQ them with a high end peak at around 10,000 with about 6 or more DB and add a little bass eq at around 80 with 5 DB. I turn the overall gain on the EQ down a bit so I do not get any clipping and it allows for headroom so I can compress without having to worry. I pitch it up a semi tone or 2. then I compress the beats seperately. I heard that compressing twice is quite commonly used… ^_^

Im not sure what settings to use beacsue I can get a really snappy attack but it starts to get a bit clicky and it just sound like a loud snap rather than the echo sound u get with amens… Also I wondered if remarc used a very slight distortion? or maybe reverb…

When I compress I also turn up the gain as the ratio gets harder… I dont know if this is the best way to do it. I thought that for compression to work effectively u would turn the gain up as u compressed.

Also all my editing is done in soundforge. I use al their dynamics tools and EQ. I ahve nothing to compare them with so I dont know if they are any good. I recently figured out u could use VST plugins to edit ur stuff in sound forge which got me excited. haha! :)

  • I dont like using the sample offset command. :P

BIG UP TO YOU TOO!!!

Hint: throw a 5 band EQ on your snare track… followed by a lofimat2 with bit depth and quality/bitrate maxed … then tweak the two treble bands on the EQ until you get a nice crisp sound out of your snare :)

:D thanks for that! Im trying to do most of my editing in sound forge though so I have nothing to worry about when im laying down my beats! So u say its mostly the treble bands that nring out a nice decay… hmmm… I just read somewhere that also cutting a little of ur mids is also a good way to bring the decay out. U are all very helpful… dont stop :P haha

I absolutely love the way renoise works. It just feels so clean and uncluttered. so easy to work with compared to abelton or fruity. :lol:

Try using a slight amp envelope on the snares to bring out the attack instead of compressing like crazy. When the snares starts to sound like clicky noises you are compressing too much. On two of the tracks you posted it was often an amen break + snares and other stuff from the think break, so don’t be afraid layering breaks!

If you own an oldschool sampler like akai s900, try resampling breaks through it. I do this all the time, it adds a nice light distortion that is perfect for jungle breakbeats.

An interesting thing is to try to think of what the producers of the 90’s used. I bet most of them couldn’t put a compressor on every channel and eq the shit out of everything. So my guess is that it’s mostly samplers(adding grit) controlled by a midi sequencer(tracker?), into a mixing desk(adding more color to the sound).

Use saturation plug-ins to compensate for the coloring of the sound that you get from hardware. :)

I don’t know if i answered your question, but hey… just sharing some tips!

Hey! Yeah that made alot of sense. It read somewhere that Edgey envelopes his beats seperately and I tried it but it didnt sound very nice. : / It may be because I compressed the snare first and then done it. When I tried envolping the snare i put a diagnal line down from the attack and messed around with it abit. But i didnt save it in the end. I managed to get a break that I think is alright considering ive only been editing breaks for a short while. Its just compression and high end EQ. I thought maybe the high end Eq was needed to brighten up the sound abit. I didnt apply any low end. I think it might need a peak somewhere around 80hz to give it a punch.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/n3hsis

If u could give me some feedback that would be great! brutal but constructive critism please :rolleyes:

I figured out why the decay was so shit. I think it was the noise gating that done it. hmmm…