I enjoy having a go at different musical genres. Today it’s UK Garage (or something like that). I don’t mind if it’s not spot on; I have my own take on it.
3 Likes
No expert in UK garage, but - fresh!
You certainly nailed the feel of the drums - the little flams and rolls are perfect IMO.
Also like the detuned retriggered synth chords. Nice touches throughout 
I randomly came across another old attempt at making Garage/2-step/whatever they used to call it on my hard drive and decided to finish it. This one’s called “I know I’m Free”.
wow - ace! care to share the push .xrns?
wow - ace! care to share the push .xrns?
Thanks! There are some fancy plugins on that track, so I’d have to work around that before sharing an .xrns.
I’ll see what I can do.
Excellent work on both tracks!
Thanks! There are some fancy plugins on that track, so I’d have to work around that before sharing an .xrns.
I’ll see what I can do.
having ‘push’ on repeat - freezing cold here & clear manhattan skyline - good match!
interested in how you programmed the swing/ little fills, the note progressions, etc; it’s not grave if plugins are missing…
xilin: I’ll put together a simplified .xrns with most of the essential stuff in it after work today. I use a lot of third party reverbs and might replace some of those with Renoise reverbs. The mastering plugins will be gone and most of the synths will have to be rendered to samples. It will sound quite different, but it might be sufficient to get an idea of how I put it together.
I can say a few things straight away about how I made the tune.
Swing and beats: Here, I simply used the inbuilt swing generator in Renoise, set to 400 % (it’s on the Master track). There is nothing in this tune that does not swing, so I might as well have it as a universal setting. What really matters, though, is where you place the notes, flams and fills, and what kind of drum sounds you use. Garage tends to have thin, “klicky” snares and short kicks. Experiemt with placing kicks, snares and percussion in offbeat positions until it sounds good. Use every element sparingly - it is important that there is a lot of space and air in the drum and percussion tracks. Hihats are especially important for creating the UK garage groove. Always use short, sharp sounds, and use reverbs to create a spacious feel. At 120 BPM (IIRC), this is somewhat slower than typical UK Garage (and a lot slower than so-called Speed Garage).
Bassline: Again, it is important to have lots of room and spaces inbetween the notes. The bassline in “Push” is a combination of kick drum tails with the transient bit edited out or muffled by the kick drum via a signal follower on the one hand, and on the other hand, a plug-in synth (Waves Element IIRC) playing the bass melody. The two bass sounds never play at the same time. The kick drum tail track is sent to a send track with distortion and reverb on it, which is automated to come in in waves.
Chords: As you can hear, the busiest chord pattern, the one that appears at the beginning, is toned down to simple, reagge-like hits when the beat kicks in. Mimimalism is important. When the chord/melody bit gets free reign, there are some four finger chords in there, as these seem to be popular in this genre.
Vocal samples: UK Garage, 2-step and Grime tend to mangle the vocals more than I have done. I wanted something more human and less “vocal science”-like for this track. I got the samples from a soul acapella on Youtube. It takes some EQ-ing and lots of reverb to make them sound OK in the mix. For some vocal samples I used heavy dub echoes, as this sounds cool and happens to be a staple of the genre.
Overall arrangement: As you can hear, I’ve tried to make the arrangement simple. A new part of the song might as well contain fewer rather than more elements. For example, I found the bass melody somewhat too repetitive and reduced the number of notes in it from around 1.44. Then it comes back in when the vocals come back in.
An .xrns has been added to the Renoise Downloads section. It sounds a bit weird without the 3rd party plugins, but it will do the job. I could have tried harder to achieve the same results with the Renoise dsp’s, but I couldn’t be bothered tbh.
much appreciated svenn!! thanks for the upload!
loving this track! wooop!
It is amazing how you play with the percussions and the bass. There is no mistake in the mix. Awesome stuff!
Best I’ve ever heard on this forum. Period.
I see this track is getting some well deserved traction. Wel done Sam!