Where to start in achieving this kind of beat?

Hi all,

I am a long time musician but new to electronic and specifically Renoise.

I hope this question isn’t too annoying as I know many people ask ‘how can I sound like this?’, but my question is more specific so hopefully it’s answerable.

If you listen to that piece, I am really interested in the way they have created this beat, especially starting at the 40 second mark or so.

It kind of reminds me of marching band snare solos. The velocity is very well managed here from what I can hear. A few sixteenths of louder snares, then a few of softer. Then some different snare sounds thrown in here and there. The kick is placed on off-beats too.

I am guessing these are shorter snare samples rather than a sampled amen break or something. Maybe they are even using a drum kit to achieve that human feeling?

Also, the snare and kick sounds themselves are interesting. I am guessing they are made up of some layered sounds? Am I off?

I am going to try to reconstruct this by ear as an experiment, so any advice would be great.

Thanks!

The beat sounds like a complex layer of multiple percussive elements, some in sync some twirling around each other.

The “snare” in the beginning seems more like a hihat to me. First you only heat the mids (maybe through lowpass filter, or only the mid layer sounding), you can also hear mixing chorus in action giving it a hazey feeling. Then another layer is brought in, or the lowpass is turned off, and I hear some kind of very gritty hat sound. It can be achieved by hipassing a suitable sound, running it through the “shift” distortion of renoise (or a rectifier if you use plugins), and then highpassing again to get rid of the low freq pollution introduced. The sound must have a cloud of all those little transients inside, so maybe like a sharp hihat with “coins taped on” that rattle on each hit, the shift distortion will bring them out and make them sound brighter. I think the sound is multiple variations of the same hit cycled or selected via velocity, to make it sound more organic/less static. You can do that with the renoise sampler as well - but you will need to use a multisampled hat instrument that features multiple versions of the same hit that are slightly different each…

On the hat - triplets are making the thing “roll” so nice. And ofc clever velocity programming. To get triplets look at this tool: https://www.renoise.com/tools/place-selected-notes-evenly

Then theres a synthetic kick and snares, I think I hear both an 808/909 style snare and some kind of breakbeat cut like snare. To make the snares that sharp and snappy, you can pitch them up as well as apply a volume envelope that quickly cuts of the volume. The envelope might also be useful to make the hat sound sharper, after the shift distortion is added.

The beat sounds like a complex layer of multiple percussive elements, some in sync some twirling around each other.

The “snare” in the beginning seems more like a hihat to me. First you only heat the mids (maybe through lowpass filter, or only the mid layer sounding), you can also hear mixing chorus in action giving it a hazey feeling. Then another layer is brought in, or the lowpass is turned off, and I hear some kind of very gritty hat sound. It can be achieved by hipassing a suitable sound, running it through the “shift” distortion of renoise (or a rectifier if you use plugins), and then highpassing again to get rid of the low freq pollution introduced. The sound must have a cloud of all those little transients inside, so maybe like a sharp hihat with “coins taped on” that rattle on each hit, the shift distortion will bring them out and make them sound brighter. I think the sound is multiple variations of the same hit cycled or selected via velocity, to make it sound more organic/less static. You can do that with the renoise sampler as well - but you will need to use a multisampled hat instrument that features multiple versions of the same hit that are slightly different each…

On the hat - triplets are making the thing “roll” so nice. And ofc clever velocity programming. To get triplets look at this tool: https://www.renoise.com/tools/place-selected-notes-evenly

Then theres a synthetic kick and snares, I think I hear both an 808/909 style snare and some kind of breakbeat cut like snare. To make the snares that sharp and snappy, you can pitch them up as well as apply a volume envelope that quickly cuts of the volume. The envelope might also be useful to make the hat sound sharper, after the shift distortion is added.

Thank you so much for this detailed reply. I am going to start experimenting with these ideas and see where it takes me.

One quick question I had based on this:

I know that volume and velocity are not the same thing. For example I know that when a hi-hat or snare or piano is hit really hard, the timbre changes, so volume is not enough to convince the ear that the instrument is being attacked at a different speed.

If I were to use a Kontakt library to enter notes, how would I enter in velocity data? I thought about the volume column, but that doesn’t seem right. Would a MIDI keyboard be the only way to record velocity or is there a command I can write in?

Thanks!

The volume column in renoise is the velocity. What the velocity does, depends on the synth/sampler used. So renoise with a sample will just change the volume based on the velocity, unless you have set up different actions in the instrument. I don’t know what/how contact does, but it is of course possible that the velocity will do something else, i.e. choose another sample, or define other parameters in synthesis.

Sounds like elektron machine drum was used. Maybe mono synth too?

I think the drums was also produced with different sample starts and loop points
the fast shrill sound at 2:28 or 3:08-3:10 sounds like a short loop point at the end of a sample

Thanks everyone!

its technically called paradiddle & also the reason it reminded u of a marching band…not as random as it first sounds:

very interesting
I had wondered about this Fingerdrumminglayout

http://cdm.link/2010/02/fast-fingers-video-mappings-shows-you-pad-drumming-on-mpc-ableton-beyond/#comments
Now I’m a little smarter