Drum programming/ Jungle/ Aphex Twin

I bought Redux last year with the intention of using it for my next prog album, but I haven’t even touched it yet. I should really give it a go!

I have not used trackers in any serious way since the 90’s, they have probably come a long way since then (especially things like Renoise) but once you click with how they work, they are extremely fast to use and with a level of precision that always felt superior to a graphical DAW to me. Trackers remind me of vintage hardware sequencing such as the Roland MC-4 or MC-500, with some + and some - features, Event list top down style editing as on a tracker or Roland’s ‘microscope’ editing with a keyboard/keypad is something that I miss, I’d love a modern hardware version of a tracker. There are a few on the market, tasty chips and nerdseq both of which look interesting.

Elektron should totally make a tracker

The thing about “hardware trackers” (and this extends to things like LSDJ, LGPT etc) is that I can’t get into using a tracker using anything other than a keyboard, and occasionally mouse. It just seems to go against the benefits of using a tracker in the first place!

Yes I agree, I have LSDJ but prefer nanoloop for my Gameboy shenanigans, the Roland stuff I mentioned had keypads for entry which was pretty similar to using a keyboard though, you can enter stuff blindingly fast once you get good on them.

I made this simple beat on octatrack(with ableton limiter on master), 2 sliced breakbeats (by 8th), long 808 kick, several atmospheric samples. Breaks were warped to 160bpm in ableton, then sliced and remixed on octatrack

Not as intricate as a tracker, but a lot of jungle/d &b was made on MPCs by mashing buttons with note roll on. You could assign pad pressure to filter cutoff, mash some pads, set the roll rate to a different value and then mash some more on top of what you just later down. With tasteful editing you could get great results

I get some fairly IDMesque textures from my beatbox loops by having two tracks playing the same beat, and muting one on each side of the fader.

One loop plays normally, the other is sliced and has an LFO scanning the slices that has its depth and rate mapped to the fader. Add in a delay fx on that sliced loop with the delay time and mix mapped to the fader as well. Glitchy insanity ensues.

You don’t need any special tools to make fast, complex beats/breaks. Just a bit of patience and focus.

In general it really is just about getting in close and programming the damn beats; keeping 1 or 2 elements (often kick and main snare or straight hats in the background) relatively repetitive while varying other parts, plenty of rolling, retrigging, stretching, pitching, reversing + short delays for those metallic/comb filtery bits…filtering too especially in the earlier stuff.

Hangable Autobulbs & RDJ sound like they have lots of midi-note-repeater or arp generated beats; holding down a note or 2 while modulating the speed of the repeater/arp & plenty of resonant lp filtering for more movement.

Drukqs was programmed by hand in PlayerPro, an old tracker (using samples of breaks + his analog gear amongst other bits). Trackers have a really great workflow for this stuff because you can non-destructively retrig, pitch, reverse, pseudo-time stretch samples with simple key commands VERY quickly. They’re amazing for rhythmic composition but pretty hard to visualise harmony on.

Anyone can get some glitchy beats by whacking on a plugin these days but if you want your complex beats to fit with your track properly you have to do the work.
No special gear needed, you could make super complex beats on a Pocket Operator if you were so inclined.

that’s true. You hear the difference most of the time

When listining to the druqks breakcore like tracks, it’s nocticeable that he often uses a huge amount of different sounding drums per track. Several breakbeats alternate with Roland Tr sounding beats all differently programmed.
Something like Ultraloop could be great for this job, where you can load a whole map of loops and mix up different sections of them. There are also great glitchy fx in there.

I’m always too lazy to make a whole map of my own loops. I tend to program beats while writing the track, so program it in a way they suit the track. But should be worth to have your own collection you can use, you can cut them up anyhow. But yeah, these druqks tracks sound quite loop heavy and these loops cut up and crazy fx’d in the tracker.

The break in vordhosbn sounds amazing, cause the beat sounds completely originally programmed. Such a great groove, so many changes and details.
I think it’s a bit easier to work with funk breaks, since even chopped up they contain a bit of the groove the real drummer played originally.

I just listened again to Drukqs, and there are some stinkers, but the gems are real works of art. Ziggomatic 17 might be my favourite, the drum programming is so friggin awesome and it seems almost impossible to do that stuff in such a precise manner. He’s got some chops that guy.

He added “Mangle11” to Druqks on his page. Insane drums again.

didn’t know it. It was already released on a Rephlex compilation.

Mental.

This is a rich topic for me. No pun intended.

So many ways to approach chopping on the Octatrack that it’s hard to know where to suggest starting. I’d say slice a loop, place some trigs, create linear locks, then start editing those locks into something crazy but musical. Copy to new patterns and keep making changes. Introduce more loops as you go.

My personal fav right now is load loops and trigs into track one, then resample into track 2 with recorder buffers/trigs to mangle more.

Here’s something to try.

Conditional Amen Break Glitching Octatrack = Ned Rush https://youtu.be/bXUn8D9TR4g

Similar approach:

I recently splurged on some rawcutz (thanks @v00d00ppl). The 3k hits are just thrown together in a folder without rhyme or reason. So i ended up doing 64 chains of whatever kicks and snares ect.

I loaded one track kick chain one track snare chain and one hats. Then i just started tappin away. Process them all differently, cue all to a track recorder and record a loop.

Insta jungle / glitch / mid aphex. Slice it up for further madness.

What puts some above others imo is editing fit musical purposes. The above bit is easy. To make it musical is work.

The thing about aphex drum programing indeed is that it doesn‘t sound random at any point. No probability, random slice triggering etc. It all sounds planned. ever changing but always perfectly fitting the moment of the track. it sounds done by hand at that‘s what impresses me so much. Cause I imagine that takes a lot of time and compositional talent.
making crazy glitch drums for the sake of sounding glitchy and random is not so difficult imo

I assume trackers are really good tools for getting this done faster by hand

I used to make beats in Fruity Loops then spend hours and hours chopping them up in Acid. It had a nice workflow for that. I think the most similar in a modern DAW is probably editing audio inside an audio clip in Bitwig, but it just isn’t as quick and fun (not do I the inclination to spend the time anymore).

Actually, Reaper isn’t bad for chopping up audio on the timeline.

Used to slice up breakbeats in fruityloops and create similar sounds. Without all those glitches though.

Ultraloop by Twisted Tools…

Thanks for that! Seems very efficient, almost too easy! It gave me cool ideas for Octatrack!

it‘s pretty genius. but yeah, feels a bit like cheating

you are totally right.
But you know what I mean It’s just - this thing is so good, you can’t do boring beats with it

The principle seems to be a kind of sequencer with several tracks with different settings, isn’t it?
Octatrack : 8 tracks with different settings, same loop, quantized slices, triggered only by midi tracks, with random arp and all lfo arsenal…
I have to try that…

I don’t know what is “comping”…

And also you can layer more than one at a time! All if you like… And decide whether fx are on a step or stem/lane etc
With a bit of preparation in your sample map you can get some great results, a bit of silence here and there for instance😉

I can do that with OT without Megabreak.

And @rotallytuined of course if I go back a bit to DAW and plugins I have to try Ultraloop in priority.
Next year maybe!

No doubt you can Tell me how you would do it
I have to say, it’s just incredible convenient in Ultraloop. The interface is genius

Already did, above and in other conversations we had. Find the pieces of the puzzle.

haha. Ok. I’ll do

So here is a try with 4 Amen Break tracks, triggered alternatively by midi tracks arp.
1 generative bar. Not great, but it was fun and surprising. @Unifono, sorry, it’s randomized.

His style is the result of good homeworks i think
Because all of is tracks are single/unique
the quality of these loops lies just by an hard-work of sampling art
In addition to the quality of his melodies He has a real talent for building and mixing loops
As a conductor…It’s just a cooking work
Afta “it 'snice to watch how he goes from a sampler that generates a beat to a TR606 out-of a pedal effect transition go thru atmosphère in same régularity.”

The quality is felt when you work a loop hrdr … what# is on 1/2/3/4 … measures
Creat on computer ,then reused in one type of effect ,then resampled ! and replaying with other sounds in lines …

Take two international artists
The already has facilities for melodies and the other is obliged to sample melodies
They are made very good music!
Thats all !

I will end up with a personal opinion :
Without technology the music would be less deep
For someone who knows his weaknesses …it is easy to work around them