90’s breaks programming in Bitwig

I have always been a fan of 90’s jungle and drum and bass. You can emulate some of the techniques in Bitwig with pretty much stock plug-ins.

Prepare the break

1. Set your project tempo
2 Grab your break. For this demo I’ll use a break from the Blu Mar Ten sample pack.
3 I personally use these settings for the crispest settings. I also boost the gain just in case the next stage drops the volume.

Slices

4 Make sure the break is in time and next right-click on the clip and select slice to drum machine.

BeatMakers

Note make sure that you select Slice at Beat Maker so it will create 1 slice and 32-bit to stop any dither.

The sampler setup

1 First trick is to get the velocity to control the filter.

Sampler

In the modulators section add an Expressions module and set it to modulate the cutoff filter on the pad sampler. Next set the Velocity sensitivity to Zero. This will allow you to use the note velocity to control the cutoff without losing any volume.

2 Set up your start points. Once happy with filter thresholds duplicate the first drum pad for each sample start point for break.

startpoint

Since the break is in time with the tempo project you should have little issue with timing.

Below is an example of a basic patternmidi

3. The poor man’s delay. I must give props to this You Tube video for this tip.

PoormansDelay

Find a suitable hit you want to add the pseudo delay to. Set loop start and end points round it and then increase the release value of the AHDSR and adjust to taste.

Finally to add a bit more old school grit, use the brilliant RX950 DA Converter and adjust the levels of crust to taste.

Filter

You can also modulate the filter on the RX950 using the VEL setting from the Expressions modulator to get something similar to s950 filter sound.

The result.

 

Trac Series One (I got by with a little help from my friends)

So my first release “Trac Series One” was released on Amuse,io on the 5th of October 2018. Amuse is a great platform for anyone wanted to do DIY releases to the main 12 streaming platforms. When you set your release up it asks for a 44.1k 16 bit wav and the cover art must be at least 3000×3000 pixels and no more 6000×6000 pixels.

So I had the music covered, even had it professionally mastered for the release. However I was at a loss about creating the artwork and branding. As a graphic designer, I’m a good music producer (yes that bad). I have one laptop and one Chromebook. I like to keep the laptop as pure as possible for music so no graphic apps. Chromebook has little to offer.

The first attempt was on Adobe Comp on the iPhone of all things….  So this is where my friend from Sweden Christian Bjurinder steps in. By day he is a fantastic graphic designer and by night a talented producer and DJ (Chuck Cogan) of many years.

He came up with the artwork for the release and the branding on this site and all my other outlets.  Nothing was too much trouble and came up with the designs in the flash.

And the rest they say was history 🙂

Oh yeah below is a link to my Bandcamp site where you can stream or purchase Trac Series One.

 

Links

Christian Bjurinder
Chuck Cogan at hearthis
Amuse.io
Larson Whiled Amuse profile