Chop an Amen break in Ableton Live 11 using a Drum Rack | Jungle, Drum and Bass, Breakbeat
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- Опубліковано 20 лип 2021
- In this video I demonstrate how to chop an Amen break to a custom Drum Rack using the Slice to MIDI function in Ableton Live.
Download the set here (requires Ableton Live 11): drive.google.com/file/d/1CPc_...
Rhythm Lab's Ultimate Amen Breaks Pack: rhythm-lab.com/the-ultimate-a...
🙏🏻Get loads more pre-chopped, pre-programmed breaks and regular Ableton supply drops on my Patreon: www.patreon.com/humansyntheti...
#ableton #musicproduction #breakbeat
@HumanSynthetics
Hi, my name's Alex and I make electronic music as Human Synthetics. I make jungle, drum and bass, breakbeat, idm, house, techno, electro, lofi, dubstep, bass music, garage, ambient and whatever I can try my hand at.
I livestream my everyday creative process as a music producer using Ableton Live as much as possible. I make music every day whenever and wherever I can and I want to share this process with the world.
I also make tutorials about using Ableton Live, from chopping breaks to mixing and mastering.
Have a question about music production or using Ableton? Leave a comment, or pop it in the chat on one of my livestreams.
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I have spent the past two hours trying to find ONE just ONE good tutorial on Amen chopping. You have blessed me, I am forever grateful for how simple you have made this for me. Bless your soul
Awww wow!! Thank you! So pleased to hear you got something from it. Happy chopping!!
Stranjah and Bizzy B both have great channels and loads of videos on breaks chopping
It's much harder trying to find one of someone using Reaper instead of Ableton
Such a detailed but easy to follow tutorial on chopping processing. You didn't leave me wondering why my sound doesn't sound like yours at any point! Immensely satisfying to play around with my own breaks. Thank you!
Aww awesome! Thank you, that's such a nice compliment. Glad to help and share what I know.
all of these tips are super useful, thank you for sharing!
My pleasure! Glad you enjoyed it, good to see the stuff in this video still going strong :))
great video, this method of doing amen breaks seems the best for me, thanks!
Cheers Dawid, glad it's working for you!
awesome video man thanks for all that
Cheers dono, my pleasure! Glad you've enjoyed it. Thanks for the comment
Great video and explanation! Thanks
Hey Adi, glad you found it!
Thank you very useful video
Cheers! Glad it's still helping people. :)
Thank you so much for the midi pack! gonna download and program some cool beats
You're welcome! Let me know how you get on!
cool and simple tutorial about breakbeat slicing in ableton. 🤟
Aw thanks Pretend Passing, thanks for checking in on stream this evening :)
Thank you!
Quality video. Looking forward to the next one.
Cheers Sebastian, appreciate the comment! I should probably make an amen playlists as there's lots of other stuff I've done with it on stream. It's indispensable!
@@HumanSynthetics Sure thing. Thanks for your response. I would definitely appreciate an amen playlist. I'm always looking for more ways to chop and process breaks.
@@sramirez1906 My pleasure. Yeah I think we could be onto something there... a playlist for each the big breaks. I've worked with a lot of different ones on stream and did have the idea of doing a chop shop style thing - too many ideas and not enough time! I use the Think break a lot as well, but the Amen gets a lot of mileage!
@@HumanSynthetics Sounds like a plan!
This is a great video! Not many of this quality for breakbeats. Another on standard 130pm or less breaks would be amazing also!
Thanks Shannon, appreciate the comment. That's a great suggestion, I'll see what I can do - got some more jungle bits on the way for now, but 130 breaks I'll think on - cheers
Very cool Alex, You released this content before the big hitters.
Thanks so much bish! I'm surprised it's kept doing as well as it has tbf. Guess people just want to know how to get started with the amen in Ableton! Thanks again
excellent.
Cheers Callum, appreciate it :)
Just found ur channel bec of amen breaks algorithm on youtube
Hey @spectralknights2, glad you found me! This vid is the gift that keeps on giving :)
sweet
tysm
the pleasure is all mine, glad to share, and even more glad this video is still useful to people!
quality content here.
Thank you! Appreciate the comment, keeps me doing what I'm doing!
seriously helpful stuff, even almost 3 years on
Thanks so much :) yeah this is still one of my most popular videos ever! Now we're on Live 12 and the theory in this is pretty much the same. Guess I got lucky with this one early on. But thanks again, glad to share what I know.
Nice. And Fanu rocks :)
Thanks David! Amen (no pun intented!), been meaning to bag some of his samples for ages now.
@@HumanSynthetics and btw ur tricks are really inspiring. Amen ;)
@@DavidGillodes big up! Feel the time is near to revisit this as I tend to do things a bit differently now and reckon a short form vid would help people. I do cover things like this on stream, but within longer sessions just writing music. Thanks man!
Thank you For this much appreciated :)
you're very welcome! Glad it was helpful
think I saw a comment on another vid about getting a Live pack working, but it wasn't there when I checked back... did you manage to do it alright?
@@HumanSynthetics I deleted the comment as I got it sorted. Thank you for getting back to me.
@@JR_Music sick glad it worked!
Amazing video.
Did you have a producer mentor and a who are your jungle dnb influences?
Thanks so much :) Ah, good questions! I guess I'd say I'm largely self taught with the DAW, but that would be discounting the wealth of sick content across the internet, particularly from the likes of Ned Rush, Stranjah, Groovin in G, Thought-Forms, and others. I learnt a lot about mixing from Dave Pensado's videos and Recording Revolution, even if they're more band focussed. My life background is as a guitarist and live performer, and as a chorister earlier in life ha. I've been playing most of my life in one form or another, bands, or on my own, and this has definitely given me a leg up across all my electronic, DAW based stuff. This included recording in analogue and digital studios, where I got to work with experienced engineers. I also studied classical guitar and did my exams, so I have that perspective too, which I try to use to inform my music, not dictate it. I love music theory and pondering why and how music does what it does to us as human beings - I think that touches on the meaning of life for us here and now, or a sense of beyondness that speaks to the human experience, as with all art, really.
DNB jungle wise, I got into all of that through my mates, especially at uni where we used to go to Hospitality nights, and Breakthru here in Birmingham. So, it was largely liquid and jump up then, with some techier stuff. Back then it was producers like Logistics, High Contrast, Commix, that I noticed, along with Pendulum's early stuff, especially tracks like 'Vault'. I also really loved minimal house and tech that was everywhere in 2006/7. Birmingham had a great scene for stuff like that. I've always just loved to go to nights, or listen to mixes, and just be inspired by the overall vibe of stuff I've heard. I can often remember it all, and this informs how I produce - it won't necessarily be one producer I'm really digging into. That said - some of my fave jungle/dnb producers atm are Paradox (especially his Alaska tracks), Seba, Photek, Fracture, PFM, Arcane, Tim Reaper, ASC, love all the stuff on Deep Jungle Recs too, Subjects, Kid Lib, Phineus II, Dwarde, Orca, I like mad neuro stuff like Current Value too ... really there are so many, and I'm influenced by so many different types of music it all kind of merges together. I've got to shout out producers on UA-cam too, especially the likes of arcologies who is just totally my vibe it's kind of doppelganger haha. I find if I get too into any one musician, I end up trying to copy them, so I'll often just listen to mixes and not try to read the tracklist! I love all electronic music, all music really, and I just love finding new weird stuff to get into, jungle dnb or otherwise. Also my mates send me lots of new stuff - good to have a good circle of music friends to keep you inspired.
Got to say, I think a background in guitar shred fuels my breakbeat nitty grittiness, I love fast technical sounding stuff lol.
Hope this gives an insight, and thanks for asking me to talk about myself haha. Thanks again :)
Sick tutorial dude. I use FL Studio so I'll try something similar with Slicex
Ahh okay cool! Always a pleasure to know people using different daws get something from the vids. But thank you very much 😁
class bud
Cheers! Thanks for the comment.
@@HumanSynthetics helped me out loads , thanks for informative info and keep it up
This was the video that finally helped things click for me. Question for you, a lot of choppers I see almost always don't use Ableton's transient markers and shift/add them themselves. Is that completely dependent on the breaks?
Cheers man, that's amazing! Glad it's helping and so satisfying when things fall into place.
Yep I think that's probably the case: most breaks have similar rhythmic identities but they're not often bang on the same. It's really a break by break thing - with practise you can often hear how the break might stand up to being sped up, chopped or whatever else you want to do with it.
Sometimes I adjust the transients differently too, it depends and it's always good to experiment.
Big up!
@@HumanSynthetics Appreciate the reply! Do you mind if I ask two follow-up questions?
-I'm having trouble adding effects onto my individual hits, I was able to add audio effects to individual hits within the rack, but all of the macro controls we set up in the slicing preset apply to my whole sample rather than the hits themselves.
-what are your favorite ways to process drums? Would love to start messing about :)
@@misterbrick7937 sure!
Because everything is set up as a slicing preset, anything like fx added after you've 'sliced to midi' have to be mapped separately. You could try adding fx in at the slicing preset stage, so a step before... in fact that sounds like a pretty good idea if it's possible! Some of what you can save as s slicing preset is limited in functionality, but it could be possible. Another option is to use the send and returns in the drum rack itself. I'd opt for this first anyway probably. It's a bit hidden if you haven't used them before...
I tend to keep things pretty straight often. I think I've gone through my kind of go to processing for drums on some of my chop an chill streams. Also the get creative with breaks video. It's nearly always eq, compression and maybe a bit of drum buss, but it depends. Sometimes I don't do anything and rely on interesting chops.
I appreciate the comments though man, it's good to help, I understand better in the process too.
yoooo this is fuckin tight my guy, thank you!!
Nice one Chadwick! Glad it's hitting the spot
Great tutorial, well explained. Thanks for the rack, too. 🙏
One question, as far as preserving the audio integrity of the loop and transients, would it not be better to not have warping applied before chopping? Or does the face that you did not retain Warping when applying the slicing preset negate that issue?
Secondly, would you do a tutorial on your process for chopping breaks at a slower tempo than the original speed of the break? 🤔
Thanks so much John! And thanks for all the kind words on Patreon :))
Great question, and to be honest I'm not sure myself! My first thought is it probably wouldn't make that much difference. With anything like this in Ableton, I'm a big fan of experimentation, maybe try both ways and see which sounds better to you? If there's not much of a difference, I tend to go with what's quickest.
Absolutely, great idea. Someone else asked me this question a while back on this video I think! I'll add it to the list. Could be a great thing to cover in its own livestream - chopping breaks across tempos.
Thank you - that would be amazing. 🙏
I think most break chopping tutorials assume that people are going to speed up your breaks after chopping, which in a lot of ways, is probably easier than slowing them down. The additional step of ‘filling’ the gaps that slowing chopped breaks down creates is something that doesn’t get much coverage. It’s been really hard to find much info on it.
I assume that using a ping pong loop on the tail of each hit is the ‘best’ way to do this while retaining a somewhat naturalistic sound, but maybe there are some details to the process that help to make it sound better, or can make the process faster?
How do u change between sounds like the stretched snare that hit only sometimes and not for all the break
You have to program a different MIDI note for each of the separate sounds. It can be fiddly and time consuming, but worth it! :) Hope that helps, let me know if not.
First of all thanks for the tutorial! Around 11:50 you say something about adding "call fx" (??) and then you get this choppy sound to your break. Can you elaborate on what you did? Thx in advance
Thanks @jegsiger - I think it's my drawl - I'm saying 'cool fx' haha - but what I actually do is shorter the length of all the MIDI notes so that the break slices are being cut short. This depends on how you've chopped it up to that point but if you've followed along with this vid, when you start working with the MIDI - highlight all of the notes and shift + back arrow to shorten the length of the MIDI notes for the 'cool' staccato effect :)
Following this but when it’s sliced there’s a pause between each one so the sound doesn’t flow, do you have any ideas? TIA 👊🏻
Hmm, that could be the tempo you're working at? What's the project tempo saying in Ableton? Been a while since I watched this video back, but do I resample the break in repitch mode before I chop it? If there are gaps it usually because the pitch of the chopped break is too high and the slices are playing back too quickly before the next slice happens. Or it might be you don't want that really choppy staccato sound you get by shortening the length of the midi notes that are triggering the break, in which case you can lengthen them so the break plays 'continuously' so to speak. Does any of that help zero in on the problem? Let me know 👍
at 6:25 did you quantize to the current grid or a certain note duration?
Thanks Isaac, good question... I had it set for 1/16th notes here. For breaks, I tend to quantise to 1/16th notes as there are often notes of that durations in drum breaks, like hi-hats, or ghost snares, which tend to fall on a semiquaver, or sixteenth note interval. I don't think I use 'Current Grid' very often when quantising things, I tend to set it depending on the material. Hope that helps!
Is there something different about the sample pack download? I'm having a hard time getting the sample pack working on ableton.
Hmmm could be the version of Ableton you're working on? Did you dl the Ableton set or just the Rhythm Lab pack? My set has just the break I use in the video chopped up, where as the Rhythm Lab has loads of differently processed amens. Let me know how you get on.
Looks like the files in the "Original" folder are all corrupted. All the others seem to be working though.
Rhythm Lab's site is not working. Can anyone pls upload the pack to gdrive or similar? 🙏
Hey, just checked and it looks okay to me: rhythm-lab.com/the-ultimate-amen-breaks-pack/ let me know if you get in :)
Is there any way other way to get that classic cutoff effect if you’re doing longer chops (mostly quarter notes). I guess I could swap between two different tracks when I want that effect for a quick fill. I’m always keen to see if there’s a way to do as many of the jungle “tricks” as possible within one midi track though. I was hoping there might be a way to automate it
Hmm good question! You could try inserting a choke drum pad which is gated to the others in the choke groups but has nothing in it, so just an empty pad. I sometimes do this with longer parts of a break. And I'm the same totally! Always like to keep things concise like that if I can. Let me know how you get on as I could be misinterpreting the question. Have you checked out my authentic jungle breaks vid? I do the 'ghost' pad thing in that.
@@HumanSynthetics ok that is a genius idea man. I will definitely be trying that!
@@crackerackadingdong Ah sick! Let me know how you get on with it :)
been workin out swell. been able to play my first tunes out live thanks to your videos man @@HumanSynthetics
Do you cut off mid range on amen break snares?(1000hz)
I think the break I used here was already quite heavily eq'd probably around the midrange as you suggest. I've got a little tut in mind for slamming amens...
But to answer your question specifically, yes I often do this with a lot of breaks. But the cut really depends on the frequency content of the audio, sometimes a bit higher. Sometimes a bit lower depending on how the break has been warped.
@@HumanSynthetics When you process breaks or do you use a distortion effect such as one of the stranjah tutorial?
@@edgarsrutkovskis1846 hmmm it really depends on what I'm trying to achieve. Sometimes I use a little to add character, but I often just like my breaks quite clean. I like things like redux for adding character, but only with quite gentle settings.
It can be easy to be too heavy handed with distortion! Often less is more.
If I was trying to make 'come to daddy' by aphex twin then that's a different story!
Thanks for the questions Edgars.
I used Live for 10+ years. I agree with others - for big projects, is is not a great tool. There are bugs in Ableton that have not been fixed for years. Also Ableton support is terrible. The forum admins are obsessed about complaints (trying to intimidate users who complain to much). Ableton website looks like made by some kids 40 years ago. On the other hand the program is very intuitive, not hard to learn and great for creation (inspiring). Having those small plugins always at the bottom of the screen and not being able to detach into another window is a big problem for me because thongs are to small and unreadable. Tons of problems with playing Video and endless problems with missing files (in projects). At the moment, I am thinking about switching to another DAW (or at least using it in parallel), but still cannot decide between Cubase and Studio One. I AM TOTALLY FED UP WITH ABLETON SUPPORT and that is a major factor, I am about to quit.
You're obviously in denial.
Aren't we all?