Making beats using loops etc? (Cubase)

[amberleaf]

Hi All

Just wondering if anyone has any tips and tricks on making beats with drum loops a faster or more streamlined process?. I have a few drum loops that are about 30 seconds long and i know you can make hit points and chop them into groove agent and assign pads but it all seems very laborious.
Is it better to start with the music first maybe and add the drums later rather than trying to craft the drum track first ?
I am doing mostly world \ ethnic music so need to breakdown beats and add stops and change patters but at the moment i am lucky if i get 2 different looped patterns together as it seems to take so long.

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[newbreednet]

Truly, and I don't mean to sound flippant; if you want to produce music without effort, check out some of the threads on the AI music tools like Suno and Udio.

 

[doctoremmet]

Imagine people who actually play in entire drum tracks

As for loops: the “crafting” of loops, breaking them up, creating some new sycopating breaks from the chops… that’s the creative process where new music is going to pop up. It will take time.

If that’s not what you’re after (the fun and the creative process of crafting tailor made loops that is), and instead just need more “ready made” beats as an accompaniment for your world music, maybe you need to acquire a collection of, well…., “ready made syncable world music loops”? I imagine there is a whole universe of those available over at Splice, Loopcloud etc.?

 

[amberleaf]

Truly, and I don't mean to sound flippant; if you want to produce music without effort, check out some of the threads on the AI music tools like Suno and Udio.

I put a lot of effort into the music i make but mostly on the music side of it , only starting to experiment with drum loops and sampling and i am just really slow at chopping and sequencing beats and was just seeing if anyone had workflow tricks or tips that they have discovered with experience.

 

[amberleaf]

Imagine people who actually play in entire drum tracks

As for loops: the “crafting” of loops, breaking them up, creating some new sycopating breaks from the chops… that’s the creative process where new music is going to pop up. It will take time.

If that’s not what you’re after (the fun and the creative process of crafting tailor made loops that is), and instead just need more “ready made” beats as an accompaniment for your world music, maybe you need to acquire a collection of, well…., “ready made syncable world music loops”? I imagine there is a whole universe of those available over at Splice, Loopcloud etc.?

Yeah i guess as much , I'll figure out a method with time I'm sure but just thought I'd ask just in case. Thanks though !

 

[doctoremmet]

Yeah i guess as much , I'll figure out a method with time I'm sure but just thought I'd ask just in case. Thanks though !

Sometimes a drum loop can be an excellent way to get inspiration for a track. For one world music “type” track (which I hardly ever make) I’ve used loops from UVI’s World Suite, and for drum ‘breaks’ I added percussion by playing that in using individual one shot samples of a djembe. (Demo below). I tried to achieve a bit of an afrobeat vibe.

I think there must be quite a few sample libraries for your particular use case, with loops and variations, intros, outros etc. particularly catered to the genre.

 

[amberleaf]

Sometimes a drum loop can be an excellent way to get inspiration for a track. For one world music “type” track (which I hardly ever make) I’ve used loops from UVI’s World Suite, and for drum ‘breaks’ I added percussion by playing that in using individual one shot samples of a djembe. (Demo below). I tried to achieve a bit of an afrobeat vibe.

I think there must be quite a few sample libraries for your particular use case, with loops and variations, intros, outros etc. particularly catered to the genre.

Thanks for this , this is the kind of answer i was looking for . So it sounds like you layered extra tracks over the loop you made with the one shot samples?...
I will play around with that later when the kids go to bed
Thanks for taking the time to answer and show an example

 

[doctoremmet]

So it sounds like you layered extra tracks over the loop you made with the one shot samples?...

This is exactly it. Simple but effective enough in this case, I figured?

 

[Nico5]

A rather different approach, and arguably one of the quickest ways to achieve a sense of originality with the least amount of work is to drive drum loops through one or more fx chains.

The biggest insta-modifier may be a decent bpm controlled delay applied to the loop.

This works best when the original loop is not too busy already, but if it's the right kind of busy, you never know what goodness may result.

Add compression, distortion, filters, eq and whatever else to get to different sonic spaces.

Bonus points for using multi-band version effects for some or all of the above, since that makes it pretty simple to have different things happen for the kick, the snares/toms/bongos etc. and the hi hat, shaker, cabasa, cymbals, etc.

In Cubase, one could also use multiple fx sends from the same loop, and populate each fx channel with different fx chains and mix to taste. For bonus, make the sends into pre=fader sends, and (optionally) dial down the fader of the original loop containing track. Or not. And route all of those fx drum tracks plus the original to a drum group, so you can still control the total volume of whatever drum madness genius you've cooked up.

And then start dialing presets or knobs and faders on the fx until it feels like something you want to jam along with.


p.s. Of course you could also be like me and hoard drum machine plugins, libraries and special purpose loop mangling and rhythmic kind of fx. But that's a hobby in itself and rather adds to the time spent on drum parts rather than making it quicker.

 

[Laddy]

Check out the Sampler Track in Cubase. Drag and drop audio, if in/out points are not set, find them, let the program chop the loop into hitpoints, drag and drop the resulting midi and then edit the midi by switching, deleting notes etc. No need for groove agent there.

Also, one way to work is to find a loop you like and just repeat it for the duration of the whole song, then play around with melodies and chords to make a track, and after that return to the drum track and work with details.