Extracting nature’s rhythms
One of the easiest ways to add instant character to a lifeless groove is to seek out and utilise the natural rhythms and textures found within dense, complex field recordings. Take the ‘cafe ambience’ recording from our earlier tutorial as an example: the audio contains street noise, coffee shop chatter, the clinking of coffee cups, chairs scraping, and many more subtle sonic elements that combine to create a unique bed of sound. By dropping a recording like this into your DAW, then playing it underneath more traditional, rigidly-programmed drums, you’ll hear the natural rhythms within, as the variety of elements interact with each other and your beats.
When exploring this technique, make sure you scan through the entire length of the audio in search of the perfect ‘magic moment’ that fits best with the other parts – you’ll know it when you find it! Alternatively, you can always chop up the file and piece together your own collage of choice cuts and segments, further refining its rhythmic interplay against the regimented drums.
From here, you can either keep the ambience element running underneath the entire track, using it as sonic ‘glue’ to subtly bind the other sounds together (see 217’s
Geek Technique for more on this); or you can take things even further and create variation throughout the course of your track by automating processes such as filtering, distortion, delay and reverb.