Bounce as you go
When it’s time to lay a track down against the clock, who wants to waste hours layering umpteen kick or snare samples on top of each other? There’s got to be one perfect drum hit in your samples folder that’ll get the job done, right? But if you’re a producer in search of a truly unique style, and generic drum samples just aren’t cutting it, it might be time to start designing your own beats from scratch. By piecing together each component of every single drum hit (via sample-layering or synthesis), you’ll have the ultimate control over the timbre, pitch, power and width of your electronic kit as a whole.
In this video exercise, we do exactly this, putting our beat-building chops to the test by building a multitrack drum groove using only a single instance D16 Group’s drum-layering plugin PunchBox. Although PunchBox is primarily a ‘kick designer’ instrument, we’re going to use its sample-layering modules to create every single percussive element of a house/techno beat – kick, hats, claps, toms and crashes – one at a time, layer by layer. After one sound is finished, we’ll immediately render it to a new audio track, then move on and create the next element, until we have a fully-formed groove built from the ground up.
But what’s the point of completely arbitrary challenges like this? Well, imposing limitations and restricting your sonic palette will force you to make the most of what you do have in front of you. By allowing yourself to use only one sound-generating instrument to create every tiny piece of a more complex puzzle, you won’t have to stop mid-flow and decide where to source the next element from – and you’ll get to grips with that one instrument a lot quicker, as you’re forced to learn its every nuance in the search for new sounds and layers. Plus, this method replicates the ‘overdubbing’ workflow you must use when working with a single hardware instrument, which can be both methodical and inspiring. With that, let’s, ahem, ‘kick’ things off…