7. Sequencing groovy noise loops with rhythmic automation

1

Instead of using iZotope’s free Vinyl plugin to virtually age and degrade pristine signals, we’re going to abuse its noise-outputting abilities to design a choppy, gated percussion loop from scratch. Insert the plugin on an empty audio track in your DAW, then set Year to

1950 for a crunchier, thinner noise timbre.

2

To help us design a rhythmic loop that works well under a beat, we import a basic multipart drum groove – comprised of a 4/4 kick, clap on beats 2 and 4 of the bar, and offbeat hi-hats – onto new channels into our 126bpm project. This will help influence the way we shape our loop’s rhythm and groove.

3

The Mechanical Noise slider sets the level of noise Vinyl spits out. To rhythmically sequence our vinyl noise ‘oscillator’ level, we’ll automate this parameter in regimented lines, creating a gated 16th-note groove. We’ve gone for the choppy, jagged pattern above. We’ve only broadly joined the dots for now, in preparation for our next move…

4

By bending and shaping our jagged 16th-note shapes, we create swing-like rhythms and interesting timings that interplay nicely with the straight drum hits. Most DAWs offer a method of bending automation curves into logarithmic or exponential shapes – here in Ableton Live 9, we simply hold Alt while dragging an automation line up or down.

5

Next, for even more rhythmic interest, we automate the Scratch slider to hit an amount of 10 on the first and third offbeats of the bar. This injects stuttering bursts of crackles into the groove for triplet-like flourishes, ghost pops and pre-beat stutters that lead into each clap.

6

Our vinyl scratches from the previous step are annoyingly random, giving us an inconsistent effect. To capture a more predictable groove, we render several bars of our noise to a new audio file and splice together pieces of the new audio loop to collate a bar-long loop that works best with the overall groove.

7

Our rhythmic noise groove is now a canvas for all manner of processing. Before we reach for anything creative, we’ll address a nasty resonant peak in the low-mid frequencies – a targeted -7.5dB EQ scoop at 500Hz, courtesy of OverTone DSP’s AF2-10-CM, pulls down the offending bloat, giving us a cleaner mix and more room for other track elements.

8

Let’s try out a few creative processors to give the loop more personality. First, with its Mix set to just 5% for subtlety, we’ve automated The Orb CM’s main Vowel and

Drift amount for a faint touch of talking formant-filter sweeps; next, Xfer’s OTT pulls up the loop’s quietest points with a combo of upwards and downwards compression; and Xfer’s free Dimension Expander creates lush stereo information.