Groove-switching tricks

Stuck in a loop? Edit suggests some new ways to mix up your rhythms with fills and turnarounds

A looping drum groove quickly becomes repetitive. That’s why I like to design clever turnarounds, fills and edits – even simple switch-ups can add tons of interest.

Once happy with my core drum groove, I usually review the rhythmic phrases at the end of eight- or 16-bar sections, then switch things up by altering the existing beats, adding in a new breakbeat or sample, or both together. In this tutorial, we’ll see this with two processed breakbeats. For the first, I’ll make use of Cubase’s audio editing features to slice, reverse, pitch and filter. I aim to splice the break so it fits the surrounding track perfectly. For the second drum break, I’ll trigger it via MIDI using one of my favourite virtual instruments, Spectrasonics Stylus RMX. This time, instead of slicing and sequencing the break as audio, I’ll process it with various creative plugins such as iZotope VocalSynth, Illformed Glitch and PSP Nitro.

I like to group my individual drum tracks to a single drum bus for collective processing. Sending the new glitchy breakbeat edits to the main group helps combine them sonically, add weight, and save time at mixing stage. This way, I can spend hours creating weird drum textures and shifting through various grooves to split from the track’s orderly drum beat. The possibilities are endless – but sometimes, less is more. Mix up the techniques to find something that fits your own style!