Designing punchy liquid-funk drums from scratch
1 First, I need to select a suitable drum kit. The drum sounds in liquid DnB are tight and punchy, with tuned-up snares. The John ‘Jabo’ Starks kit from Toontrack’s Funkmasters EZX has just such a snare, so I call up its Dirty Funk preset and turn the Reverb channel down in the mixer page, as I’ll be adding my own ambience later.
2 With the project tempo set to 170bpm, I program a standard four-bar liquid funk kick and snare pattern, repeating for the first three bars with a variation in the kick drum at the end of bar 4. Notice that the kick in this particular kit doesn’t have the requisite DnB power and presence, but don’t worry – we’ll fix that shortly.
3 The hi-hats take a straightforward eighth-note pattern, with the velocity alternating between 127 on the beat and a lower value for the hits between, emulating the emphasis that a real drummer might apply, and preventing the overly robotic feel that inevitably comes from constant-velocity hats in any music.
4 To bring that breakbeat vibe to the part, and make it sound more like the kind of thing a real drummer might play, all I need to do is add some ghost notes on the snare. It’s important not to go overboard with these and keep the velocity very low, otherwise the part will end up sounding too busy.
5 Let’s get some oomph. Loading Live 10’s new Drum Buss device and activating the fixed Compressor evens out dynamics. The bassline root note is D, so setting the Frequency control in the low-end enhancement section to 70Hz and raising the Boom parameter tunes the kick drum to the track, and gives it power and presence.
6 The snare needs liquid DnB-style ‘air’. In EZdrummer 2, I route the snare to its own output in the Mixer page, then create an audio track in Live, with the new snare channel as its input. Sending the snare to a spacey reverb on a return track gives nice ambience, and raising the global Brightness EQ boosts the top end of the whole kit.