Ed:it shows how to keep transitions interesting

1 To start, here’s my eight-bar drum beat, coloured green. At the end of the first four bars, I’ve placed an audio file of a breakbeat (red) onto a new audio channel. I’ll cut out and delete all elements of the main beat, to ensure the new loop has its own space in the mix.

2 Next, I’ll chop up the break into individual hits. You can see here that I’ve applied fade-ins and fade-outs to the start and end of each slice to prevent clicks. After that, I’ve swapped round the slices so that the hits work better with the main beat.

3 For contrast, I’ve reversed several hits to give the breakbeat a weirder, glitchier sound. This jolts the listener’s attention away from the overall groove’s repetitiveness. For a less obvious effect, I’ve chosen to reverse the break slices that occur between the kick and snare hits.

4 Transposing certain hits up or down will create excitement and more of an individual sound. There are no hard or fast rules here – I’ve simply selected hits at random and tried out different pitch values to see what works. Sometimes I’ll even pitch the entire loop in one go.

5 Next, to create sweeping and aggressive motion throughout the loop’s frequency range, I’ve called up a resonant high-pass filter (FabFilter Micro). I’ve recorded in my sweeps by twisting a MIDI knob. This is then quantised after to smoothen the filtering.

6 To finish the edit, I route the signal to my main drum group, and send its signal a reverb return. This cements the break with the rest of my drums. For stereo movement, I automate the channel’s pan amount sharply from right to left for a quick spin around the stereo field. Job done!

7 For my second breakbeat edit, I’ve called up Spectrasonics Stylus RMX. Each hit is separated across the keyboard for easy MIDI manipulation. Like before, on the eighth bar of my track, I cut out a bar of the main drums and place the new loop in the gap.

8 By editing MIDI notes, I can resequence the loop’s individual slices to fit the broken-beat style of my track. I then go on to pitch up the entire break within Stylus RMX, to give it a little bit more character and contrast against the main beats.

9 I now mess up the loop for maximum drama. Here, I’ve inserted Illformed’s Glitch on the channel, then tweaked the plugin’s various effects to adapt the break’s overall timbre. Adjusting the wet/ dry Mix level to around 75% retains some of the original signal.

10 Next in the chain, I’ve inserted iZotope VocalSynth for additional graininess. Keeping the mix at around 50%, I’ve used the Polyvox, Vocoder, Talkbox, Delay & Transform modules to refine my effect. Yes, I know I’m not processing a vocal… but using a plugin outside of its remit can produce unique results!

11 Next, two more insert effects. The first is Endless Smile’s Helium Jumping preset – automating this from high to low creates a sweeping rise over the loop. PSP Nitro is next, adding gentle chorus with a

50% mix amount. These both add excitement and flow, and allow the main beat to breathe into the next section.

12 Again, I’ll route the channel to the main drum group to glue the dynamics of the break with the main drums. I’ve precisely adjusted the channel volume to work within the mix; and again, subtly automated pan from left to right for additional width. To end, I’ll send a small amount of the break to my aux drum reverb for ambience.