Fleshing Out The Beat With Claps, Hats And Percussion

Once Max has got his kicks sounding substantial, he laces his beat with a selection of other drum machine samples and a funky shaker loop

Next Max adds a clap, and like the kick he does this by sequencing a short note and using the Simpler’s Release time to control how long the sample plays for. To apply manual swing, Max zooms the MIDI grid editor in and repositions one of the hits manually. He also turns down the velocity on the swung hit to make it less prominent. An open 909 hat is added next, which Max tunes to fit with the kick and the clap, and he then applies reverb to it via a return track. He complements the open hat part with a closed 909 hat, and he applies 1/16th note swing by moving the hits manually. Unlike the previous sounds, the shaker part is an audio clip. The loop is stereo and is louder on the left channel than the right, so to make it mono Max adds a Utility effect with the Width parameter set to 0%. He then groups the hats, puts a Compressor on the shaker track, and uses the hat group to feed the Compressor’s sidechain input, ducking the shaker when the hats play. A high-pass filter in EQ Eight is used to take the unwanted low-end out of the clap, and Max sets this to around 1kHz. He then duplicates the clap track, and transposes the duplicate part down four semi-tones to make a thicker clap sound. So that the open and closed hats don’t clash, Max puts a Compressor on the closed hat channel, and sets its sidechain input to the open hat track. This causes the closed hats to duck in volume every time the open hat plays. Max picks out a snare sample and uses his MIDI controller to record a part live. He then tweaks its timing in the MIDI grid editor, and complements it with another snare sample which he sequences in a similar fashion to create a funky rhythmic interplay. He pans the snares slightly to give the beat a little stereo width.