Savage DnB beats in Ableton Live

Jamie takes a relatively minimal approach to making Trick’s beat, focusing on sound selection and minimal, tasteful processing

01 > The first part of Trick’s beat is a break that Jamie sliced to MIDI and slightly rearranged. “Having fundamentals at the forefront is important, so I’ve removed the transient from the snare in the break simply by increasing the attack on the amplitude envelope.” 02 > “Breaks often don’t have the right transient or snap that you want to get that power that drum & bass has. It’s important to reinforce it with something with a very solid transient behind the character,” continues Jamie. He uses a ‘wood block’-style snare with a full-sounding attack to supplement the break’s snare. 03 > Jamie also reinforces the break’s kicks using two different kick samples that have a slightly varying characters, but occupy the same kind of range in the frequency spectrum. “The tonal difference makes it sound a bit more live,” he adds. 04 > “The drum bus is simple – all the movement, hi-hats and energy comes from the break, and the power is from the hits. Processing-wise, on the bus, I’ve started with bx_console E, where I’ve added top end, cut lows, applied parallel compressions and analogue distortion.” 05 > “After that I’ve got the DJMFilter which is handy because with one simple movement you go from cutting the lows to cutting the highs,” Jamie enthuses. “Then, after that, I’ve got the RX950 which gels things together, and the clipping sound that it has is quite dirty and cool.” 06 “I’ve also got another bus with extra drum sounds in it. There’s little going on in these: filtering and a choppedup Think break with some weird plugins. I use deessers on drums a lot to prevent harsh top end; here I’ve used it to chill the top end of the breakout.”