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JWM - Splat (Glitchy Lofi DnB Track)
Here's some 160 bpm goodness for you all to feast your ears upon. My first time diving into Drum & Bass believe it or not. Instead of heavier DnB with "Dubstep" Neuro basses and shit, I went a more simplistic route inspired by Dedf1sh music from the Splatoon series.
Not gonna lie, I tried to use various plugins to try and achieve the glitch effects I wanted, and I couldn't get the sound anywhere near what I imagined in my head. So instead of plugins, I froze the tracks to audio and edited the glitches by hand. 😂 That got me pretty close to what I heard in my head.
So to avoid redundancy in this thread, my process is explained in greater detail here. https://forum.loopypro.com/discussion/comment/1395898/#Comment_1395898
Tagging @FizzyLizzy27 so they can hear the final result of this project. Hope you enjoy this, mate. 
Cheers.
Jim
Comments
Bump.
Edit: Still waiting for comments.
My first thought is that it could fit in the Severance TV show with the unusual happy/quirky piano theme, cool track!
I feel you ahahah, I also did this too many times.
Good.
You should make more drum and bass.
You are getting close to the Splatoon tracks that were posted on that other thread! The glitch by hand must take a lot of work… I’m wondering if control of the volume on an AUM track with an LFO (i.e. rapid on/off events) might save you the extra hand work. Just activate and de-activate the LFO.
Of course, Drambo or Mozaic can be helpful here to program the right behavior for the CC stream to drive an AUM channel.
@Etienne While I definitely try to stay away from TV shows (takes away from music production, and it still doesn't get much better than "Breaking Bad" imho, lol), I heard "Severance" is a good one. ❤️ Thanks mate. Glad you dug the piano theme.
And yes, sometimes it's tough to realise what's in my head by using a plugin alone, and so it requires me to get into the nitty gritty editing instead. 😂 I don't mind that though, because a plugin often has a limited preset way of glitching audio. With audio editing, only your imagination is the limit.
@sigma79 That's definitely the plan, mate. Was stuck in a bit of a music creation funk, but only because I was tired of producing genres I'm already good at. This is literally my first Drum & Bass track.l if you can believe it, so it gave me the challenge to try new-to-me things. I think it's serviceable for a first try at any rate. 😅
@McD Glad to hear that I'm close to the Splatoon tracks. Then again, whenever I try to shoot for a sound or vibe, it somehow still becomes my own rather than a direct carbon copy. 😂 Which is good though. Took me years to develop a sonic signature.
Glitch editing by hand took less time than me trying to faff about playing with glitch plugins like Effectrix. 😂 I got more satisfaction out of editing by hand than if I would've used a plugin to automate the glitching. Before BT had plugins to do glitching for him, he did all that stutter editing shit by hand. 🫢 Afaik, "Somnambulist" has the most microedits in a track to date.
But now that you mention trying Drambo to do edits and such, I may give that a shot and experiment. (Then again I may become frustrated and return to editing audio on a timeline. 😂 )
I suspect a Mozaic script to automate the on/off volume “glitches” would just be a few lines of code and hundreds of lines
after the users ask for additional features. I’ll leave that path to the real programmer’s and maybe share the easy one
in this thread if you don’t mind.
Nice work, your glitch “programming” worked well…👍
Well done!
Great track, Jim!
@McD My music threads are all about learning and helping each other. I certainly don't mind if it helps me and the rest of our small community on the web. ☺️
@faction Thank you so much, my friend.
You certainly have made a great impact here with the short time you were here so far. Can't wait to hear what you'll create in the future.
@Pxlhg @Pierre118 Thank you so much, my friends. That means a lot to me.
Or, what if? I combined Drum & Bass with Reggaeton? 😂 If you stop to think about it, DnB is roughly twice the speed of Reggaeton, so the two genres can marry together in an unholy union of cacophony! 🧑🔬
I also liked the piano theme running through…
For some reason when I read Splatoon I hear Puckoon (by Spike Milligan) so struggle to take it seriously… sorry and apologies for any derailment 😊
I knew from the amplitude graphic this would be an interesting one and it has a very catchy piano hook too. Having come up through reel to reel recorders with worn tape guides, effects with limited bandwidth and a bug chunk of recording session time spent on tracking down hum, the idea of deliberately adding imperfections seems alien. But I get it that glitch is a ‘thing’ and your attention to detail in getting exactly the effect you wanted is to your credit. Thank you too (I think) for introducing me to the Squid Sisters!
Lol. Splatoon is a fun videogame series not meant to be taken seriously, lol. Also, apologies for not getting back to you sooner mate. I'm...kind of shocked I didn't. 😂
Absolutely mate.
Well, it's strange. Music producers spent so long trying to remove imperfections from recordings, and once that was achieved through DAWs and such, it's like the resulting sound became too polished (stale). So now producers want to reintroduce imperfections to give their recordings some character. That's what I figured anyways.
Glad you like the Squid Sisters. I still need to get Splatoon 3 tbqh. Someday.
@jwmmakerofmusic solid track, I’d honestly like to hear more about what you used to make the track
Definitely, mate. These two comments in response to @FizzyLizzy27 I linked to above explain the entire process in better detail, but for better clarity I'll copy/paste them here.
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I actively listened to the original 21-minute video about three times today (rather than passively listened). What I've noticed is how most of the tracks seem to be written in some sort of mellow Drum & Bass genre. Some drum patterns are that of Dubstep, and some are HipHop. But I didn't find any "four on the floor" grooves in the Dedf1sh tracks (thank goodness, since I'm burnt out on the "four on the floor" grooves).
Okay, so instead of creating a complete project and sending that to you and explaining everything at once, I'm learning alongside you @FizzyLizzy27 . I will eventually send to you the final project regardless, but only once it's complete.
So, what I did for this first attached example was lay out the chords and bass with the default piano sound. I set the BPM to 160, and used A Minor for the key (not that the specific key and chord progression matter since you can go with whatever chord progression and key you desire). No melody juuust yet (if there'll be one that is, or the chords will be the main feature). The idea sketch isn't exactly what will end up being the final thing. I may chop up the chords for some rhythmic effects once I copy/paste the MIDI to a pad. Or I may use Effectrix or even simple audio editing. To be determined.
(I need to check above to see if you yet have Effectrix. If not, unfortunately it is a $25 full unlock IAP which I can't gift you (since Apple in their infinite lack of wisdom decided to not allow the gifting of non-subscription IAPs, sigh).
Then what I did was lay out the drum samples in Koala Sampler. I heard a lot of very simple punchy drum samples rather than anything complex, so I used the samples from the infamous "Superdrums 8000" sample pack (not sure if it's now discontinued, but it's the late and great Doru Malaia's masterpiece!) I used one choke group for the kick, snare, and tom fill. I used another choke group for the hi hats. The crash cymbal is...a crash cymbal, obviously. The reverse crash is actually a ride cymbal reversed and stretched to one bar.
I mostly programmed the kick and snare on an 8th note grid, the hi hats on 16th notes, and for the "glitchy" effect, programmed those drums on 32nd notes.
Anyways, hope this helps so far.
Okay, so I realised that an "idea sketch" is not really all that great for giving advice, so I decided to break each section down in the attached walk-through (see below all this text for said audio walkthrough).
As mentioned, the track is in A-Minor at 160bpm with the DnB style. You can choose any BPM, key, and chord progression you wish. It's all up to your imagination.
The first 8 bars show off the basses. There's a subbass (a sinewave from Micrologue) being affected by Bleass Saturator. Nothing much to write home about as it's more of a utilitarian thing. 😂 Then there's the midbass, which is the more interesting of the two effects. I used two sawtooth waves an octave apart, and I slightly detuned the second oscillator. I also used Bleass Saturator on this, but of course used Cubasis' studio EQ to shave off a bit of low-end so the subbass shines through. Of note, I used Micrologue's LFO to add some movement to the filter cutoff as well as a slight pitch wobble. 😉
The next 8 bars shows off Cubasis' Lofi Piano. This has a lot of glitchiness to it. I tried to use Effectrix, but it was lackluster for my purposes. So what I did instead was I froze the MIDI to audio, made a shitload of edits by hand (making use of the fade handles, repeating some audio, reversing some audio, etc etc etc), then freezing the audio again. I slapped on Cubasis' reverb and studio EQ.
Then the next 8 bars shows off Cubasis' NeoFM Gentle Synth Pads. Similar process as the Lofi Piano where I froze to audio, made a bunch of edits, froze to audio again, and added reverb and EQ.
The next 8 bars are the drums, which I explained in the previous reply. However, I'll reiterate that I used Koala Sampler, choke groups, and a lot of 8th notes, 16th notes, and 32nd notes. This helps give the whole thing a glitchy feel. I did use ToneBooster's Reverb on this one since I could shave off the low-end with its internal EQ in order to prevent muddiness. I noticed reverb on the drums in many of the Splatoon Dedf1sh tracks, so decided to add a small amount of that.
Next 16 bars compile everything together. (The reason I did 16 bars is the drum pattern is slightly different from the first 8 bars to the other 8 bars).
And, if you notice, there is some sidechain ducking going on with the basses, Gentle pad, and Lofi piano. This was achieved by placing Cubasis' Channel Strip and routing the Koala track to each channel strip. I turned off the auto makeup gain, reduced the length of the release to taste, and adjusted the threshold to taste. (A small "rule of thumb" for sidechain ducking - the higher an instrument's notes are in a mix, the shorter the release time should be, and the less intense the threshold should be. Basses require just a bit more threshold and release to let the kickdrum shine through. Then again, "rules of thumb" are meant to be broken, but stick to this "rule of thumb" just for now.)
In summary - just freeze most things to audio and edit by hand. Drums can be glitched out with Koala using choke groups and somewhat clever note programming. Other elements (especially sustained ones) should be frozen to audio and edited further from there. Cubasis has fade handles, the "repeat" handle at the middle of the right side of each clip, you can select a group of clips in a lane and adjust the fade handles all at once, etc. Then Cubasis has a transpose function where you can transpose a clip by cents, semitones, and/or octaves. And if you double-tap a clip, you can even reverse it in Cubasis' simple audio editor.
Yes, I discovered all this through trial and error. From what I've discovered, editing everything "by hand" may be a bit of a pain in the ass, but it allows me a lot more control over the final results.
(Also, you can even edit the final audio loops even further if you really want to!)
Hopefully this helps. Now for me to structure out and finish the piece of music.
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And therefore I structured out said piece of music, which is what you just heard, mate.
Again, I had to edit everything "by hand" in order to achieve what I did. Honestly, it was a bigger pain in the arse to search for a plugin to do that stuttering for me than it was to just, ya know, freeze the audio and edit by hand. 😂
This was dope!
Exactly what I assume the fight music from the Persona series sounds like (never played but heard descriptions a lot of times 🤣🤣)
Edit: or if Kojima took over and released Sleeping Dogs 2 with a DMC button mash fighting system
Edit 2: crap... I may have just envisioned my perfect AAA title and it'll never happen
Eh, Ive got my indie ideas brewing for when I have "freeze thyme" or whatever they're calling it these days
YES! Exactly mate! Exactly the kind of vibe I tried to achieve! 😃
Hahah well ya fkin nailed it!
Quite envious of, not just recognizing the nuances of different subgenres, but being able to flow between em (from the outsiders perspective) so effortlessly
And consistently good stuff for which burgeoning producers can inspire!
Cause it has been, and is
Thanks mate.
Well, it's taken me many, many years of practice and active listening to several different genres and subgenres to get a feel for each. I can produce just about any genre (except maybe Prog Rock, which is amazing to listen to and I love listening to Prog, but a bitch to try and produce for me personally, ymmv). So yeah, this was my first attempt at DnB and, specifically, the Dedf1sh style from Splatoon. All to help another artist out in fact.
It's just basically me figuring out a style, actively listening rather than passively listening for enjoyment, paying attention to tropes as well as nuances, and then hunkering down and attempting to nail the style in a DAW or other creative environment - Cubasis 3 being the case this time.
@jwmmakerofmusic 👌👏