This section is about more obscure effects that can be applied to excite your breakbeats even more! You see, when I first started learning about breakbeat programming, UK Jungle & Hardcore was all the rage. Those styles, in their day, were very much about breakbeat manipulation. The producers saw what Funk pioneers had done with samplers 10 years earlier, then took it to the next level. In this day and age, the sky is your limit. The technology is there for you to conjure up the most extreme and fascinating effects. With automation we can also pull any of these effects in and out throughout the track, at will, to make the breakbeat more adaptive and the overall track more dynamic. As this is the final part in the guide, I'll be using my own modification of the legendary "Amen" breakbeat at the swift tempo of 160BPM to pick up the pace somewhat. Let's do it!

Reverse Cuts

Remember when we made cuts of the Dreambreak sample to trigger later? Well it's very easy to make even more cuts by duplicating drum hits, then modifying them in some way. One way is to reverse the hit, or an entire cut's string of hits. Listen to the example below to see how I've done this with a very energetic "Amen" sequence.

Hattrixx Amen with reverse cuts

Did you hear where the reversed hits were? I've also used a pitch bend on the last cut, which can be an interesting effect as well.

Pitch Shifting

This isn't so easy, but definitely worth the effort. Sometimes you won't want to use a breakbeat at the pitch it happens to fall on when you stretch it to your destination BPM. However, even the latest pitch shifting facilities tend to sound awful on a busy breakbeat such as the "Amen". The most common method of controlling the pitch is to NOT use a time stretch algorithm at all, but use a hit point calculator! With the hit point calculator you can transfer the breakbeat's hits to your sampling device, and it's groove to MIDI data, so that every single hit can be triggered individually. This means you can lower the pitch of the entire sound (or individual hits), but still keep the groove and not destroy the texture of the breakbeat. Of course you can also raise the pitch of the hits, but then you create gaps between the hit samples (because they've been sped up to reach a higher pitch), which doesn't often sound good all the way through a track. Anyway, this is the technique I have used for the example below. It starts at a higher pitch than the original "Amen", and then falls dramatically. Check it.

Hattrixx Amen with hit-point-based pitch shifting

I DO NOT recommend using a hit point calculator like this if you don't intend to alter the pitch of the breakbeat. The results aren't as smooth as the techniques I've explained in Part 3 & Part 4. Also, complex MIDI editing can become tedious, with every single drum hit to account for. This is especially true of busy breakbeats like the "Amen", which consists of over 30 individual drum hits in total! So what do I do if I just want to stick to a single pitch that's not the same as the original "Amen"? Simple:

1. Load the breakbeat into the hit point calculator.
2. Find and check the hit points.
3. Set the tempo to your destination BPM.
4. Alter the pitch within the hit point calculator.
5. Export or transmit all the hits as one sample.
6. Treat that sample as if you would any other breakbeat, and create cuts with it.

That's not the only pitch shifting effect you can achieve, though. In the old days, popular samplers like the Akai S1000 had the most amazing pitch shifting effects. Not amazing because they were convincing or accurate, but amazing because they produced a unique echoing sound that you could get wildly creativity with. Below is an example of that kind of pitch shifting (which doesn't shift down very well, by the way).

Hattrixx Amen with old style pitch shifting

As you can see, it gives the breakbeat a metallic sort of ring to it. Actually, to produce that example I used the Magix "Samplitude" audio editor. I created pitch-shifted cuts, which I then triggered alongside a regular "Amen" cut. I've used a subtle flanger effect, as well, to make the overall sound extra smooth. You can also achieve this kind of pitch shift with virtual samplers (such as Native Instruments "Kontakt") in real-time, which would give you more control and the ability to program smooth pitch slides rather than my sudden pitch changing effect.

There is another easier pitch manipulation effect. This method is really quick and simple:

1. Load the breakbeat cuts into your sampling device, as normal.
2. Add an extra cut for the main snare.
3. Set the key range of the extra snare cut to span several notes.
4. Trigger patterns and rolls that run up and down the span of the extra snare.

Instant Jungle! Hah! And you don't even have to limit yourself to the snare, you could use any other cut that sounds good. Bear in mind, though, that you have to be quite quick with the cuts either side of the original pitch, because they do drift out of time with this technique.

Time Stretching

If you can do old style pitch shifting, you can do old style time stretching too!

Hattrixx Amen stretched to 400% length using old style time stretch

I find this is a nice dramatic way of switching to a slower groove, or on individual cuts it's a good way to add interest to an adventurous sequence. Newer time stretching algorithms can be used in similar ways, but I've found they tend to soften the sound too much, whereas the old style time stretch makes a sound slightly grittier (and you can always soften it later if required).

Filtering

Low pass filtering is a typical technique that's used on all sounds in Dance music, maybe even a little too much. You can swoosh and sweep like in my example below...

Hattrixx Amen through a low pass filter

...or you could set the filter cut off on the sampling device to trigger via velocity. Usually it's also a good idea to experiment with the resonance control, for the best sound. For example, you can configure your modulation wheel to affect filter cut off and filter resonance levels in such a way that the resonance rises as the cut off decreases. That way, the filter will sound a lot less flat, the perceived overall volume isn't lessened too much, and with a lot of sounds you can achieve an under-water-type effect (especially if you use a reverb or stereo delay effect on top).

Arguably more useful is a high pass filter. When you use a high pass filter, the cut off runs in the opposite direction and cuts from the lowest frequencies to the highest frequencies. With this you can make snares crack, kick drums 'make way for the bass', or create longer dynamic sweeps, which hint towards a coming change in the track.

Amplitude Modulation

Amplitude modulation is a process where you set a sound's volume to an LFO. Some amplitude modulation effects allow you to create a stereo offset, so that when the volume drops in each stereo channel, it plays in the other. I've found that the stereo spread this produces to be useful for areas in a track where a breakbeat is less prominent (for example a breakdown). I would tend to layer it with a quite mono version of the breakbeat, as I have done in the example below.

Hattrixx Amen through stereo amplitude modulation

I'll let you in on a little secret, though. There's an even cleverer trick with amplitude modulation. In styles of music where there's not a lot going on other than the breakbeat, try layering it with a copy going through stereo amplitude modulation. You can really make a breakbeat sound thick and fresh if you do this just right. You might also want to try turning down parts of the effected breakbeat and just thicken your snares, for example. Remember where you read it first!

Bit Crushers & Sample Dividers

These devices lower the resolution of the sound going through it, to make it rough and grainy. You also lose a lot of high frequencies when you drop down to lower sample rates, so it can be used like a more modern alternative to a low pass filter, as I've done in my example below.

Hattrixx Amen through a bit-crushing effect

If you are going to layer crusty old breakbeats with fresh new percussion samples, you might want to use one of these devices to make it all sound crusty. It really depends on what type of sound you want to produce.

Gating

There are different ways to achieve the gate effects.

As above, you can manually draw the gate patterns into the MIDI editor, with the Expression or Volume controllers. However, if that comes in the signal chain before effects such as reverb or compression it might not sound right. On top of that, some devices aren't capable of responding to volume changes that quickly. So my alternative method is to use an audio track, split it up into segments, then mute the segments where I want silence. The audio method has it's disadvantages, as well, because it's not always practical to record an audio segment until the full arrangement of your track is finished. Here's how it sounds, anyway...

Hattrixx Amen with manual gating effects

...but there are more types of gating. I've found tempo-synchronised gate effects that have many advantages over the techniques I've described so far. The disadvantage is that it can be difficult to get those gate effects to reliably stop and start when you want them to. You could always keep a 'gate only' channel, and run your breakbeat through it only as and when you want a gate, but that's a lot of resources spent on one small effect and it still might not be 100% reliable.

The other type of gate is a noise gate, which sounds very little like the previous example. A noise gate has an amplitude threshold just like a compressor, but anything that doesn't reach the threshold is silenced completely. Therefore, it can be used to eliminate the sounds between the loud peaks of your drum hits. That's useful, because it means you can accentuate snares and kicks to create a lot of space in a breakbeat sample that could otherwise have compromised clarity.

Controlled Phasing

I haven't heard this effect used for such a long time that I almost forgot to add it to this guide. Actually, the example below sounds a lot like the old style pitch shifting example. Have a quick listen before I explain how it's done.

Hattrixx Amen with a controlled phasing effect

Those parts of the breakbeat you could hear that sounded as if they were changing pitch were 2 layers of the same sample, with a slight offset. This effect can only be controlled with MIDI triggers if they're blessed with the luxury of sample-accurate timing. What? If you're using a virtual sampling device, rather than a hardware sampler, you can use triggers and turn the quantise off to create this effect. You just layer a 2nd copy of the cut you want to 'phase', then drag it slightly so that it starts a bit later than the 1st instance. The further you drag them apart, the deeper the tone of the phase, and the more echo-like the texture will be. The closer they are together, the more tight and whiney the phase will sound.

Simply because we're using cuts that are triggered extremely close to each other, this will not work without sample-accurate timing. If the timing is loose, the pitch and texture of the phases will not be consistent. A way around this problem is to manually create 'phased' cuts where you've just pasted a cut sample on top of itself, shortly after it's initial attack. Then you load the new 'phased' cut into your sampling device and trigger it in isolation when you want that effect.

In the old days, however, this effect was achieved using a delay module that operates in milliseconds. An advantage of using this method is that you get an accurate result every time without the need to create extra cuts. A disadvantage is that you need a device to provide the delay effect on the breakbeat that's dynamically programmable. If it can't be switched on and off at will, it's pretty pointless.

Please be aware of how this effect alters the amplitude of the breakbeat. You might have to use a compressor, or experiment with the volume to prevent it from overloading the mixer channel.

Vocoding

If you're thinking 'talking breakbeats', then you're not too far wrong, but that's not what we're going for here. In basic terms, a vocoder morphs 2 sound signals into 1, using the first signal as a carrier and the other as a modulator. What does that mean? I won't go into the science, but it means you don't necessarily have to morph a human voice with a synthesizer - you could always morph a breakbeat with a synthesizer. Have a listen, you'll see what I mean by "morph".

Chords played on the Hattrixx Amen, through a vocoder effect

Mmmmm, now that's my kind of sound manipulation!

The Conclusion

Well that's the end of my little guide. I hope you learnt a lot from it and I'd appreciate it if you could take the time to visit my personal website. Don't ever hesitate to get in contact via my website if you have any questions. Feedback is also welcome, and I'd love to know how you get on with your breakbeats!

Thank you.

Hattrixx...