Drum & Bass Shuffles Part 1

Interesting Drum N Bass Shuffles in FL Studio Part 1

By Sean Duncan

Shuffles can be an important part of a DnB beat. Whether they come in the form of tambourines, hats, or percussion, they often make the track seem faster and when done properly they can give the beat a rolling feeling. In Part 1, we’ll be creating a custom shuffle using multiple samples, effects, and envelopes.

AudioExample

Step 1 - Load Sounds

Most of the time, simply taking a hat or ride and filling in sixteenth notes results in an uninteresting, “machine gun” sound. We can avoid this by using multiple samples. The samples we’ll be using in this example come from the Studio Drums pack on Audiotuts’ Freebie page, but feel free to use different samples if you’d like. If you’re following along, load prac_hat, prac_hat2, and prac_hat3. To see what the machine gun effect sounds like, fill in all the sixteen steps with one of the samples and press play. Velocity variation can help us, but it still sounds dull.

AudioExample (without velocity variation)

AudioExample (with velocity variation)

Step 2 - Pattern

Since we’re avoiding the machine gun effect, let’s use all three of our samples and make a pattern such that no sound is repeated twice in a row. Also, set all three of these samples to the same Cut group, on the Sampler’s Misc tab, this will make it so that the sounds interrupt each other without even letting each other finish. I also wanted to mention that I’m at 170bpm.

Step 3 - Envelopes

Next, let’s tighten up our sound with some volume envelopes. The first hat will have the largest envelope, and the second hat will have a slightly smaller envelope, this makes for a dynamic sound that puts the emphasis on the standard beats. The third hat, which is filling in the gaps, should be even smaller.

It’s sounding good right now, but it’s very vanilla and not Drum N Bass-y enough. Let’s use an effect to make it more interesting, I recommend something that will affect the pitch, or a flanger, or something similar. I’m going to use the freeware Kore Player FX plugin, the patch called Grain Shifter works quite nicely.

Step 4 - Render, SliceX

Next, render the file and load it into slicer plugin like SliceX. The advantage of rendering it is that we can now use this sound in other projects, compose a pattern more easily in the piano roll, and take advantage of the tools that SliceX has. I find it’s much more user-friendly to save a shuffle as a single file for slicing rather than saving the individual hits.

After some experimentation I decided to make a pattern that doesn’t use the first slice, but instead uses the second, third, and fourth slices. I also adjusted the velocities to make the pattern more exciting, so that it has a dynamic sound rather than a static tone. Since the second and fourth slices sound exactly the same, you might be wondering why I am using both of them. We’ll be changing them a little bit in the next step.

Step 5 - More Envelopes

Next, let’s use tighten up our sound even further by using SliceX’s envelopes. By default, the current envelope set that is displayed will affect all the slices, but let’s leave Slice 4 out of this by assigning it to a different envelope set. These different envelope sets are called Articulators, so let’s assign Slice 4 to Articulator 3 and leave everything else on Articulator 1. Let’s decrease the decay knob on articulator 1 to see what we get.

This sounds pretty cool, the lack of an envelope on Slice 4 gives it a sort of a jazzy, sometimes-open-hat vibe. What I was looking for, however, was a rolling shuffle that doesn’t draw too much attention to itself, so we’ll need to tame that slice. Let’s go to Articulator 3 in order to adjust Slice 4’s envelope. I took out a little bit of the attack and adjusted the decay. It’s still a unique sound, which is good, and it blends in a little better now.

Step 6 -With Kick and Snare

Now let’s hear how it sounds with a kick and snare. I used the Kick and Snare from the FL Studio loop DL_Ice Cubes, which is in the Packs \ Loops \ Drum Loops \ Old Drum Loops folder, feel free to use a different kick and snare if you’d like (you'll probably want to). In my example, I removed the shuffle on the fourth bar so that you can hear the difference it makes. I also EQ’d the shuffle in order to emphasize the grain shifter effect and to give it a different tone.

Conclusion

First, we showed how to avoid the machine gun effect by using multiple samples. Then, we tightened our drum sounds using envelopes and sweetened our sound with a Kore Player effect called Grain Shifter. Lastly, we rendered and sliced our audio file and after making a pattern, we adjusted the slices with SliceX. Stay tuned for Part 2 where we’ll be making shuffles through sampling techniques.

Sean Duncan has been writing for audio production websites and magazines for a few years. You can hear his personal music at: http://www.reverbnation.com/nomaly