ForaBrokenEarth
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Nottingham, UK

How do?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf6f4S_TJNI&

This track really inspired me this morning and I just can't make anything that has this kind of groove.  My kicks and bass lines just feel really locked down, rigid and mechanical. I've tried adding some swing, but its hard to do when the groove is at 3-3 to lock the bass in. I'm really struggling.


I guess my question is, for you more advanced folks, how do you humanise the groove between the WAV and the NOI while still squeezing them for all they're worth?

Cooshinator
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ohio gozaimasu

First of all, ew why do you use 3-3 groove that's almost as bad as using 7F for your empty chains.

Second, something I often do and something I think that song does is use noise instruments that take a tick or two to register. When the hi-hat switches to quarter notes, you can hear that they sort of have a "flam" effect because they start out with a lower pitch and a tick later switch to a more open pitch (which might be hard to pull off in 3-3). This keeps the hi-hat locked into the groove while making it feel like it's a bit behind, and also it makes for a more interesting hi-hat in general

Third, mixing and sound design are everything. He's using fairly punchy/abrupt kick and noise instruments, and all the other parts are mixed down a little to give the beat room to sing. Punchier percussion isn't always better, but it often gives you the freedom to make better use of dynamics, and stuff that makes good use of dynamics is usually more groovy.

Fourth, I think the background arps help more than you might think. Arps have this weird thing where, if you use them fast and rhythmically like that song, they make sense while you're listening, because the brain realizes they're supposed to be one chord. But you also hear certain important notes triggering just after or before the song's subdivisions, so they have this weird effect in making the groove sound a little more "stuttered".

Finally, I think the song is composed well enough and with enough variation in rhythm to give the groove enough to play with so that it never falls stagnant. It's easy to hear a rhythmical loop in lsdj and think "oh, this will never go anywhere", but if you write around it well enough and mix things up from time to time, I'm sure you'll find yourself liking it a little more. And cool tip: try writing music with the volume turned pretty low. If you can get it sounding groovy while it's quiet, it'll sound even groovier when it's loud.

Last edited by Cooshinator (Apr 9, 2016 4:47 pm)

ForaBrokenEarth
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Nottingham, UK

I use 7F for my empty chains sad

I usually use 3-3 so that the bass and the kick feel like they happen simultaneously. I do sometimes use the D command to swing the hats.Guess I need to go back to the woodshed and study some save files.

Cooshinator
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ohio gozaimasu

Lol I was (mostly) joking about the 3-3 & 7F stuff. I've heard of people using 3-3 in the wav channel and 6-6 in every other channel for that reason (sounds to me like that an0va track is probably doing this?). I guess that makes sense, but I find it really hard to make a decent kick drum in only 3 ticks, and I rarely ever find myself needing to have a kick and bass on the same note (imo having the 2 loudest, bassiest instruments playing at the same time isn't a great idea in terms of dynamics), so I've always been an advocate of 6-6. And the 7F thing really doesn't matter but I've always used 00 because it's closer to the majority of chain numbers, especially early in a song (which usually has the far more empty chains)

Last edited by Cooshinator (Apr 9, 2016 5:18 pm)

herr_prof
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Cooshinator wrote:

First of all, ew why do you use 3-3 groove that's almost as bad as using 7F for your empty chains.

I use both lets fight. You know you can just treat a chain as a half a bar at a 3/3 groove right?

Last edited by herr_prof (Apr 9, 2016 8:12 pm)

Mrwimmer
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Los Angeles, CA

I almost guarantee there is no consistent groove setting for this song.  Use more G commands, analyze more rhythms.

Cooshinator
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ohio gozaimasu
herr_prof wrote:

I use both lets fight. You know you can just treat a chain as a half a bar at a 3/3 groove right?

Meet me at the tether-ball court after gym class, shrimp (ง •̀_•́)ง

Just so y'all know I'm not saying there's anything wrong with 3-3 in general, I've written more than a few songs that switch to 3-3 when I need to use 32nd notes. But defaulting to 3-3 when you could totally pull off the same thing in 6-6 with maybe a few clever r, d, & g commands is a major waste of chains which is a big problem if you're writing music with a decent amount of variety. I know Vince Kaichan uses 3-3 and I've heard that he often has to spread his songs over 2 or 3 song files which sounds kinda dreadful.

Cooshinator
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ohio gozaimasu
Mrwimmer wrote:

I almost guarantee there is no consistent groove setting for this song.  Use more G commands, analyze more rhythms.

Why do you say that? I'm not hearing much that gives me the impression he's doing any crazy groove switching, so I'm curious as to what parts make you think that

VCMG
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California
Cooshinator wrote:

I know Vince Kaichan uses 3-3 and I've heard that he often has to spread his songs over 2 or 3 song files which sounds kinda dreadful.

Actually I use 6-6 and just crank up the tempo most of the time unless it's still not fast enough, since 3-3 chews through phrases super fast (I have a song that uses a 4-4 or 5-5 groove at ~240-250 bpm because I needed ~300 for the track). I think it's best for parts where you need more granularity for just a few specific bars but not elsewhere.

I can't say for sure without actually listening to the track you're making, but I think your problem might be a songwriting thing and not a technical LSDJ thing, since the song's groove is actually pretty straightforward (ignoring all the time signature changes etc).

One way to loosen up a rigid pattern is to have some variation in the sounds, so for example you might make certain kicks quieter than others, or you might have a 2nd noise instrument that is an accented version that you throw in once in a while. A performer won't always hit a note the same so you can approximate that by throwing in variations once in a while.

There's also the whole 'confidence' thing that is super weird and I don't really understand how it works, but basically if you believe it has groove, it will have groove. Some of the strongest I've ever heard came from a song that uses drum machines with stupid-simple rhythms and almost no variation in volume, but it sounded great because you could hear the confidence behind its composition.

Dunno if this was helpful at all or not since it's super hard to explain this stuff, but basically it's just a skill you pick up gradually from listening and paying attention to other people's tracks.

ForaBrokenEarth
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Nottingham, UK

Nah I think you guys are right. I'm not putting enough work into the basics and looking for tricks to compensate. It's something I do a lot and need to work on. Gonna focus on song-craft and attention to detail like variations which I'm lazy about.

It always comes back to the fundamentals. I've been lazy for a few years, Need to up my game!

an0va
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Hi!

First off ForaBrokenEarth I'm super honored that this track inspired you - thank you for checking it out! As far as the groove, I guarantee you can get it down no problem. I just whipped out the SAV file for that song right now to take a look at the programming and here's a couple key things I noticed in it:

  • the whole song is written in a 5/5 groove (i.e. on the groove screen, the main G00 groove is 5/5 instead of the default 6/6) -  I wrote this song on guitar and the meat of it was based upon this quintuplet (five in the space of four) riff. (example: 2:58 in the track has all channels doing it in unison, but you can hear the riff thrown all throughout the track). I couldn't really figure out a neat way to do this in LSDJ, so I had the whole song written in 5/5 as the main groove and whenever I wanted to do the quintuplet riff I would switch that channel to a groove of 4/4. It makes sense because four notes with groove 5/5 is the same length as five notes at groove 4/4 (5*4=20; 4*5=20). But don't let the numbers confuse you, I really suck at math - but what I'm saying is don't hesitate to experiment with these settings at all

  • the heavy kick is an instrument I designed that is in fact kick and bass at the same time - you can do this in a table by messing with the TSP column and the PXX command, then throwing a P00 where you want it to stop

  • but most of the song actually uses a really thick noise kick, tbh!

  • there's a slight tempo change in the middle of the song, i just sped up that whole section by like 5 bpm just for extra energy

That's pretty much it! I might consider releasing the SAV of that song someday but there's really not too many secrets hidden within it. Just experiment with GXX, use HXX pretty liberally, and don't hesitate to add/subtract beats or entire measures at will (unless you're making dance music, because then DJs will hate you lol). Just like the great discussion in this thread, try to variate stuff a lot to keep it fun!

If you're interested in hearing me ramble more about grooves in LSDJ you can watch an embarrassing video of my goofy voice hosting a presentation on this topic at 8static in 2012. otherwise feel free to shoot me a message/hit me up whenever and I'll hook you up 8)



edit: i use groove 3/3 and blank 7Fs almost all the time too wink

Last edited by an0va (Apr 11, 2016 12:02 am)

herr_prof
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Oh yea I forgot you guys write prog shit.

ForaBrokenEarth
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Nottingham, UK

@An0va, I really appreciate you helping out man. Your tunes are awesome. I'm watching the vid now, it's pretty informative. I forget how small the chip world is!  Gonna sit down and practice.