"Some day - we'll live as one family."
Hi folks... reading Kemmler's great post "Matching Tempo - The Hard Way" got me thinking about some of the other methods I've used over the years to get loops in time....
It's a long story and involves a bit of "audio tech history" - but hopefully by the end of it you might come away with a new perspective.... and a few more mashup tactics up your sleeve. :)
On the samplers of the early '90's, Timestretch was often not much of a valid option if you wanted your loops to sound good. Sparing some of the complexities, the Timestretch function essentially sliced the loop into a bazillion tiny slices and either moved these further apart or closer together. This usually resulted in some passable results if the loop was "sped up" i.e. the slices moved closer together - but if they were moved apart, things started to fall apart, quality-wise. The algorithms of those days were simpler; and weren't really capable of filling in the gaps between the slices intelligently. The sound took on a glassy, grainy, shredded kind of unique distortion, which was actually really fun when used to the extreme for vocal special effects; but not much use for preserving the integrity of a drum loop! Timestretch fell into the category of "destructive audio editing" as opposed to "non-destructive audio editing" - in other words, the Timestretch process was applied to the audio file and a new file was created and saved to disk. With non-destructive editing, the audio file on disk remains unchanged, but is simply read differently by the CPU.
For the most part, on the old samplers, you would get your loops in time by pitch shifting them. This process worked entirely differently to Timestretch. The entire sample was played back faster or slower - sonically, the effect was much the same as adjusting the pitch on a Technics 1210 record turntable. Pitch shift, also known as "loop tuning" was a "non destructive edit" - thus, there was no "digital graininess". You would set up the loop by truncating the front edge of the loop accurately, then playing a one-bar-length midi note and setting it to loop on the sequencer; adjusting the pitch of the sample loop in cents until it snapped into time.
So the early techno producers, lifting old hip hop and funk loops from vinyl as their raw material, pitch shifted them up considerably to fit them into the faster tempos of the current rave / hardcore techno styles.
Now of course, the "trouble" with pitch shifting is, obviously.... that it shifts the pitch of the drums!! When the "rave" tempos were around 120-130 bpm (i.e. circa 1988-1990), this worked out ok: an 808 kick filled the hole in the low end which was left when the loop was sped up; and the "new" kick sound was both crunchy and deep.... having both pulse and edge..... nice.
However, the kids wanted harder-faster-louder and the tempos kept pushing up and up. Something had to give.
Then a groundbreaking, phenomenal, mindblowing record came along. It was Urban Shakedown's "Some Justice", released in the UK in 1991. It was fast. Really fast - probably over 140bpm? The drum loop (taken from an old Run DMC track) was so fast that the original kick drum was a mid-range crunch. And then they broke more rules. Did away with the 4/4 808 kick completely. Filled the low end with.... that bassline.... a sliding, megatonnage slab of badass square wave that went down so low that it would disappear completely on small systems and make your trouser-legs flap on big ones. And the vocal in the breakdown - Cece Rogers' "Someday", pitched up beyond belief....
The reaction to this track in the clubs and raves was instantaneous, visceral, euphoric, insane. It was one of those ones where the DJ would drop it and watch the place explode.
Jungle was born.
OMG haha I've found it on youtube!! Check it out... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBxS_IWs_ss I apologize to your neighbors in advance - you'll probably want to crank it. Watch your subwoofer. What is it about this track? You find yourself thinking "this is silly" on one level but at the same time you are filled with an irresistible urge to dance like a loon. Or at least, I am. There are several versions on youtube - and judging by the comments on some of them; it still has the same effect now as it did back then.
(Correct / forgive me if I'm wrong about this being "the first" jungle track. There may well be some even more obscure, pioneering tracks and artists that predate this one. There probably are: this new style was a logical step beyond what happened before - and many of the artists in the scene were inspiring and feeding off each other. Hehe, no matter how underground you think you are, there's always someone more obscure than you; someone whose music was so secret, rare and brilliant that mere mortals have not heard of it.... ;) anyway....)
As the urban rave music grew progressively faster throughout 1992, the drums started to sound more and more outrageous... the snares and hi-hats sounding like a rat with fleas, and the kicks like gulps. This left an ever-widening open space in the low end, and this was filled in with all manner of fabulous dub-inspired, wobbly, pulsating, throbbing, speaker-busting, eyeball-rattling, innard-rearranging electronic bass sounds. The tempo pushed to around 160bpm and then kinda locked: Drum and bass had arrived.
I am quite sure that if the simpler technology to pitch shift loops hadn't come around before the modern suite of timestretch algorithms, this genre might never have existed.
It's an interesting angle on how genres of music are born. Usually all credit goes to the originator of the style - and while they undoubtedly take some of the credit; some kudos must also go to the guys who invented the technology they are using.
Next step in the story - hardware samplers were gradually phased out as the digital audio workstation came into play. With the advancement in computer technology, hard drives and audio interfaces, people started to do all their sampling on the computer.
The tendency to map samples out across a keyboard ostensibly disappeared. And with the increased processing power available, the modern generation of timestretch tools and algorithms was born.
In the latest versions of Cubase ( I am not sure about logic and the rest, as I don't use them - but it is likely similar), you can both Timestretch and pitch shift with a choice of several algorithms - depending on what type of sound you are working with. And with the pitch shift function you have the option of "time correction". This function pitch shifts your loop and then timestretches it so that it stays at the same tempo as before.
But I still like to use pitch shift whenever possible. I like how it sounds. Call me an old fashioned purist, but I am still wary of Timestretching loops. I abandoned Ableton Live after one day for this reason. Sure it does it all for you, drag n drop, shrink to fit, one size fits all music making... but I'm still not happy with the degradation in sound quality of loops when they are slowed down. I haven't touched Live for a couple of years so maybe things have improved.
I used to do my pitch shifting in old versions of Cubase audio in much the same way that Kemmler did his timestretching - by math. Only I had a massive database table that I had created, that had the exact lengths (in milliseconds) of 1,2,4,8 and 16 bar loops in every tempo between 80 and 160!! I could then figure out the tempo of any accurately-truncated loop by comparing it to my chart - and I could quickly pitch shift them manually in a sample editor software as required, before dropping them into cubase. Yeah, I'm kinda obsessive I know... It took me weeks of homework to set this up (and to truncate every damn loop in my library!!) but my clients loved it when in sessions I could get great drums really fast, with no sonic degradation.
Nowadays, to pitch shift a drum loop in cubase, first I make sure I have an exact number of bars of drum loop. Then I will pitch shift it and note the new length: By doing this a few times by trial and error I can end up with an exact length loop.
Cubase's MPEX3 algorithm is pretty good - especially with shortening loops. However, I do recommend getting your head around a few extra techniques - they give you some interesting creative choices plus a path towards optimal sound quality in the long run. Try both pitch shifting and timestretching a loop if you are not sure - sometimes one will sound better than the other. Sometimes a pitch shifted loop will have extra sparkle - or extra flap if slowed down. Sometimes a pitched up snare has a, um, radness that you can't get any other way.
You also of course have a third option - to cut up the individual drum hits and quantize them to new positions. Obviously this won't really work if your loop isn't "clean" and if there is overhang in between the hits. But the good thing about slicing is that you can then re-arrange the slices and create new patterns... something you were going to do anyway, right? ;) Don't forget to cut at the zero-crossing points...!
Of course, now we have apple loops and acidized wavs with their tempo markers; these essentially perform automatically the same function - moving each drum hit further apart or closer together as required by the tempo. You can often "hear the gaps" if you slow down an apple-loop too heavily in Garage Band or whatever.
An aside note - I highly recommend mapping samples out across a keyboard and playing them at wildly different pitches. It's one of the tricks that was used by Orbital, Future Sound of London, the Orb, all those guys - and was one of the keys to their interesting and varied sonic palette. (It can also sound terrible if used badly...)
Generally, doing things manually still leads to better results. It is of course, much more time consuming. But until algorithms become smart enough to time-stretch and pitch shift absolutely perfectly (at which point computers will also be able to make nice cups of tea and give back rubs), it's a good way to go. Art requires a little suffering, doesn't it? ;)
Anyone else out there master their tracks manually by trimming individual peaks by hand in order to raise the output level of the master fader without using plugins? Didn't think so.
PXR8.
:):)
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