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PERCUSSIVE TAPESTRY - Part 1: Intricacy in Fills, Transitions and Rests with laces
🕑 Added 2022-10-12 18:00:07 +0000 UTC
PERCUSSIVE TAPESTRY
Part 1: Intricacy in Fills, Transitions and Rests with laces
In this Lux Cache tutorial series, we invite our favourite producers to unveil the art behind detailed drum & percussion programming within their writing process. In our inaugural chapter of ‘PERCUSSIVE TAPESTRY’, Australian experimental club prodigy laces explores their post-genre approach to drum fill arrangement & sound design, showcasing the unique production philosophy that has garnered him support from the likes of Nina Las Vegas, Machinedrum, TEKKIE TRAX & more.
This article is available as a Patreon text post or a preferred viewing .pdf document. All audio examples and assets mentioned in the tutorial are available in this Google Drive folder. We ask you kindly to not share Lux Cache content outside of the Patreon, our contributors rely on your donations.
- An accompanying sample pack of drum fills designed by laces is available to Subscribers on the Lux Cache patreon page.
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CONTENTS :
- INTRODUCTION
- FILLS:
- PERC FILLS
- FX FILLS
- TRANSITIONS
- RESTS
- SAMPLE PACK
INTRODUCTION
My introduction to electronic music production was always from the point of an excitable listener. I find that one of the most engaging elements of songs I listened to in my earliest years was always the use of intricate fills and ear candy sections in various dance tracks and it’s something that I found instantly engaging when trawling through the various skills and lessons I needed to learn in order to become proficient at sound design and music production. In this tutorial I will attempt to introduce you to various lacelike ways I have gone about creatively approaching ear candy in the context of fills, transitions and rests using examples from my discography.
FILLS
Before discussing the sub-categories of fills, I’d like to quickly define my idea of what a fill is in the context of dance music. A fill is a brief musical, rhythmic or textural element added between sections of the core melody. In a live performance context it’s often an improvised or added accents to the written performance however, in dance music, fills mainly operate as added ear candy to either maintain the momentum of a high energy section, add variance to the sonic palette of the track or act as a turning point for the song writing to switch into new ideas. For the sake of this tutorial, I would like to isolate three concepts of fills that represent the ways I typically approach filling empty sections of songs.
* It should also be mentioned that I produce almost entirely using samples as opposed to MIDI based drum programming.
- PERCUSSIVE FILLS
Percussive fills represent some of the most straightforward ways to pack in empty space in a track and may come as somewhat intuitive. I’ll go through some examples for how to utilise percussive fills in dance music however these typically don’t require a whole lot of processing. For this example I’ll analyse a perc fill from my track “Sunvocus (Deep Heaven Lite)” From Field Fallacy Haptics.
As you can tell, I obviously wrote this track right after subscribing to Eliderp’s Patreon lol shoutout Eliderp. This fill acts as a perfect introduction to the concept. Basic snare samples positioned in such a way as to be pleasing to the ear and carry the momentum. This moment of the track takes place well after the psytrance kick+bass pattern has been introduced and it’s somewhat overstaying its welcome, the purpose of this drum fill is to add further complexity to the rhythm in a moment which typically is only a rest and to somewhat ‘reload’ the energy of the section, to pseudo re-introduce the energy and power that you first felt when the psytrance kick+bass was originally introduced. This section is almost entirely composed of snare samples however it’s important to take into consideration the inclusion of the clap sample from earlier in the track and the kick on the 1 to introduce the fill to the rest of the track.
🔊 Snare layer 2 + Other track elements
Fills like these typically don’t require a great amount of processing and in this case each layer only has a light amount of EQ and compression to highlight key frequencies. As well as writing in patterns like these, a great way to add punch is to automate out the tails of existing sounds. In this case I have automated the gains of elements such as the synth impact, sub, vocal etc. to restrict from playing right up to the exact beginning of the fill as to give the snares nothing to compete against sonically (as seen below).
Ontop of using percussive fills for more upbeat sections, drum fills like these can also be used in more ambient or low energy sections in order to achieve a duality to a section. More sentimental or musical breakdowns can be gifted an ‘overproduced’ aesthetic or imply high energy music to come later in the track by adding perc fills like the ones featured above anywhere amongst the composition. Below is an example of this:
In this clip, the main element is the vocal pad that guides the movement of the track. In addition to this sound there's not really much going on however, I have included a very loud fill in order to inject a sense of progression and underlying force into the track. This fill in particular is just a combination of a massive Umru kick + some compressed noise followed by an overly saturated toms sample. Throughout my time producing I’ve come to think of fills in quarters.
If you were to create the most busy, complex and noisy fill then each quarter of the section allotted for the fill would be crammed with unique and captivating sounds. In this fill I have done something similar where I decided to focus on two halves of the fill, one being the initial impact (kick+noise) and the follow up percussive moment (saturated toms). Just some food for thought.
- FX FILLS
Instead of either adding in new abrasive sounds or packing in a sequence of tight drum sounds in order to carry one phrase of your main melody to the next, it may sometimes be more appropriate to apply new post processing effects to sounds/instruments already present in the main phrase. For this example I’ll analyse fx fills from some of my tracks and highlight the usage of three processing concepts/plugins: Tapestop, SerumFX’s Reverb Filter and Portal
In my track “Prosperity (feat. Ninajirachi)”, this Intro section features a keys section with an unholy amount of tapestop courtesy of KiloHearts and their Phaseplant preset called “Tape Stop Keys”. In this particular instance the tape stop is actually built into the Phaseplant template but I’ll show an example of how I use Kilohearts Tape Stop independently after this. I criminally overuse tape stop all over the place in my tracks but in this instance I am making use of it to slow the track down into a fill, into a rest.
Below is how the tapestop is being utilised inside of Phaseplant. The Tape Stop starts in a paused position and the parameter that controls the Play/Pause of the Tape Stop is being modulated by the Envelope. Once the Envelope Passes a threshold you set within the tiny orange circle then the Tape Stop will release the sound creating a fast pitch up sound effect once you begin playing the keys and then a sharp pitch down once you finish.
If you were to try to use a Tape Stop for a more typical fill/transition, then I would recommend using Kilohearts Tape Stop but any standalone effect will do. Below is an example of one.
In this quick fill I've incorporated a bit of perc but mainly want to show off the Tape Stop on the track titled “Siren” in the above image that gives the fill/transition it’s Stop/Start type of movement.
In this instance it’s really just as simple at automating the Play/Pause of the tapestop to align with the timings you desire for your transition and then adjusting the Stop and Start times to allow a decent amount of time for the pitch up/down to be heard by the listener and fit the groove. Below is the sound on its own.
🔊 Tape Stop Example Fill Siren only
The only other technique I would suggest here is when using FX to create transitions that slide into one another it can be extremely helpful to use Ableton's reverse feature on samples, duplicate them and position them immediately before the start of a sample to create a sound that sweeps into itself and has more of an organic feel. Above you can see I’ve done this on the tracks titled “Sword FX'' and “Impact Kick” alongside the Siren sample itself being duped and reversed to lean into the sweep. Reversing is shown below or just press the R key when highlighting a sample.
Honestly I personally think the overuse of tapestop is brilliant and typically only relegated to certain corners of the rap prod scene, pluggnb, hard trap stuff etc. In the past I have created transitions and cool effects by tape stopping the entire master channel or perhaps just drums or maybe just the vocal. Below are some examples of these.
🔊 Drop My Cell Remix Full track Tape Stop
In my track “You Need Me”, most sections also feature an unholy amount of this effect, Reverb Filter in SerumFX. This effect can be found under the Misc category in the list of options in the “Filter” effect in SerumFX (or default Serum).
🔊 You Need Me SerumFX Reverb Filter
You’ll notice in this Intro section, the fills and ear candy are really being carried by the effect, only being paired with limited perc and perc FX samples. To be perfectly honest, I barely understand how this effect works but its power to transform a sound in an instant is just too strong not to mention so I’ll just explain how I use it.
As you can see above, this effect really only required one automation of the Cutoff knob to achieve. In my experience, the only two parameters that matter are the Cutoff and Mix knobs. Cutoff is used to “effect” whatever sound you’re working on and seems to simply apply a filter that punches holes and creates massive peaks in the eq to result in a bizarre plate reverb type of sound with some decay when turned all the way left and then seems to simply duplicate the sound when turned all the way to the right; which isn’t really where the magic happens it’s more so the left side. The automation that works best for fills are sudden peaks followed by a return to the baseline amount applied to the entire sound (Even if that is zero Reverb Filter before the fill begins), as you can see this manifests as the right angled triangle type shapes in the automation in the track above. Mix is more basic as in just a way to control the amount the filter is changing your sound aka. dry/wet. Below I’ll show off some more examples of what it can sound like on various sounds but this trick really speaks for itself when you experiment. If you have access to Serum or SerumFX I highly recommend giving this little trick a try when you’re out of ideas on how to add ear candy or end a phrase. I have used it on pretty much every style of sample and synth imaginable to great effect.
🔊 SerumFX Reverb Filter Simple Breaks
🔊 SerumFX Reverb Filter Ryuichi Symphony Sample
In my track “Pace ft. TEEN’, The break features a sound that is used in a fill that then extends out into a textural base for the breakdown. This sound was using portal and resampling results of fucking around with this plugin to create unique sounds and textures.
🔊 Pace Downshift Clip Isolated
This sound was created in a separate project file using a simple midi clip, Phaseplant and Portal, recorded onto a separate track. Portal is a granular synthesis effect designed by Output that houses a number of parameters that allow you to cut up audio you feed into it to your heart's content. Granular synthesis allows for extreme destruction of any audio by reordering miniscule pieces of the audio called “grains' leading to unrecognisable outcomes. In this instance I honestly just messed around with the Portal preset “Swarm Redux '' by manipulating the two main parameters, in this instance named “Swarm” and “Redux. By using the circular XY grid to create a long track of revolving textures as the Cymatics midi (lol) continued to play, I found something I liked, I cut it out and pasted it into the Pace track to fill the end of a sequence.
🔊 New Pace Downshift Clip (Example)
Using granular synthesis can seem extremely hard to control and utilise in an actual track but I find it helps a LOT to record and resample whatever you’re working with to then manipulate and warp elements you like into positions in a track where the sounds actually work. Some of these kinds of effects often have an element of randomness or an internal clock that differs from the internal clock of your DAW, I find it easier to brute force using the technique of resampling. Of course Portal can also be used on elements within a track however you please but in the context of finding ear candy for fills I much prefer this method.
*It should be mentioned, all of these techniques can be and should be melded together in order to keep ear candy fresh for the listener.
TRANSITIONS
When producing genreless electronic tracks there is a style in which a lot of my music falls under in which each track consists of a series of contrasting sections whose elements find themselves differentiated by mood, rhythm, instruments, key signature and anything else really. There are many tried and tested formulas for transitioning between classical structures ala. Drop into Breakdown into Build-up that will usually pertain to using white noise sweeps, tonal risers, sub-impacts and elements like that. I find that these techniques are still extremely valuable to communicating to a listener what direction a track is pointed in but is much better served when context specific elements (as in elements already present in the track or aesthetically resonant with the song) are used alongside classic dance music tropes in transitions. When producing music like this I find some of the most difficult moments in cleaning up the structure of a track is being able to create transitions that both live up to the complexities and tones of the previous and approaching sections and also are sonically interesting on their own merit. For this example I’ll analyse a transition from the first chorus/drop to the breakdown in my track “Sunvocus” from Field Fallacy XVI.
On Top of utilising perc and fx fills here, I want to highlight the choice of contents for the section right before the breakdown. In this case the breakdown includes some Portal slathered synth alongside a bunch of verbed out vocal layers similar to the vox chops used in the drop. With the intention of creating a seamless transition between the sections I opted to cut the main bassline out early and switch to a vocal using a perc fill in order to acclimatise the listener to the coming section before it has actually begun. This is less so a rule of thumb so much as it is something I routinely do with my tracks as a way to paste together sections of tracks that don’t necessarily fit perfectly together. Below I’ve shown how the track would sound with and without the transition concept.
🔊 Sunvocus Different Transition Clip
🔊 Sunvocus Transition Clip (again)
I find that I will especially use this transition method if I have a new sound coming in the next section or even a new mood that I want to hint at and lodge in the listeners subconscious before they listen up to it. In this transition, all that's really going on is the main kick of the chorus, hats to keep the momentum and the vocal sample.
RESTS
As a capstone to the contents of this tutorial, I want to quickly highlight the concepts of rests in experimental production. A rest in musical notation is one of the earliest taught concepts in music theory and describes the absence of a note/sound. In the context of my own music this can include sounds and notes but means the absence of the hook, main motif melodic elements. I find myself using very blatant rests as a way of directly implying a rhythm using the sounds before and after a rest to add a phantom weight to a moment in a track. For this example I’ll analyse the rests in my track “3K feat. Ilai Ashdot ” from Field Fallacy XVI.
This section of 3K features a gated synth as a melodic base with a small collection of percussive hits, and vocal samples alongside tape stopped moments of rest on the 1 at the start of each 4 bar section. On top of creating a unique rhythm, these rests also kind of act like extension to the fills existing before the bar starts. The purpose of using rests in this way is to imply a phantom weight to the moment of the rest in the overall rhythm of the track. In other instances it can also be used to give the sense that the track has skipped a step, further committing to a unique rhythm without betraying the 4/4 time signature. Here are some more examples of a rest like this across the rest of 3K.
This one includes the use of a kick+noise to accentuate the rest before the main melody+vocal layer begins.
Rests are woven into the chorus/drop of this track too as I designed the drum pattern and melody around their placement. In this rest you’ll notice a big percussive womp at the start of the second 4 bar section.
Entering the outro, this is probably the best case for using a rest to achieve the feeling of skipping a step. As we enter the final section of the track, the impact/subdrop lands on the second beat of the first bar.
On top of utilising rests in a classic sense, I also would like to highlight a trick I’ve been using in a bunch of my own tracks to invoke the aesthetic of a contextual sample, track skipping, bluetooth glitch or overall 4th wall breaking sound design. During the production of both FFXVI and FF:Haptics, I often would cut the master volume of tracks to -inf dB for split seconds out of time or elongate tiny rests or employ fast fades of the master gain in order to imply not only narrative content (reminding listeners of the limitations of the hardware being used to listen to my music in the year it was produced) but also to enforce a more avant garde style of jittery rhythm to the listener. Below are some examples of this in use:
🔊 Prosperity remix context rest
Other pseudo rests could include breaks in the music to add aesthetic narrative focussed samples such as original “laces” radio tags such as the Ninajirachi vocal lines spread all over the runtime of Field Fallacy Haptics; among other things.
Get creative with the ways you split up musical sections in your tracks to add personality and flavour, I like to think I’ve made at least one listener stop and engage with my music more intimately as a direct result of a seemingly innocuous choice to fuck up one of my own songs.
SAMPLE PACK
- An accompanying sample pack of drum fills designed by laces is available to Subscribers on a seperate post on the Lux Cache patreon page.
Thanks for having a read of my tutorial for Lux Cache!
<3
laces
laces c/o NLV records, 2021
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laces is an experimental club and electronic producer based from Melbourne, Australia. His recent track ‘Pace’ with TEEN is available on Bandcamp.
You can follow laces on Instagram @laceslaceslaceslaces & find their work at laceslaceslaceslaces.com
2022 © Whiston Digital / Lux Media | luxcache.com
Comments
KWIN
Sooooooo hyped you got Laces on here!
