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Drum Break Processing 🥁
🕑 Added 2025-06-27 15:45:07 +0000 UTCAs I’ve been doing so much drum break work at the moment, with a forthcoming 90’s style breaks pack well under way, I thought this would be the perfect time to go over a bit of break processing.
This is a topic that can be very confusing, especially for beginners as there are so many tools that you can use & everyone has their own methods.
What I have done over the years is really simplify my process down to a few plugins and mostly hardware these days to get the job done. Whilst I know everyone doesn’t have access to this equipment, I’ll do my best to explain things here and then also follow this up with a Patreon video next month showing both a hardware & software version of my approach. 👨💻
Sample Rate Reduction into the AKAI S1000
The goal here is all about imparting some of the nice crunch & dirt from these old hardware samplers onto the breaks. Pitching your breaks +12st in the DAW & then back down -12st in the AKAI just gives them that extra bit of grit compared to skipping this step.
It rolls off the highs a touch, introduces a bit more aliasing distortion and just adds more of the AKAI colour to the signal. You can of course pitch up & down a lot more for extreme crunch and sample degradation, the most I got is around 24st.
I have a great video with lots of comparisons if people are more interested in this topic - Sample Rate Reduction vs Pitch Interpolation
This one is probably the hardest to emulate 100% in the DAW, especially for the AKAI but you can definitely get close. I made some presets for Decimort 2 emulating the EMU e5000 Ultra when I put that video together - Decimort Presets
Even though Amigo is more about emulating the Amiga Commodore, the way you can reduce the sample rate and turn the ‘interpolation’ on and off is a really neat feature for helping you hear aliasing noise & how anti-ailising filters work.
It definitely has a certain crunch to the plugin that is in the realm of these hardware samplers & it’s super affordable too!
Clipping into the AKAI S1000
With the AKAI you can drive the ‘Rec Level’, which essentially hard clips the signal as you push the A/D converter beyond it's headroom. This is not analog tape like soft saturation which rounds the waveform. It’s a much more of an abrupt flattening, giving you sharp and aggressive distortion when pushed.
The more you drive this ‘Rec Level’ in the Akai the more clipping you get. Too much and you end up squaring off the transients, adding too much distortion and losing the punch from the hits.
The aim here for me is mostly about loudness. Clipping the signal just enough to raise the average loudness (RMS level) of the break, whilst retaining the same peak level.
RMS vs Peak Level Explanation - Paradox DnB Production Breakdown Pt.2
What this essentially means is that when you get these breaks rolling in your tracks, with all the bass & pads etc added, they’re still going to cut through the mix. You’d don’t need to limit them too much later on or really add any extra processing bar level balancing.
A great way to emulate this is by driving the inputs on the RX950 whilst pulling down the outputs. Emulate this with RX950
Kazorg also has a great clipper. Kazrog Free Clipper
EQ
More and more these days I like to work with a simple 3 channel desk EQ on my Topaz 14:4. The trick to this, is to have the break looping round and round and play with the EQ live. I just test certain common EQ settings:
Does the break want more brightness?
Is the midrange too muddy?
Does it want more kick/bass?
This is usually enough to get you 90% of the way there but especially with EQ, every break needs to addressed on it's merits.
Pro-Q - I will often turn to a digital parametric EQ for problem solving harsh resonances but you can go a long way with the basics. Paradox for instance still does all his EQ on an analog desk similar to mine.
Filtering
Filters are without doubt my favourite tool in music production! Do not underestimate their power 🚀
Low-Pass Filter + Resonance - My number one filtering technique for breaks is to add a small amount of resonance, around 10-15% with a low-pass filter, and then roll it down a little. What you’ll find it that it cuts away some of the digital tops, but pushes the high/mids forwards.
Low-Pass + Drive - One aspect of rolling off the high frequencies of a break is that you make it quieter as you remove the frequency content. A great way to counter balance this, is to drive the filter level so that it matches the level of the unprocessed break. Filterfreak is an amazing plugin for this as you can just automated the ‘mix’ from dry to wet.
High-Pass + Resonance - This is the reverse of the low-pass technique but can be really cool for bringing out the low end of a break. If you match the cutoff to somewhere around the kick frequency, you can get a really fat boomy break.
Transient Shapers
These are probably the easiest tool to hear and understand, but every now and again can absolutely save the day.
Sometimes you just want a slightly more skippy break or you’re struggling with a lot of room sound and reverb in the break. Pulling in the sustain on a transient shaper can save you so much time rather than trying to EQ out those frequencies or find the perfect settings in a compressor.
Compression
Finally we have compression, the mythical beast that everyone seems to have a different understanding of! 🦄
Compressing breaks can actually be very simple:
Let a little attack through (30ms)
Set a fairly fast/medium release time (100ms)
Ratio 2:1 or 4:1
Pull down the threshold for a couple of dB gain reduction
Balance the output vs input so you can clearly hear what is happening.
This is the best recipe I can offer for ‘glue’ type compression. What we mean by glue, is that it brings the hits of the break closer together in dynamics, smoothing out the peaks and tails so the entire thing feels more cohesive. Rather than a bunch or individual hits, the compression makes it sound like the break is from a single source.
Even as I’m writing this last bit, I know compression is a tricky one so I will definitely go over this topic in more detail in the video. 📼
Big ups all the new members to Patreon this month! It’s great to see the amen break instrument generate so much interest & I’m excited to get cracking on the next one in a couple of weeks. 🙏
Cheers everyone,
George ✌️
