Snoman R. Dance Music Manual: Tools, Toys, and Techniques

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2-step, these techniques can be mixed with drum ‘n ’ bass and hip-hop/rap,

which are discussed in detail in other chapters.

DRUM RHYTHMS

Much of niche garage relies on a 4/4 rhythm with a slight skip in the beats,

usually generated by the snares.

Generally, a kick drum is laid on every beat of the bar and is augmented with a

16th closed hi-hat pattern and an open hi-hat positioned on every 1/8th (the off

beat) for syncopation. Snares (or claps) are often employed on the second and

fourth beat underneath the kick but these are often skipped. This can be accom-

plished by laying a snare just before or after the second and fourth kick and also

dropping a snare in between beats 3 and 4. As always, experimentation is the

key so it is worth further experimentation by moving the snares around the beats

(not on the beat) until the rhythm displays a skipping beat ( Figure 13.1 ).

This should only be viewed as the start. Both tambourines and shakers are

often added to create more of a feel to the rhythm but this does depend on

the subgenre. Where these are placed is entirely up to your own discretion, but

generally they are best played live and left unquantized to keep the feel of the

loop live.

More importantly, though, like house music, garage relies on plenty of drive.

This can be applied in a variety of ways. The most commonly used technique is

to employ a slight timing difference in the rhythm to create a push in the beat.

Typically, this involves keeping the kick sat ﬁ rmly on all the beats but mov-

ing the snares forward in time by a tick or two. Then once the bass line is laid

FIGURE 13.1

The cornerstone of

niche loops

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down, its timing is matched to these snares using a sequencers match quantize

function.

For garage kicks, samples are often used. These can be sampled from speciﬁ c

garage sample CDs or, more often, other records. It is important to note that

the kick and snare should not be heavy enough to detract from the bass.

Generally, the kick is commonly kept quite tight by employing a short decay

combined with an immediate attack stage. This is to help keep the kick

dynamic but it also prevents it from blurring and destroying the all important

interplay between kick and bass. Typically, a 120 Hz sine wave produces the

best starting point for a garage kick with a positive pitch EG set, a fast attack

and a quick decay to modulate the oscillator.

Production-wise the kicks rely very heavily on compression to produce the

archetypal hardened sound. Although the settings to use will depend on the

sound you wish to achieve, a good starting point is to use a low ratio com-

bined with a high threshold and a fast attack with a medium release. The attack

will crush the initial transient of the square producing a heavier ‘thump’, while

experimenting with the release can further change the character of the kick.

If this is set quite long, the compressor will not have recovered by the time

the next kick begins and this can often add a pleasing distortion to the sound.

Once the kick has been squashed , as a ﬁ nal stage it’s often worthwhile using

the PSP Vintage Warmer to add more warmth to the overall timbre.

The snares should be kept particularly snappy and pitched quite high, remi-

niscent of drum ‘n’ bass. To accomplish this, keep the decay on the snare

particularly short to keep with the short, sharp dynamics of the loop. This char-

acteristic sound can be produced by using either a triangle or a square wave

mixed with some pink noise or saturation (distortion of the oscillator) both

modulated with an amp envelope using a fast attack and decay. White noise

should be used to keep the snare quite bright, but much of this noise will need

removing with a band-pass ﬁ lter to allow you to remove the high and low con-

tent of the timbre to produce the effect you need.

If at all possible, it’s worthwhile using a different envelope on the main oscil-

lator and the noise since this will allow you to keep the body of the snare

(i.e. the main oscillator) quite short and sharp but allow you to lengthen the decay

of the noise waveform. By doing this you can modify the snare so that

it rings out after each hit. It also permits you to individually adjust the

decay’s shape of the noise waveform. Generally speaking, the best results

are from employing a concave decay but as always it’s worth experimenting.

The snares may also beneﬁ t from some pitch bend applied to the timbre.

If you use this latter technique, it’s prudent to remove the transient of the snare

in a wave editor and replace it with one that uses positive pitch modulation.

When the two are recombined, the timbre will have a good solid strike but

decay upwards in pitch at the end of the hit. If this isn’t possible then a viable

alternative is to sweep the pitch from low to high with a sawtooth or sine LFO

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(provided that the saw starts low and moves high) set to a fast rate. After this,

small amounts of compression so that only the decay is squashed (i.e. slow

attack) will help to bring it up in volume so that it doesn’t disappear into the

rest of the mix. If you’re still ﬁ nding it difﬁ cult to produce a snappy snare, a

transient designer can be used to alter the transients of the snare hits.

Notably, it’s only the timbre for the kick and snare that truly deﬁ ne the niche

sound. While in the majority of cases the remaining percussive and auxiliary

instruments such as the open and closed hi-hats, tambourines and shakers

are sourced from sample CDs or the TR808 or 909, almost any MIDI module

will carry sounds that can be used. Plus, many modules today carry the ubiq-

uitous TR808 and 909 percussion sound sets as part of the collection anyway.

Normally, none of these should be compressed as thus can reduce the high-

frequency content. But having said that, this is simply convention and you

should always be willing to ‘break the rules ’, so to speak.

Of course, it would be naive to say that all beats are created through MIDI

and a proportionate amount of rhythms are acquired from sampling records

with a drum break. Indeed, these will have probably been sampled from other

records, which will have been sampled from previous records, which will have

been sampled from other records, so you should feel free to experiment with

your sampler and sequencer.

Along with working with individual loops, some producers have been known

to stack up a series of drum loops to create heavier rhythms. Armand Van

Helden is well known for dropping more powerful-sounding kicks over pre-

sampled loops to add more of a heavy inﬂ uence.

If you mix a number of loops together to create a rhythm, EQ is an impor-

tant tool. You can use it to reduce the frequency content of the kicks to pre-

vent attaining a beat that is too heavy. Indeed, it’s preferable to just have one

kick playing, so the kick should be removed from all the other loops. Once

a few basic loops have been merged, effects and aggressive EQ cuts or boosts

are employed on each individual element of a sliced loop to create interesting

interacting timbres.

THE NICHE BASS

As previously mentioned, garage, particularly niche, relies heavily on the bass

rhythm and timbre so it is vital that these are correct for the genre. Typically

the rhythm of the bass is kept fairly simple and will often consist of nothing

more than a few 1/4 or 1/2 notes per bar that will tend to move very subtly in

pitch by no more than 3 or 5 semitones ( Figure 13.2 ).

In the above example, the bass moves from C to A, but many of the notes are

kept quite long allowing full pitch bend of the notes. Note also how in the

above example some of the notes overlap the ones following those overlaps.

The portamento control on a synthesizer, creates a timbre that will rise during

its period and it’s this type of movement that is fundamental to the bass.

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For the bass timbre, just about any synthesizer is fair game. Native Instruments

Massive has been used to its full extent in this genre, but any analogue synthe-

sizer (or DSP equivalent) can be used so long as it contains enough frequen-

cies to be swept with a ﬁ lter. Indeed, the ﬁ lter envelope is the key to producing

the warping bass timbre. Using two square waves, detune one from the other

by ⫹ or ⫺ 5 and set the amp envelope to a fast attack and short decay. Set the

ﬁ lter envelope to a medium attack and full modulation. Finally, set the LFO to

modulate the cut-off frequency and experiment with all the settings until you

accomplish the sound you require.

Another typical timbre can be attained by combining two oscillators, one set

to a sine wave to add depth to the timbre while the other set to a sawtooth

to introduce harmonics that can be swept with a ﬁ lter. These are commonly

detuned from one another; the amount varies depending on the type of timbre

required. Hence, it’s worth experimenting by ﬁ rst setting them apart by 3 cents

and increasing this gradually until the sound becomes as thick as you need for

the track.

Set the amp EG’s attack to zero along with sustain but set the release and decay

initially to midway. The decay setting provides the ‘pluck’ while the release can

be modiﬁ ed to suit the motif being played from the sequencer. The ﬁ lter cut-

off is set to a low pass, as you want to remove the higher harmonics from the

signal (as opposed to removing the lower frequencies ﬁ rst). This along with the

resonance are adjusted so that they both sit approximately halfway between

fully exposed and fully closed. Ideally, the ﬁ lter should be controlled with a ﬁ l-

ter envelope using the same settings as the amp EG, but to increase the ‘pluck’

of the sound it’s beneﬁ cial to adjust the attack and decay so that they’re slightly

FIGURE 13.2

A typical niche bass

line

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longer than the ampliﬁ er’s settings. Finally, positive ﬁ lter key follow should be

employed so that the ﬁ lter will track the pitch of the notes being played, which

helps to add more movement.

Finally, you can pitch shift the timbre by modulating both oscillators with a

pitch envelope set to a fast attack and medium decay. If possible, the pitch-

bend range should be limited to 2 semitones to prevent it from going too wild.

If you decide to modulate the ﬁ lter, then it’s best to use an LFO with a saw-

tooth that ramps upwards so that the ﬁ lter opens, rather than decays, as the

note plays. The depth of the LFO can be set to maximum so that it’s applied

fully to the waveform, and the rate should be set so that it sweeps the note

quickly. What’s more, if the notes are being played in succession it’s prudent to

set the LFO to retrigger on key press. Otherwise it will only sweep properly on

the ﬁ rst note and any successive notes will be treated differently, depending on

where the LFO is in its current cycle.

This will not suit all niche music, though. Some artists ignore synths and con-

struct their own basses from culminating samples together or pitching a sample

down the keyrange because just about anything sounds great when it’s pitched

down a couple of octaves into the bass register. The key is to experiment in

creating a low tone that has the energy to add some bottom-end weight to the

music but that at the same time does not demand too much attention.

Both distortion and compression are often used on niche basses. While most

effects should be avoided since they tend to spread the sound across the image

(which destroys the stereo perspective) small amounts of controlled distortion

can help to pull the bass out of the mix and often give it the much needed raw-

ness. Similarly, compression after the distortion can be used to even out the

volume, keep the effect under control and bring the overall levels up. As a gen-

eral guideline, start by setting the ratio to 4:1, along with an attack of 5 ms and

a medium release of 150 ms or so. Set the threshold control to 0 dB and then

slowly decrease it until the bass registers on the gain reduction meter by at cou-

ple of decibels. Finally, set the make-up gain so that the loop is at the same vol-

ume as when the compressor is bypassed and then start experimenting with the

attack and release settings until it produces the level and ‘sound’ you require.

MOTIFS

The motif in garage depends entirely on the type of garage being produced.

Pretty much anything should be considered fair game. Very generally speaking,

though, the lead is often the exact opposite of the bass. Whereas the bass is very

low and boomy, the lead riff is often incredibly bright and pitched high up the

range. 187 Lockdown’s Gunman used a sample of a watch from an old western

ﬁ lm to great effect. Indeed, many leads are often sampled from other records

or ﬁ lms and it would be naive to suggest that they are always programmed with

MIDI. Consequently, it’s impossible to offer any guidelines apart from ‘to listen

to the latest records to see where the current trend currently lies’.

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This does, however, also mean that there are no deﬁ nitive motif sounds that

can characterize the genre (bar the heavy bass line). That said, there are some

timbres that have always been popular, including bright pianos, angel bells and

fairy type timbres.

Triangle and noise waveforms can produce a harmonically rich, bright sound

that will cut through the mix. Depending on how many are employed in the

timbre, these can be detuned from one another to produce more complex,

interesting sounds. If the timbre requires more of a body to the sound then

adding a sine or pulse wave will help to widen the sound and give it more

presence. To keep the dynamic edge of the music, the ampliﬁ er’s attack is pre-

dominantly set to zero so that it starts upon key press, but the decay, sustain

and release settings will depend entirely on what type of sound you require.

Generally speaking, you should avoid long release settings since this may blur

the lead notes together and much of this music relies on sharp attacked tim-

bres. Since the bass encapsulates the music, the lead should not detract from

it; therefore the motif should remain quite steady with little modulation,

but that’s not to say you shouldn’t experiment. If you want to add movement

to a timbre, you can employ LFOs or a ﬁ lter envelope to augment the sound as

it plays.

If you need a starting point for a high motif, start with two oscillators; – one set

to a sine wave and the other set to a triangle wave, – with one of the oscillators

detuned so that it’s at a multiple of the second oscillator. The amp envelope is

then set to a fast attack, short decay and release and a medium sustain with the

ﬁ lter key-tracking switched on. To produce the initial transient for the note, a

third sine wave pitched high up on the keyboard and modulated by a one-shot

LFO (i.e. the LFO acts as an envelope – fast attack, short decay, no sustain or

release) will produce the desired timbre.

Another technique is to use a pulse and a triangle oscillator. As the sound starts

on keypress, the amp uses a zero attack with a full sustain and medium release

(note that there is no decay since the sustain parameter is at maximum).

A low-pass ﬁ lter is used to shape the timbre with the cut-off set to zero and the

resonance increased to about halfway. A ﬁ lter envelope is not employed since

the sound should remain unmodulated. If you require a ‘click’ at the begin-

ning of the note you can turn the ﬁ lter envelope to maximum, but the attack,

release and sustain parameters should remain at zero with a very, very short

decay stage.

CHORDS

Generally, chords are not used within speed garage. Chord progressions are

usually employed to ﬁ ll up any empty spaces in the mix, but in speed garage,

the space within the mix is as important as the bass. If you ﬁ ll up the frequency

spectrum, the music doesn’t have as much impact as it would if there were

holes in the frequency range of the mix.

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Nonetheless, if you wish to employ chords in the music, they should act as

a harmony to the bass and lead. This means that they should ﬁ t in between

the rhythmic interplay of the instruments without actually drawing too much

attention. To accomplish this, they need to be very closely related to the key

of the track and not use a progression that is particularly dissonant. Generally,

this can be accomplished by forming a chord progression from any notes used

in the bass and experimenting with a progression that works. For instance, if

the bass is in E, then C major would produce a good harmony because this

contains an E ( C – E – G). The real solution is to experiment with different chords

and progressions until you come up with something that works.

Since it is important not to completely ﬁ ll the frequency range of the mix, the

chord timbre should be quite thin. If necessary it can be ﬁ lled out later with

ﬂ angers or phasers. Pulse waves have less harmonic content than saws and tri-

angles and do not have the ‘weight ’ of a sine wave, so these are the best choice.

Generally only one pulse wave is required with the amp envelope set to a

medium attack, sustain and release but a fast decay. If this timbre is to sit in

the upper mid-range of the music then it’s best to use a 12 dB high-pass ﬁ lter

to remove the bottom end of the pulse. Otherwise, use a low, pass to remove

the top end and then experiment with the resonance until it produces a general

static tone that suits the track.

Following this, set an LFO to positive modulation with a slow rate on the pulse

width of the oscillator and the ﬁ lter to add some movement. Which waveform

to use for the LFO will depend on the track itself, but by ﬁ rst sculpting the

static tone to ﬁ t into the track you’ll have a much better idea of which wave to

use and how much it should modulate the parameters. If the timbre appears

too ‘statically modulated ’ in that it still seems uninteresting, use a different

rate and waveform for the oscillator and ﬁ lter so that the two beat against each

other. Alternatively, if the timbre still appears too thin even after applying

effects, add a second pulse detuned from the ﬁ rst by 3 cents with the same amp

envelope but use a different LFO waveform to modulate the pulse width.

Alternatively, try using three sawtooth waveforms and detune two from one of

the oscillators by ⫹ and ⫺3. Apply a small amount of vibrato using an LFO to

these two detuned saws. Then use an ampliﬁ er envelope with a medium attack

and release and a full sustain (there is no decay since sustain is set to full and it

would have nothing to drop down to). Experiment with the sawtooth that wasn’t

detuned by pitching it up as far as possible without letting it become an individ-

ual sound (i.e. less than 20 Hz). If possible use two ﬁ lters – one set as a low pass to

remove the low-end frequencies from the two detuned saws and one set as a high

pass to remove some of the high-frequency content from the recently pitched saw.

SOUND EFFECTS

One ﬁ nal aspect is the addition of sound effects and sometimes vocals. Often

the vocals are nothing more than an MC speaking, but commercial vocals have

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been used ( Spin Spin Sugar remix). Vocals are rarely used as is, however, and

often beneﬁ t from time stretching in a sampler/audio workstation. No real

advice can be given here since it depends entirely on the vocals on how they

should be effected, but as always, listening to the current market leaders will

give you ideas on how the vocals are being effected in the current climate.

The sound effects also play a large role in the production of speed garage.

Indeed, they often help to deﬁ ne the genre (the gunshot and siren in 187

Lockdown’s Gunman play a large role). These effects can be sampled from mov-

ies, or sample CD’s or created in any competent synthesizer. What follows, there-

fore, is a quick rundown on how to create some of the most used sound effects.

The siren is possibly the easiest sound effect to recreate. Set one oscillator to

produce a sine wave and use an amp envelope with a fast attack, sustain and

release and a medium decay. Finally, use a triangle wave or sine wave LFO to

modulate the pitch of the oscillator at full depth. The faster the LFO rate is set,

the faster the siren will become.

Another popular effect is the gunshot. Just about every sound effects sample

CD has these, but if you don’t have one you can create your own in any ana-

logue-style synthesizer with two oscillators. One oscillator should be set to a

saw wave while the other should be set to a triangle wave. Detune the triangle

from the saw by ⫹3, ⫹5 or ⫹7 and set a low-pass ﬁ lter to a high cut-off and

resonance (but not so high that the ﬁ lter self oscillates). Set the amp’s envelope

to a fast attack, sustain and release but with a medium decay and copy these

settings to the ﬁ lter envelope. Make the decay a little shorter than the amp’s

EG. Finally, use a sawtooth LFO set to a negative amount and use this to con-

trol the pitch of the oscillators along with the ﬁ lter’s cut-off.

Yet another effect commonly used is the rising effect. To recreate this use a saw-

tooth oscillator and set both the amp and ﬁ lter EG to a fast decay and release

but a long attack and high sustain. Use a triangle or sine LFO set to a posi-

tive mild depth and very slow rate (about 1 Hz) to modulate the ﬁ lter’s cut-off.

Finally, use the ﬁ lter’s envelope to also modulate the speed of the LFO so that

as the ﬁ lter opens the LFO speeds up. If the synthesizer doesn’t allow you to

use multiple destinations, you can increase the speed of the LFO manually and

record the results into a sampler or audio sequencer.

ARRANGEMENTS

With all the parts programmed we can begin to look at the arrangement. As

touched upon in the musical analysis, garage is an incredibly diverse genre so

there are no deﬁ nite arrangement methods.

Nevertheless, as much of house relies on the sampling ethics of drum ‘n’ bass, a

usual approach is to arrange the instruments in different conﬁ gurations to pro-

duce a series of different loops. For instance, one loop could consist of just the

drums, another of the drums and bass mixed together, another of the drum,

bass and leads, and another of just the leads. Each of these are then sampled

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(or exported from an audio sequencer) and set to a speciﬁ c key on a controller

keyboard connected to the sampler. By then hitting these keys at random you

can produce a basic arrangement.

That said, as with all genres this is subject to change, so the best way to obtain

a good representation of how to arrange the track listen to what are considered

the classics and then copy them. This isn’t stealing – it’s research and nearly

every musician on the planet follows this same route. This can be accomplished

by using a method known as chicken scratching. Armed with a piece of paper

and a pen, listen to the track and for every bar place a single scratch mark on

the paper. When a new instrument is introduced or there is a change in the

rhythmic element, place a star below the scratch. Once you’ve ﬁ nished listen-

ing, you can refer to the paper to determine how many bars are used in the

track and where new instruments have been introduced. You can then follow

this same arrangement and, if required, change it slightly so that it follows a

progression to suit.

The data CD contains a full mix of a typical Speed Garage track with narration on how it

was constructed.

RECOMMENDED LISTENING

Ultimately, the purpose of this chapter has been to give some insight into the

production of UK garage, and as ever there is no one deﬁ nitive way to produce

the genre. Indeed, the best way to learn new techniques and production ethics is

to actively listen to the current market leaders and experiment wildly with all the

tools you have to hand. With this in mind, what follows is a short list of artists

who, at the time of writing, are considered the most inﬂ uential in this area:

■ Armand Van Helden

■ Dreem Teem

■ RIP

■ 187 Lockdown

■ Booker

■ Todd Edwards

■ MJ Cole

■ The Artful Dodger

■ Shanks and Bigfoot

■ Ed Case

Techno

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To the uninitiated, techno is used to describe any electronic dance music,

and although this was initially true, over the years it has evolved to become a

genre in its own right. Originally, the term techno was coined by Kraftwerk in

an effort to describe how they mixed electronic instruments and technology

together to produce ‘pop’ music. However, as the following years were riddled

by numerous artists taking the idea of technology on board to write their own

music, the true foundations of where techno, as we know it today, originated is

difﬁ cult to pinpoint accurately.

To some, the roots of this genre can be traced back to as early as 1981 with the

release of Shari Vari by A Number of Names, I Feel Love by Donna Summers

(and Giorgio Moroder) and Techno City by Cybotron. To others, it emerged in

the mid-1980s when the ‘Belleville Three ’ collaborated together in Detroit.

These three high school friends – Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson and Derrick

May – used to swap mix tapes with one another and religiously listen to the

Midnight Funk Generation on WJLB-FM. The show was hosted by DJ Charles

‘ Electrifying Mojo ’ Johnson and consisted of a 5 h mix of electronic music from

numerous artists including Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream and George Clinton.

Inspired by this eclectic mix, they began to form their own music using cheap

second-hand synthesizers such as the Roland TR909, TR808 and TB303. The

music they produced was originally labelled as House and both May and

Saunderson freely admit to gaining some of their inspiration from the Chicago

clubs, particularly the Warehouse and Frankie Knuckles, and the house music

they played. In fact, Derrick May’s 1987 hit Strings of Life is still viewed by

many as house music, although to Derrick himself and many other aﬁ cionados

it was an early form of Detroit techno.

Techno

CHAPTER 14

’ Techno is a complete mistake. It’s like George Clinton

and Kraftwerk stuck in an elevator with only a

sequencer to keep them company

… ’

Derrick May