Thanks for the votes and especially the feedback. I’d lost all perspective on it after having that ‘oh shit this is quite cool!’ excitement the first evening or so working on it. I’ve made very little d&b/jungle in my on/off years of making music. This is the second time I’ve chopped a break at this sort of tempo so especially appreciated @J-Hz saying my drums were on point as I’m full of self doubt and my own worst critic. I’m sure I’m not alone on that one!
I’ll post details hopefully tomorrow on my sample sources and a bit of the process.
Really looking forward to having a proper read and listen to others samples and processes too.
Thanks for all the vote guys, this was my first entry on these forums so i didn’t expect to place at all.
So here are the main samples I used. Pretty much the samples did all the work and I just put drums and extra sounds over the top haha. I used Renoise for this track, did basic equing, used decimort to make the sounds more gritty for the lofi video game feel. One thing I will do better for the next comp will be to get the mix to be louder.
1st Half
2nd Half
I had the transition in there as it reminds me of when Mario would go from out in the open world into the pipes and the music changes to a more cavey/dark tone. Second half of the track I added strings and 808 bass for that ambient dnb/jungle sound.
I wanted to sample stuff from sega saturn, PS1 or dreamcast eras but it was harder than I thought. I was going to use some jazzy tunes from Gran Tursimo as well haha
Awesome man, this one was another percy and a close runner for me. Those vocals, damn - they sound straight out of jungle/d&b tune from a certain era I’m not up on enough to place, I had no idea they’d come from a game soundtrack!
I’m impressed that @DrOrthogonal started with monkeys, but didn’t do a “jungle” (as in location) type beat. It’s easy to go cliche when dealing with monkey sounds.
Thanks as always… yeah I love that vocal, it was pure serendipity by way of serato sample that I stumbled on to that hook, I just loaded the acapella and hit find slices (it was on the second pad I auditioned) and bam 30 mins later I’d finished … So yeah I can’t take all the credit for it.
Edit I did know it was a diva vocal though, wch was pretty popular in early 90 jungle…
SNES/Famicon was my first proper console so I wanted to make something from that era. Never had the game (want play it now though) but found the soundtrack to Chrono Trigger and thought it had some cool stuff in it.
The main sample, and my starting point where I built from is right at the beginning:
I also used little bits of this that come in later:
I wanted to try and chop a classic jungle/d&b break and always loved the apache break. I manually chopped in Ableton simpler/drum rack and processed with the Drum Buss messing with the transients to try and make it snap/hit a bit more and dirtied it up and compressed it some. Had loads of fun making the patterns jamming live to get ideas and then using the piano roll. I couldn’t tell if they were interesting enough so kept adding little extra bits and the glitchier stuff that comes in after a while.
Also found a pack of Chrono Trigger fx sounds which are peppered throughout.
The weird dolphin noise (a little visit from Echo - Seeeega!), some synth drone, the bass sample, the perc that’s not part of the apache and a few fx blips were from that Jungle Jungle sample pack so thanks to those that linked that one. Some great stuff in there.
I did it all in Ableton on my laptop and like I said in the original topic, when I plugged it in to my speakers it sounded all over the place, distorted and just baaaad So I did some rough mixing, playing with the panning, levels and super simple EQ’ing rolling off lows/hi’s.
For my mastering (I don’t really know what I’m doing ha) I sent the whole thing through my 404mk2 and dialed in some light-ish EQ, light 303 compressor, then into the SP-16 (aka the Sounds Better-izer) for some filtering and saturation. Then on the master in Ableton I had Legowelt’s Smackos Tapestation and toned down the settings a bit. I LOVE the sound of this thing but it’s easy to overblow things and I often do! Ableton heads, if you haven’t got them, some great stuff here: Legowelt Software
@DrOrthogonal, I wish Ableton had it too! All the stuff people say about the sound and the Dave Smith filter/saturation on the SP-16 is true. It sounds so good to me.
Logic’s Neve EQ emulation (called ‘Vintage Console EQ’) gets pretty close to a ‘betterizer’, if you tweak it right. Especially in combination with one of the vintage compressor models. Not being ironic this time.
So I did some rough mixing, playing with the panning, levels and super simple EQ’ing rolling off lows/hi’s.
