In the earlier days of funk and r&b music, breakbeats were sections where every instrument stopped playing except<\/strong> the drums for at least one bar. Breakbeats have been known and used for a long time, and are widely known for being sampled by many early producers of hip hop, where the “break” in a song, usually only a few seconds long, is looped to create basis for an entire new song.<\/p>\n For a list of most sampled breakbeats, check out this post by whosampled<\/a>.<\/p>\n Wouldn’t it be great to make your own custom breakbeat instrument by slicing different elements of other breakbeats and then re-organizing and re-playing them? The process is actually pretty simple and I’m here to show you how you can make your own breakbeat instrument using Splice Sounds<\/strong> and Logic Pro X<\/strong>.<\/p>\n In the old days, producers would “sample” breakbeats directly off vinyl and record them into samplers. The process\u00a0required a lot of gear preparation and was time consuming. Today, we have\u00a0Splice Sounds<\/a><\/strong>, an extensive library of over 1 million samples, sounds, and presets where one can go digging for any kind of loop or one-shot they are looking for.<\/p>\n Sign up now for Splice Sounds now<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n For this tutorial, I browsed through the Splice Sounds library and picked out\u00a0six<\/strong> different breakbeats and drum loops from labels such as\u00a0Loopmasters<\/strong><\/a>,\u00a0Black Octopus<\/a><\/strong> and\u00a0Prime Loops<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Remember, our goal here is to mix and match<\/strong> different elements from multiple breakbeats to create a single breakbeat instrument that you can utilize in your productions. With that in mind, I had some criteria when choosing these six breakbeats and drum loops:<\/p>\n For example, I chose two breakbeats from the Nu Disco Dynamite pack<\/a> and another two from Atmospheric Vinyl Breaks<\/a> because they were\u00a0both contrasting beats. The former had a drum kit with a tight and compressed sound, while the latter was dirty and fat. Picking more varied breakbeats and loops gives your custom instrument more variety.<\/p>\n Once you’ve loaded all the breakbeats into Logic:<\/p>\n If the shortcuts above doesn’t seem to be working, you probably do not have the arrow keys assigned to the correct keyboard command\u00a0in Logic. Head over to the Logic Keyboard Command preferences (opt + k), and search for transients. Scroll down till you see the header\u00a0Main Window Tracks and Various Editors<\/strong> and assign the arrow keys just like how you see it in the image above.<\/p>\n The Methodology\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The way I like to setup my breakbeat instrument is to have a\u00a0combination <\/b>of\u00a0kick<\/strong>, snare<\/strong>, and hi hat <\/strong>samples that sound good together<\/strong>\u00a0mapped across every 3 keys. The setup for one octave will be such (you can repeat this for multiple octaves if you like. In fact, the more the merrier):<\/p>\nMaking a Breakbeat Instrument<\/h2>\n
1. Find breakbeats or drum loops that you like.\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"breakbeat_packs\"](\"https:\/\/splice.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/breakbeat_packs-1024x1024.png\")
<\/p>\n\n
2. Slicing Up\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"slicing_screenflow_v2\"](\"https:\/\/splice.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Slicing_screenflow_v2.gif\")
<\/p>\n\n
![\"screen-shot-2016-09-28-at-14-25-29\"](\"https:\/\/splice.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Screen-Shot-2016-09-28-at-14.25.29.png\")
<\/p>\n3. Putting elements\u00a0into a Sampler\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"breakbeat_methodology\"](\"https:\/\/splice.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/pno_KB-1024x763.png\")
<\/p>\n
![\"breakbeats-layout\"](\"https:\/\/splice.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Screen-Shot-2016-09-28-at-15.29.01.png\")
<\/p>\n