From Expansion to Beat Ideas

cblack412

Just wanted to start a discussion on you guys process on creating new beats from expansions. Especially after you hear the example patterns, lol. Please list your thoughts and tips.

cblack412

I‘ll start!

I created this using a kit from the Higher Place expansion. Let me know what you think!

https://audiomack.com/djphinesse/song/alright-demo

cblack412

Here’s another one. I just added some additional vocal samples.

https://audiomack.com/djphinesse/song/work-da-booty

ozon

I generally don’t listen to the Expansion Group Patterns (mostly even not loading them) but get inspired by the provided Instruments, Samples and Sounds for Massive/Monark/Prism. After creating a (melodic) pattern for an inspiring sound, I start to look for matching drum and percussion sounds.

6xes

layering drum kits, and switching mutes of instruments and saving it as a lock state is one possible way *shrugs.... never tried it, but figure it should work... effectively thats what the lock states are useful for

my favoured method is using shaperbox2 and mashing up the drumbeats and switching the timeshaper speeds... this can again be setup using lockstates, what im unsure about is whether you can save the lockstates as a group for recall to other projects as a template.. its possible it does *shrugs unsure

heres a video of using shaperbox2 to demonstrate variation of drum beats using just 4-5 looped samples

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UkdqZNxKsI

6xes

just as a added peice of the puzzle... in the above video... you can affect 3 parts of a sample...

low/mid/high and make them each run at different speeds and different shapers... and to that each shaper type... filter/distortion/volume etc can again affect the low/mid/high in different ways...

i have been setting this up on the maschine jam in midi mode using reaper&realearn for the purposes of realtime mixnmash of both beats rhtyhmic melodies & basslines... it does get a little tricky dealing with melodic content... but shaperbox2 is great for rhytmic content as can be seen in the video above

enz0

Most of the time I erase all the melodic parts of a kit. Then I’ll tweak from there by adding/removing/replacing/layering samples and fx

Sometimes I’ll see how the pattern sounds, especially if I’ve already laid out a melodic pattern in another group. I may throw it all away, use the patterns for only some sounds, or add/remove individual notes

D-One

I usually don't listen at all tbh, unless I am looking for a bit of inspiration.

I also always delete all melodic instruments/samples, I use the kits just to get some temporary drums going then change them later to something that matches my style better, mostly because the expansion stuff is super overused. I wish there was an option to only load the drums from the browser.

BigPictureSound

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/82867#Comment_82867

I always try to find ways to flip samples into something different, like using the audio module to pitch shift melodics into unusual variants or layering percussive elements into something different. I rarely use melodics as is, to your point they can be overused. Also not worth risking false copyright flags in algorithms.

My workflow is almost never the same, other than open up Maschine and start browsing 😂. Expansions are always just a small part of my final sound. I usually never use patterns as-is and will use multiple expansions and cherry pick specific elements and flip things into different genres. I also delete all fx processing (usually).