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Skippy's
Big Bad Beats
About Skippy
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John Lehmkuhl - known to many in the music industry as "Skippy"
(a nickname given to him during his Korg days) - is a multi-talented
musician that now lives in Los Angeles, California. Since
moving to Los Angeles in 1988, Skippy has worked as one of
the main voicing people for Korg Inc. His voicing credits
include work on the Korg M1, T-Series, O1W series, Wavestation
series (including all of the dance/synth PCM card sets for
both the keyboard and the WSSR), the very popular but impossible
to find Korg Wavedrum plus the S-1, the Trinity series, the
Triton series as well as the Electribe dance boxes. Some of
the best sounds for the Clavia Nord were also made by Skippy
and are available on the internet at Clavia's web site.
While doing all the above, somehow Skippy also found time
to work on commercials and album projects doing music composition,
arranging, sound design and of course, drum programming. Clients
include Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Richard Marx, Patti
Austin, The Yellow Jackets, and many national commercial clients
as well.Big Bad Beats is the first sound library totally produced
by Skippy, but for sure, not the last. |
Tips and Tricks for
using BBB Loops
Before moving on, we suggest you try loading a
few GC programs and sequences to get a feel for how it works. Remember
to play around with your sequencer's tempo and quantizing controls.
Again, there is additional detailed information in the "Read Me"
files on the Audio/Data CD, if you need further explanation.
There are many other ways to use Big Bad Beats
loops and Groove Control files. Here are some ideas to get your
creative juices flowing:
Master Groove Creative Tips
Of course you don't have to use Groove Control
to play around with Big Bad Beats. These loops sound very cool simply
transposing them up in pitch to create all sorts of Jungle, Trip
Hop, Ambient and electro-style loops.
Mix and match the various NoS (no snare) and NoK
(no kick) versions of each groove, to add interest to your track.
Where possible on native sampler versions, we
assigned the modulation wheel to modulate your sampler's filter.
If the loop had a bass drum, we used a high pass filter to gradually
remove low frequencies (which works only if your sampler supports
this parameter). If the loop is a NoK or Bdn (Breakdown) version
we used a low pass filter to remove high frequencies.
Move the Modulation wheel up and down, at the
groove's current tempo, to make the filter sound like it is "following"
the loop. If possible, add some resonance for trippy effects.
Assign a groove menu to two groups of outputs
(stereo preferably) on two different MIDI channels. Keep one output
dry while sending the other output group to your favorite effect
processor (or multi-processor) to make your own remixed versions
of the loop. Alternate back and forth with your sequencer at different
times for even more variations.
Groove Control Creative Tips
When you load a groove control file, you might
want to quantize the sequence file to better fit the feel of your
song. Try all types of quantize settings to see how the loop's "personality"
changes.
Mix and Match! Try playing Groove Control programs
with various Groove Control sequences from completely different
grooves. Chances are, you'll find some "happy accidents" that will
make this library sound even more unique to your particular style.
If your sequencer has a "gate time" parameter,
shorten it to make the notes staccato in feel. If your sequencer
doesn't have a "gate time" parameter, use the "change decay" parameter
and set all the notes to the same short decay, or short duration
value setting.
Play with the pitch bend wheel. The pitch bend
range is up/down one octave so you can modify the sounds of the
loops quite drastically without changing the tempo of the loop.
Play one or two beats of one GC program and then
switch to a different GC program in the same groove family, without
changing the sequence file, to make totally new, but related loops.
Mix and match different GC sampler programs and
sequence files to create totally unique grooves.
Move the Modulation wheel or Pitch Bend up and
down at the loop's current tempo to make them sound like the filter
or pitch is "following" the loop. Use gradual Pitch Bend sweeps
to make subtle, but powerful, new types of drum fills as well!
Assign the mix to two different MIDI channels
and assign each to a different pair of outputs. Keep the first channel's
outputs dry but assign an effect to the other outputs. Delete the
snare notes from the dry channel and keep only the snare notes on
the second MIDI channel to get different effects.
Try the above tip but use different notes instead
of snare notes.
Super Stereo Tip: Use an SMx (small mix) in stereo
and assign an FMx (full mix) to only the left channel but pitched
up +9 semitones and a different (or same) FMx assigned only to the
right channel but pitched down - 9 semitones. You will probably
want to quantize all 3 loops to the same quantize template to make
this super stereo and feel super tight.
Essentially a Groove Control program is a menu
of drum sounds. You can always make new loops of your own using
these sounds.
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