[Breakcore Composition] List breakchopping technqiues

Creative Resources / Tutorials Music
1

made this list a while back of every single breakchopping technique i heard in the music of others

Break Effects Cheat Sheet:

Scope: An indexed running log of the available considerable break mutation techniques for increased awareness of available permutations possibilities for creative use:

  1. Interleaving - Multiple gain-normalized breaks can be interleaved on a ‘per hit’ basis to create the effect of a single but complex break as opposed to 2 separate breaks back to back (ex pat: kick 1, kick 2, snare 1, snare 2).
  2. Pitch shift - simple pitch shift of hit up or down (typically in semitones but experiments in ‘just’ temperament are encouraged)
  3. Time Stretch - Individual percussion elements (mostly snares) are time stretched (pre-rendered for best results) with high quality algorithm
  4. Pitch runs - repeating of percussion hits at pitched intervals
  5. Rolls - Typical snares (snare rush) but any percussion hit rolls with increasing / decreasing gain.
  6. Triplet Riffs - Triplet Based slices
  7. Swing Riffs - triplet based riffs with swing emphasis
  8. Filter Sweeps - filter sweeps
  9. Reversed Samples - individual reverse hits or whole/partial beat reversals
  10. Stacatto - limited sustain / insertion of silence between hits
  11. Spinbacks - Spinback samples
  12. Ride Stops - Ride + Kick drum sample as punctuation
  13. Brake Stops - sudden pitch down effect to simulate vinyl stops
  14. Substitutions - insertion of individual samples (hits) of foreign origin
  15. Flange Sweeps
  16. Decimation / Distortion Sweeps
  17. Macro Granulating- granulation at the 1/16-1/128 level
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Nice list. Some definitely possibilities here for completion matrix as well, if orthogonal pairs of these can be identified.

Some others (some overlap w/ what’s above already):

  • Timbral modulation: apply chorus, flanger, ring mod, bit crush, or similar to a time slice
  • Retrigger/stutter: perhaps similar to “rolls” above, but emphasizing superhuman repeat rates
  • Shuffle/swap: similar to “substitutions” above, but substituting from other times of the same break
  • Gating: maybe just another name for “stacatto” above, but perhaps content aware
  • Ambiance effecting: send a time slice in parallel to delay and or reverb
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Ah yes how could i forget the reverb sending - nice one!

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