More About Rex2 Files and Using Breakbeats

I find breakbeats to a great tool when I'm writing music. I usually have a few ideas for chords written down in my notebook that I've come up with either at my M-Audio Piano or on my old acoustic guitar. Then I pick a break to start a vibe going. The thing I absolutley love about REX 2 files is that I can import the file into my sequencer (I use Cubase)
and simple type in the tempo I want and cubase is able to put it perfectly in time all in the blink of an eye.

REX 2 provide hit points for the break so your kicks, hats and snare are all divided up for you and you can mute or delete parts of the break you don't want, this is cool if you're looking to have a more sparse beat going on, you want to do some editing or if you wish simply get the sounds you want out of the break at start from scratch with a new beat.

Filters and Long Reverbs.

Another thing I love about using breakbeats is filtering the sounds, so I can take the break and have different versions of it throughout a song. For example, If I want to breakdown to a light passage of the song I can use a bandpass EQ (you will find presets for this in Cubase and other popular sequencers) that will still give me a nice vibe and rythm but I benefting from the change in dynamic, both when I drop down and when the main break comes back in.

Another thing I've done to good effect, is filtered the breakbeat down (taken alot of the high frequencies out) and put it through a longish reverb. A reverb such as this will push the beat back in the mix as will the lack of top end, then when the main beat comes back the long reverb goes and all the high end come back, and blam, the tracks kicking off again.This again goes back to dynamics, what is known as 'tension and release' and you see it in movies as well as music. It's great to have phat beat going, but if you don't have a break from the beat, or you don't get a release from it, or benefit from the effect you get of it coming back in. So you create a hole or a space, leave it open from a passage. say 4 or 8 bars or whatever feels right to you and then bang...you drop the beat back in.