Beat Dissected: ‘Mogeri’ By Dan Kye

This time on Beat Dissected we create a beat inspired by the gorgeous drums from Mogeri by Dan Kye.

Though originally from New Zealand, Jordan Rakei – AKA Dan Kye – has made his stamp on the UK underground dance music scene with an EP and a full-length LP on the London-based label Rhythm Section.

In this Beat Dissected, we’re going to be making a beat inspired by Mogeri, the opening track from Kye’s 2020 album Small Moments.

Mogeri is a skippy, dreamy and spacious track, and the basis of that is its unique beat. Here’s what we’re going to be making:

And here’s the beat with some music for context:

Want to follow along? Download the session below:

N.B: We recommend following along with headphones or studio monitors as some of these results can be subtle. Remember, this is about final polish, not broad changes. As ever, click any image to see a larger version.

Step 1: Kick

For most of this beat we will be using Ableton’s 606 Core Kit – load it on a MIDI track. Using the macro controls set the Drive Amount to 32, Drive Tone to 127, Glue to 82 and High Gain to 1dB.

Trim the kick to remove most of its tail and add a short fade out.

Program the below kick pattern.

Step 2: Clap & Snare

The beat in Mogeri features a clap sample, however, the 606 does not feature a clap. Add an 808 clap to the 606 Core Kit by dragging the sample from the Browser on to one of the empty drum pads in the kit.

Trim the very start of the sample and remove the tail to make the clap nice and sharp.

Now program the below four-bar pattern. The clap plays an off-beat rhythm whilst the 606 snare provides a fill at the end of the four-bar pattern.

Step 3: Hat, Cymbal & Woodblock

Again we need to add an extra sample to the 606 kit, this time a wood block. Drag ‘Wood Block High’ into the drum rack and trim off the tail.

In lieu of the original we want to design our own tail for the wood block. Load the effects Resonators and Reverb after the wood block sample.

Turn off all resonators but the first one. Set the pitch to C#2 and the decay to around 41.

Filter the highs and lows out of the reverb, set a pre delay of 8.7 ms and a decay of 620 ms.

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We’ll use the closed 606 hi hat and cymbal samples as is, but set the open hat to one-shot mode and then within one shot mode set the trigger mode to gate. This will allow us to vary the length of the hi-hat hits.

Program the hi-hats, cymbal, and wood block as shown below. Note the varying length of the open hi-hat notes.

Step 4: Shaker

Instead of a shaker loop, to recreate the sample from Mogeri we’ll be using a shaker one shot and programming the pattern ourselves.

Create a new MIDI channel. Drag the sample ‘Cabasa Trax’ onto the empty MIDI channel, this will automatically create an instance of Simpler with the sample loaded. Set Simpler to one-shot mode.

To disguise the fact that the shaker is a pattern built from a one-shot we’ll use some effects. Start with an EQ cutting below 612 Hz and above 3.5 kHz.

Next add Reverb with a decay of around 410 ms and the high and low frequencies filtered.

The final effect in our chain is a compressor which we’ll sidechain to our 606 kick, aiming for just over 4dB of gain reduction.

Now program the below one bar pattern and duplicate it four times. Pan the shaker channel a little to the left and bring the volume fader right down.

Step 5: Processing & Swing

To get the beat grooving correctly apply ‘Swing 16ths 59’ from the groove pool to both MIDI clips.

Finally, group the two drum tracks together and load Drum Buss and Reverb on the group. Add a little soft drive and crunch with Drum Buss and set the Damp dial to 9.2 Hz. With reverb set a decay of 344 ms, filter the high and low frequencies and set the Dry/Wet mix to 6%.

Here’s our final audio:

Here it is in the context of a song:

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