Quote:
Originally Posted by Lenox
(Post 749645)
It seems like every day I feel like improving. Like with the fog beat I thought it was a good slight improvement. But now today and look at it and I’m like the beat i made today seems way better. So I guess that’s always a positive
https://soundcloud.com/139_lenox/old-daze :P
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Timing was better on the loop and the drums. So progress. You have a good ear for samples too. I think your starting point is better than most people just getting into this. You find a good sample, but ive noticed youre sticking to one style. Not a bad thing, but MASTERING the boom bap is tough. Soulful samples are good, but dont leave much wiggle room for STYLE imo. Soul samples are best with live sounding drums, which you have. So youre on the right path. And the fact its simple gives more room for intri***ies that uh oh and peezy have mastered. Theres levels to this shit....
Problems... As stated, the most popular way to get around a simple sample, not very many variations is filtering. I learned this from uh oh a long time ago. You SPLIT the sample in half. Basically when youre mixing, you have one track play the high frequency (treble) and then you have a SEPARATE track play the low frequency (bass). Play them both and you lose middle, so if you dont mix it right it can sound more empty, if that makes sense. Like I said, I usually only sample the high frequencies and that allows me to play my own bass lines that play off the sample. When youre filtering back in the bass you can pump it up to give you that sub hit, but you gotta have drums that dont TAKE AWAY from the original bass line. I listened on my phone speakers so I cant say what all you did exactly, but the drum SOUNDS you used didnt COMPLIMENT the original sample IMO. Instead they sounded processed. Meaning, they were LIVE DRUM SOUNDS but had effects to get a weird murky middle. Those can be fun too, but in this case I wasnt a fan.
Also, while separating the bass, usually a bit of the original high sample is still there. This can separate the HOOK from the VERSE. in this case, you built your loop and let it run. Build that shot man... Make that sample go away and come back in different places. This gives variety. You can also make minor changes to your drum patterns for effect. In this specific case, your sample has words. When youre chopping loops with vocals there are usually certain parts of the song where theres OOOHS and AHHHS and those little parts can offer a 1-2 bar break. So in this one, you could run the same loop for 8 bars, 2 full cycles of your 4 bar loop, and then on the LAST BAR or two throw in a OOOOHH AHHHHH and then go RIGHT back into your original loop. But THIS time you run 16 bars of the same 8 bar loop, so 2 full cycles of the now 8 bar loop, but then im ONLY getting the lows so now I'm rapping. Bring BACK your original 8 bar loop, theres your hook again.
Intro 4-8 bars, never longer. 8 bar hook or 16 bar verse to start...depending how you feel. Sometimes its good to save the hook. Then when you get that done, give yourself another verse. Run the hook twice and fade out. This is called FORMATTING. Your giving your artist variations to break and build a SONG.
During your formatting you may want to pull out drums here and there for added effect. Example, in my drums I like to kill all drums on bar 8 of my hook. So your hook is 8 bars, but your drums only go 7. This can get tricky as sometimes its best to keep that very FIRST kick on bar number 8. So if a bar (or measure) is 4 BEATS. basically, you want that kick drum on 1. What I mean by this is if you literally count 1,2,3,4-2,2,3,4-3,2,3,4-4,2,3,4 thats 4 measures. Your beat making program will usually have a CLICK feature or a METRONOME. This sets your tempo. It will,count for you. There are infinite possibilities with bar counts but this is basically rhythm 101. This is basic shit. There are 3/4 tempos 5/12 but hip hop, rock, and most music is 4/4.
Basically man... Lol just switch it up sometimes. Pull drums, like completely remove them. Sometimes kill all drums except your hi hats. Sometimes only play the bass drum. Sometimes have all your drums run but filter them to only low frequencies or only hi frequencies. Sometimes drop THE ENTIRE BEAT for a half bar.
Research formatting. It is an art form. I told Peezy his overall beat arcs are some of the best. I use simplicity as a weapon. My beats have slight variations so when I DO drop its more effective. Whereas beat drops and switches is more of an uh oh mastery thing. He got on me for years for not varying AT ALL. and HIS shit has so many variations sometimes its like "it was alwqys supposed to be like that".
Idk bro... Thwres levels to this shit.
ALL of us here tho will say primo is the best at making a 4 bar loop with NO variations and that ITSELF is an art because a 4 bar loop that never changes can be more effective cuz you dont get tired of it.
Levels man.
I'm on level 3,000 and still have a long way to,go.
