Bring The Jams

Posted by Paul

Hip-Hop Beat Making:

Hip Hop beat making is definately a weird choice for an entrepreneurial career because people usually start off doing it just for fun, and then (if they get good, haha) one thing leads to another and moneys coming their way. Because of this there is never a business plan, and a lot of people don’t sit down and think of ways to expand. Now obviously some beat makers are great at the marketing aspect of this career, but this article is for those who may have overlooked this part, and is just aimed at giving some basic tips to get you in the right frame of mind for making you as successful as you can be doing this. This is obviously meant for beat makers, but other artists should read this too.

1. Treat yourself as a real business

Even if you are only doing this part time, on the side whenever you feel like making a beat, still go at it the right way. Make a business plan, sit down and think of marketing strategies and who you want to have fiending for your beats.

2. Get business cards

These are so cheap and so effective. Just carry a bunch with you at all times and hand them out to anybody and everybody that could possible get some use from having them. You can even get business cards free from Vista Print. How can you turn down something free that could help you out in any way? Exactly, haha. Go to local shows, meet with the artists (and fans) and let ‘em know about your beats. Give artists a beat cd with a business card in it and bam, potential callback.

3. Use the internet

Local scenes can be small and tough to get involved in if you aren’t too outgoing, which is where the internet comes into play. Obvoiusly you know about the internet if you’re reading this, so register to as many hip hop forums as you can and get the word out about your beats. Big forums, small forums, myspace, roc battle, facebook – there are countless places to meet with other artists and make a connection.

To successfully use the internet though, don’t just go around talking to people, make yourself a web presence – get a website. You can get hosting from $4.95/month. That is a small price to pay to get a one-up on those using only myspace and forums. If you don’t want to get a website for some reason, at least get an easy to remember domain name and put it to a myspace or something so that people can get information about you whenever they want.

Now all of this may seem very basic and it is, but not enough people think about these things enough. This post wasn’t meant to give you crazy sick ideas to become a millionaire, but just get your brain moving around in the right direction. If you are talented then take yourself serious and get out there.

Here are some more tips!!!:

Making Bass with a Low-Pass Filter:

The problem I see the most with amateur producers is making bass. It takes a lot of work to be able to match keys successfully, and you’ll need to do that to make bass that doesn’t interfere and sound horrible alongside your sample. After people DO find the keys, there’s a lot that goes into making a nice bassline pattern. A Low-Pass filter can help.

What is a low-pass filter?

In its simplest form, a low-pass filter is just a plugin that you can put on a sample to take out all of the highs and keep just the lows (the bass). This way, you can have the bass accentuated in a hip-hop style without messing with keys and programming basslines. This technique will work better with some samples than it will with others, as it relies on the bass already in the sample.

If you use Fruity Loops, you’re in luck. FL Studio (at least FL Studio XXL 7 which is what I use) has a Low-Pass filter already in it. It’s called Fruity Fast-LP, and it’s very simple to use. Put it in your plugin list, and then make two files of your sample all chopped up and put them both in your playlist. Take one of them, and put them on a mixer channel, and then go to the mixer channel’s properties and put the Fast-LP plugin on. Test different basses by soloing out the sample you’re using for bass (just drop the volume on the other one) and mess with the Cutoff and the Resonance. Then add volume back to your other sample, play around with the two respective volumes, and there’s your pounding bass.

If you don’t have Fruity Loops, a version with the Fruity Fast-LP filter, or just prefer to do things outside of FL first, you can still do this. Plugin masters Waves have a low-pass filter called the LFE360 Low-Pass Filter and it can be used in any audio editing program that can accept RTAS or VST. I’m sure there are other programs out there, probably free ones, so feel free to look those up as well.

Making Grimy Drum Beats:

Ah… grime. What hip hop head doesn’t love the grimy, old school drums? Not many I’d imagine. How do guys like Premier do it?

1. Sample from Vinyl

Sampling is NOT just for instrumentation loops. You can get great drums off vinyl, and this may seem very basic but a lot of people skip over this step and forget about it. If you want something that sounds like it’s from the 1970s, take it from the 1970s. This will be your best bet in getting the authentic old school drums.

2. Run new drums through an old sampler

Taking drums and putting them through a classic hardware sampler such as the Akai S900 will give them that classic hardware feel (duh).

3. Lower bit rate

This is a little less authentic, but can produce decent enough results. Load up your drum in an audio program and save it to a low sample bit rate (like 8 kHz).

4. Use plugins

Plugins are what make computer production great. There are plenty of plugins that can do the trick such as the SD 2100 plugin by Acquit Music (emulates classic machine SP 2100), and for a more out-there plugin Izotope’s Vinyl (freeware) or Trash.

Note: If you lose bass with anything you do try to layer your grimy drum with another drum (possibly with a low-pass filter on it).

These are just some methods of getting grimy drums, and there are plenty more out there. Make sure to EQ and add compression to any drums that just aren’t quite cutting it, as that can put them over the edge and make them very useable.

If you have any other techniques feel free to drop them in a comment so other people can see.

How to Strip Vocals & Make Acapellas:

Beat makers love to put acapellas onto their beats, it’s a known fact. Yes, a fact. Studys have been done. Haha. This is a video (not done by me, by the way, done by SnakeEyes on Youtube) that shows you to strip vocals using sample inversion and make DIY (Do It Yourself) acapellas. I hope you enjoy. Note: This technique doesn’t always work perfectly, but it will work sometimes, so just try it out and see how it goes.

Adobe Audition 3 (PC):

• Adobe.Audition.v3.0.Multilingual_abu137_.part1.rar (rapidshare.com; 100 MB ) download
• Adobe.Audition.v3.0.Multilingual_abu137_.part2.rar (rapidshare.com; 100 MB ) download
• Adobe.Audition.v3.0.Multilingual_abu137_.part3.rar (rapidshare.com; 30.3 MB ) download

The T-Pain Vocal Effect:

This is a much-talked about vocal effect, especially with the rise of T-Pain (and even on a smaller level Akon). You may also remember the effect on California Love. Cher used this effect too. Now, of course you don’t want to sound like Cher but she’s pretty much out of our minds by now, so we can move on and accept the synthesized love that is .. the talkbox effect . Here I’ll tell you how to do it.

What you’re going to need for this is Antares Autotune (or a talkbox.. but.. i’m going to assume that you don’t have that). Auto-tune is a Direct-X plugin that you can use with Cool Edit or whatever mixing program you’d like. Well, load it up and put the following in:

Key - C
Scale - Major

Retune - 0
Tracking - 75

Rate - 0.1
Variation - 0
Onset Delay - 0
Onset Rate - 0
Pitch - 0
Amplitude - 30
Formant - 100

There you go. Put that on your choruses or whatever, and enjoy.

Some Videos:

Here’s a collection of beat making videos for you to watch and learn/get inspiration from. Constantly being updated so check back often.

Just Blaze - Everybody’s favourite Just Blaze. And by everybody’s favourite, I mean one of mine. This is him on Smack. Update: Click here for two bonus videos of Just Blaze.

Scott Storch - Scott Storch in a little mini-interview. Shows him play Candy Shop and dabble in the keys a bit more.

Heatmakerz - Heatmakerz segment on Smack. Heatmakerz do beats for Dipset, so you know they’re hot.

Kev Brown - Kev Brown servin’ up some of that old school flavour on the MPC.

Dialek - Dialek of Purest Form rocking an mpc, keyboard, and all that good shit you love. Makes a pretty good beat. Check out purestform.com.

Urban Tactics - Up-and-coming amateur Urban Tactics shows how to cook up that heat. Two videos.

Mannie Fresh - Mannie Fresh making a beat as part of the Smack series.

Dj Premier - This is hip hop legend Dj Premier in an interview for the Scratch documentary. Talks about the process, and what it is to be Dj Premier. Good interview.

Sam Addams - Video made by Sam Addams for Spityogame.com consisting of him making a very hot beat. Composed for you sample-haters.

Equalibrum - Underground amateur producer Equalibrum making a live beat using the MPD24 and FL Studio.

Ski Beatz - Legendary Ski Beatz chopping up a beat on Roland’s MV-8000.

Ski Beatz - The Making of Dead Presidents - Ski shows how he did Jay-Z’s classic Dead Presidents.

Dj Shadow, Cut Chemist, Dj Numark - Ski From Dj Shadow’s On Tune and In Time DVD, a live performance called Pushing Buttons. All three of them work together sampling with MPCs to create some good music.

All of these tips are from a very good blog called The Producer’s Den. Check it out!