Tuesday, May 29, 2012

How to Make Pro Hip Hop/Rap Beats

Hey, I've been making music for a little while now and I've been able to generate a steady income from it. But when I began I had no idea where to start. I searched and search through pages and pages of Google to find some help but I couldn't find anything but advertisements. So now I've decided to help someone else out and write a in-depth how to on making beats.

Steps

  1. Find drums that already have bump to them. Find a kick that has punch and one that has thump and layer them, then if your making southern music put a grimey 808 under that.
  2. Rap/Hip Hop music is all about 2 things: bump and feel. Change up your patterns until you are completely satisfied. Try moving to it, try to imagine what it would feel like if you were in a club.
  3. As you start to add your instruments, keep going back and playing with your drums. Change up the hi hat pattern or even the sound, add some 808 snares, make sure your transitions are flawless.
  4. Music is an art form, it creates a feeling. As a producer you are trying to create this feeling. Its not something you have to make up, you know it already from listening to your favorite music.
  5. Don't just add your instruments and leave them, play with them, add reverb and delays, if you have rhodes add a chorus. Do everything within your power to fill the feel of the beat your making. If you can get the feel, then whatever you put in the beat will turn to diamond.
  6. Last but no where near least is....BE RELEVANT!! Stop living in the past, artists want beats like the ones they hear on the radio, they want singles and you have to cater to that if you want to make sales.

Tips

  • As a producer you are a painter of sorts. Take elements that already exist and bring them together to make something new, you don't have to rack your brain over how your gonna make good music.. a lot of it is scientific.
  • Go back and listen to the music you grew up on, but listen to it differently. Break it down, listen to the instruments, try to put yourself in the producers shoes and listen to what feel he was trying to accomplish at the time...was it a simple pop record, was it soul, funk, jazz. Take it all in, even the riffs and melodies. You will start to notice similarities.
  • Also listen to the mix, smash hits always have the same sound...Try to accomplish that at best you can.
  • Find some software that suits you.
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