How can I make my beats sound old sounding/90s grimey sound?

filters. saturation tools also help to achieve this sounds. sampling old vinyl as well. sometimes chaning the bit rate of your drums will also help.
 
Go old school and sample everything with a 12 bit sampler first. You can grab a used 12 bit sampler for cheap on ebay.
 
The most gritty filter plugin is Tone2's Bifilter. It does also Saturation, all sorts of distortion, Bitreduction, etc..
http://www.tone2.com/html/bifilter2_vst_au_effect_plugin.html

Its first incarnation was freeware and I'm pretty sure it can be easily be found somewhere in the depths of the internet.

That's what it looked like:

tone2-bifilter-vst.jpg
;)
 
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Your welcome for the link. My bad.....it isn't emulator.....it's time machine. Run a natural drum kit through that.....isotope.....then a spring reverb.....just like a break beat off vinyl.
 
jerome854 said:
Im using fruity loops
Click to expand...

Lowpass filters are your first weapon.

Most 90's grimy rap was heavily filtered than anything (very different from todays full frequency spectrum sound). Experiment with a lot of wacky filter stuff, even try some hardware stuff. Everything from drums, pianos, to lush string samples were heavily filtered at times.


If you Sample, Sample from vinyl and skip the CD's or mp3s. Vinyl also plays a role into getting a grimy sound. Experiment with vinyl plug-ins if you don't sample. Try to get your songs to sound like they were sampled (a good 90's method).

Tape saturation (before like 1997, like almost everything was recorded using reel to reel analog). Might explain why a lot of 90's stuff sound more warmer than todays stuff. This effect is probably the hardest to acheive, and I think this is a big factor of the 90's sound.


Lo-fi "bit reduction" and sample rate reduction effects. I would use more sparingly (depending on who you are trying to emulate). Extreme lo-fi is more of an 80's effect than 90's effect IMO. Most samplers used in the 90's were 16 bit 44.1khz. The more lo-fi samplers were around 12 bit 40khz type stuff. Follow your lo-fi plug-ins with filters.


Everything else depends on who you are trying to emulate in the 90's. Some of Dr. Dre's stuff was lo-fi in a hi-fi kind of glossy way. A lot of Biggies music also had a more gloss to it even though a lot of it was really lo-fi. RZA was just plain dirty most of the time.

But basically you will need to experiment with a combination of lo-fi and hi-fi effects and remember you can overdo stuff either way.
 
jlgrimes11 said:
Lowpass filters are your first weapon.

Most 90's grimy rap was heavily filtered than anything (very different from todays full frequency spectrum sound). Experiment with a lot of wacky filter stuff, even try some hardware stuff. Everything from drums, pianos, to lush string samples were heavily filtered at times.


If you Sample, Sample from vinyl and skip the CD's or mp3s. Vinyl also plays a role into getting a grimy sound. Experiment with vinyl plug-ins if you don't sample. Try to get your songs to sound like they were sampled (a good 90's method).

Tape saturation (before like 1997, like almost everything was recorded using reel to reel analog). Might explain why a lot of 90's stuff sound more warmer than todays stuff. This effect is probably the hardest to acheive, and I think this is a big factor of the 90's sound.


Lo-fi "bit reduction" and sample rate reduction effects. I would use more sparingly (depending on who you are trying to emulate). Extreme lo-fi is more of an 80's effect than 90's effect IMO. Most samplers used in the 90's were 16 bit 44.1khz. The more lo-fi samplers were around 12 bit 40khz type stuff. Follow your lo-fi plug-ins with filters.


Everything else depends on who you are trying to emulate in the 90's. Some of Dr. Dre's stuff was lo-fi in a hi-fi kind of glossy way. A lot of Biggies music also had a more gloss to it even though a lot of it was really lo-fi. RZA was just plain dirty most of the time.

But basically you will need to experiment with a combination of lo-fi and hi-fi effects and remember you can overdo stuff either way.
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What frequences i should use? (i think low pass and 1500mhz+) dont blame me im a nubbie on mixing
 
ThePrimate said:
What frequences i should use? (i think low pass and 1500mhz+) dont blame me im a nubbie on mixing
Click to expand...

It's more of a feel thing than a number thing. Most LP filters back in the day weren't even set on a realistic frequency scale.

You basically just take a bright sound, turn down the cutoff frequency until it sounds "older".


I would guess for a sample anywhere from 800 - 12000 depending on what you are doing. You can even go lower if you just want a bassline. Many producers did that for breaks back then as well.

---------- Post added at 02:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:22 PM ----------
jlgrimes11 said:
It's more of a feel thing than a number thing. Most LP filters back in the day weren't even set on a realistic frequency scale.

You basically just take a bright sound, turn down the cutoff frequency until it sounds "older".


I would guess for a sample anywhere from 800 - 12000 depending on what you are doing. You can even go lower if you just want a bassline. Many producers did that for breaks back then as well.
Click to expand...

If it helps a lot of time I turn stuff down until it sounds like it comes from an old black and white movie.

I realize more is needed to get the true black and white effect (a little hp filtering as well as some analog distortion), but some times just a good low pass filter can get you in the ballpark.
 
jlgrimes11 said:
It's more of a feel thing than a number thing. Most LP filters back in the day weren't even set on a realistic frequency scale.

You basically just take a bright sound, turn down the cutoff frequency until it sounds "older".


I would guess for a sample anywhere from 800 - 12000 depending on what you are doing. You can even go lower if you just want a bassline. Many producers did that for breaks back then as well.

---------- Post added at 02:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:22 PM ----------



If it helps a lot of time I turn stuff down until it sounds like it comes from an old black and white movie.

I realize more is needed to get the true black and white effect (a little hp filtering as well as some analog distortion), but some times just a good low pass filter can get you in the ballpark.
Click to expand...
just to add to this you can't low pass everything. So much of the sound had to do with the 12 bit samplers of the day. It wasn't that it was really filtered it was just the lower sample rates of the day that added to a more muffled sound and a more distorted sound. While you can come close to this sound using methods like mentioned here nothing matches the machines used themselves. And S900s are dumb cheap these days. The most popuar setup in hip hop until like the late 90s was the sp1200/s950/900 combo as far as I know
 
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