I must be missing something

[Arterus]

Hi everyone, this is my first post here and i hope you can help me.

I have recently started in the world of electronic music and samples and I'm trying to find some specifics on 'how to use samples'

Yet wherever I search (even here) all I EVER turn up are 'sampling' tutorials.

What I mean specifically about how to use samples is quite complex in my head, so please forgive me if I waffle a bit.

First lets deal with actually using samples to make music. I get 100% that using samples kick drums, sampled snares etc is the way to make solid sounding stuff.. Thats not my issue. Its the plethora of 'loops' and 'sounds' that you find literally everywhere that has me foxed.

My problems:

1. No two samples are in the same key, they dont loop at the same speeds and making them 'fit' seems more trouble than it's worth. Tuning samples at least from my limited knowledge (I'm using Ableton and was under the impression it did most of this for you! - not in my experience!) is a minefield of guess work.

2. The loop sample that you have is only a couple of bars long... Lets say for arguments sake its a bass sample and you want to create a drum and bass track. You write maybe 4 bars with the 'loop' sample.. And then what? How do you continue the song when all you have is one 'loop'??

3. The idea of samples and loops sounds great to me... But the putting together of full tracks with limited parts (and knowledge i conceed) seems a million miles away.

Any help in this would be really appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Art

 

[MaxAttack]

hey dude. my first post as well. I'm guessing no one has responded to you because the problems you have described are literally the elements in the art of building sampled beats.

1. no, samples are not in the same key. or the same tempo. But using software like Ableton you can easily timestretch and change the pitch of samples to make them fit with each other. there is some guesswork to it, that's part of the fun. you might come up with something totally different than you were looking for.

2. Make the song through variations. eg if you're making hip hop, add a drum fill (variation of the drum pattern) at the end of each 8th bar, add in a hi hat or take something out for the next 8, then keep switching it up. All you really need are subtle variations and they will work pretty well to keep the tune interesting. If you're making DnB you'd probably do this every 16 or 32 bars.

3. It takes a long time to get good at this stuff (as I'm sure anyone here would tell you). even once you get all your pieces to fit with each other, there's a whole other art to making your mixes sound full and complete. Just accept that it's a journey and learn as much as possible on the way.

Go to YouTube, watch as many production videos on sampling or timestretching or pitching as you can and keep trying to emulate what you see people doing. Once you learn how to do that you will be able to start messing around with it a bit.

Enjoy!

 

[AudioPhorm]

hey dude. my first post as well. I'm guessing no one has responded to you because the problems you have described are literally the elements in the art of building sampled beats.

1. no, samples are not in the same key. or the same tempo. But using software like Ableton you can easily timestretch and change the pitch of samples to make them fit with each other. there is some guesswork to it, that's part of the fun. you might come up with something totally different than you were looking for.

2. Make the song through variations. eg if you're making hip hop, add a drum fill (variation of the drum pattern) at the end of each 8th bar, add in a hi hat or take something out for the next 8, then keep switching it up. All you really need are subtle variations and they will work pretty well to keep the tune interesting. If you're making DnB you'd probably do this every 16 or 32 bars.

3. It takes a long time to get good at this stuff (as I'm sure anyone here would tell you). even once you get all your pieces to fit with each other, there's a whole other art to making your mixes sound full and complete. Just accept that it's a journey and learn as much as possible on the way.

Go to YouTube, watch as many production videos on sampling or timestretching or pitching as you can and keep trying to emulate what you see people doing. Once you learn how to do that you will be able to start messing around with it a bit.

Enjoy!

Great advice for a first post, Max. You summed it up perfectly.

Arterus, these new software programs are making amazing things possible for just about anyone to make music...but it still takes a little bit of work to learn them and how to utilize the tools available. There are plenty of resources available (including youtube or 3rd party paid tutorials) that show you how to see what key things are in, even if you have no prior experience or know nothing about music.

These DAW's (Digital Audio Workstations) that are available these days (such as Ableton, etc) do not do everything for you. They make things a hell of a lot easier than they were in decades before, but you still need to at least have motivation and creativity. I know at first, the interface/display can be daunting, but it is well worth putting in the time to learn whichever program you choose beyond the average user.

As for creating a song, Ableton has a couple different ways of doing it, learn from what others have already presented/learned. If you invest just a few hours, you can likely be where you need to be in order to make decent projects and you can proceed with inspiration from there.

Put forth twice the amount of effort that you think you should and you will surprise yourself, I promise.

Good luck.

 

[TaurusBeats]

Max, great post!

Arterus, I have some videos on YouTube and my website that can help you. I walk through the steps, showing how to use samples in creating sample flip beats, remixes and other moody instrumental music. Even though I use Propellerhead Reason as my DAW, you'll find that the concepts I explain are useful in any DAW.