Strings and Pads

typhy

New member
I like to make Hip Hop and R&B beats. I'm fairly new to producing and I'm trying to learn all I can. When I make beats I usually always start with a chord progression first, and this is usually done with a piano VST. Once I've established a progression to get the mood of the song going, I usually add drums; kick, snare, hats, and percussion if any. By now, I have a cool little beat forming. Then, I will add a bass (synthy or acoustic). I normally make an 8 bar loop and try to add as much as I can to it, and that will be my hook/chorus. So to thicken up this little groove I got going, I would normally add some strings to go along the progression. However, I have Komplete 7 and Kontakt 4 only has a string, cello, bass, viola, and violin emsemble... which is only 5 different types of strings to choose from. I guess I'm tired of hearing the same kind of strings in my beats over and over again. I'm assuming to spice things up I would have to start adding effects to my strings to get different sounds out of them? What are some effects that goes well with strings for HipHop and R&B music? Do you guys usually add effects to your strings that layer your chord progressions? Help me out! I'm tired of the same old string sounds.


I guess this is where pads come in since they are kind of like strings but synthy? I have Absynth 5 that came with K7 and supposedly this is a very good VST for pads and ambience sounds. I have very little knowledge on programming synths so I am not using the VSTs within K7 to its full potential. So basically, I'm pretty much a preset dependent producer as of right now. With that said, I've went through almost all of the presets in Absynth and like 85 percent of them sound weird as ****, lmao. The majority of the presets are dark and eerie and alien spaceship doors opening type sounds and it pisses me off so bad because I can't use them for my type of genre. They sound like they're for movie scenes and shit. My question is does anybody have Absynth 5 and can create patches useful for HipHop and R&B type music?

I'm thinking about buying my first hardware synthesizer for hands on learning such as the GAIA SH 01:
Roland CONNECT - GAIA SH-01: Synthesizer

Hopefully, that will help me learn synthesis because it seems like a real hands on equipment. I was just wondering if anybody can relate. Some words of advice would be greatly appreciated. I've tried not adding layers of strings and pads (that I could find usable) in my beats but then everything just sounds so thin. Arrrghhhh

---------- Post added at 02:18 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:11 AM ----------

One more question, I watch a lot of beat making videos on youtube and came across Ryan Leslie, which is now my favorite producer. In this video from the beginning to the 0:29 mark, there is a cool little beat going.
YouTube - Ryan Leslie x Jasmine Villegas "Hello" In-Studio

I hear a fat ass synth bass (probably analog, right?). I hear kick, snare, hats, and........ I can't tell if he has a pad or some strings or not? Can you guys tell?
If he doesn't and all it has in that little 29 second section is a bassline and a drum pattern, HOW DOES IT SOUND SO FULL?

My beats always sound thin unless it has like 10 instruments playing (not including drums, snares, hats).
 
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