Tips on Producing Hip Hop Beats!!????

M

Madness

New member
Hello all,

Im trying to produce a nice firm sounding Hip Hop beat at the moment and would like any tips you guys have for getting the beat to swing and really groove like alot of good beats do.

Ive mainly done Uptempo Dance Breaks in the past were I lock the beat and heavily quantise it, then move the Snare slightly ahead of the beat to give it a more agressive feel. Does anyone have any tips like this for getting a nice hip hop beat?????

Im mostly playing with the High Hats at the moment and trying to give them a human quality by playing with the velocity in Cubase, however when it comes to setting the beats and bars Im not sure if it should be 3/4 as oposed to 4/4 for the lazy hip hop groove or what..?????

Any Ideas greatly appreciated guys.....

Thanks heaps,
Madness...
 
Best to try and keep it simple, which is waaaay harder than one might think. Even if the sound design isn't simple, the music needs to be uncomplicated, uncluttered... Good hip-hop (in most cases) should be a great canvas for the vocalist. That doesn't mean boring. I find that the best bass lines aren't very extravagent.
Um, I'm sure you could make hip-hop 3/4, but 4/4 seems to be the standard.
If you are looking for a fresh or live sound, you may want to experiment with ditching the quantize... but more for melody work or developing interesting polyrhythms. I'd avoid Rex loops.
Any help?
 
if you want your drum hits to swing, you should avoid quantization, unless it's groove quantization. the "swing" effect is achieved by delaying 16th note drum hits in between the 8th notes (assuming 4/4). more delay = more swing.

(by delay i don't mean the send effect, i mean actually delaying when the hit falls)

the best way for you to figure this out is to actually take a hip-hop track that has a swing feel you like, and rip it to a wav and view it in cubase. you'll notice that certain drum hits will fall slightly later than they should.

if you have reason and recycle, you can always process a drum loop in recycle, turn it into a rex, open it in reason, and then "get user groove". this can then act as a template for groove quantization. any hits that you yourself play will be quantized to that groove, rather than the strict tempo.
 
SMoother Beats

Thanks,

I have been manually moving the HATS around in the grid editor and just listening to the effect!

Does this mean that only the 8th & 16th notes are delayed and by how much is permissable...I will experiment more.???

Your right I need to take a look at Midi File generated in Recycle to really know whats going....unfortunately I don't have a copy of Recycle and the last time I saw a demo you could extract only a Midi file which didn't seperate out the hats or kicks only note values I suppose.....

Is this groove quantisation available feature available in CubaseSX....???? I suppose I would need the latest version of Recycle too >>>>

If anyone out there knows of any Midi files of HipHop songs on the net that would be sweet...I

Peace to all
 
**** grids

open a track that you like in protools or another host that can act as a blank canvas. then use this track as your guide

take each sample one at a time and place them using the hits in the guide track as your marks. sometimes it is not easy to tell where to lay the hit

your decision making will give a sound much more natural than a grid
 
I think the most important part of making realisitic drum sequences is not the quantization, but the inner-dynamics of the beat. You can leave your high-hat right on the grid, but make sure no two hits have the same velocity. Add "ghost" tones and a variety of samples to the beat. A sure sign of a drum machine is a hihat or snare that sound the same throughout.

Also, check out:
http://www.tweakheadz.com/midi_drum_tips.htm
for more tips.

Ted
 
One, it's all about contrast. Always have something solid and clear cut, basically a hi hat or something sharply percussive like that. Then have of course the main beats emphasized, like odds with a kick and evens with a snare. After deciding on an appropriate backbeat, you need to think about an equally apprpriate swing emphasis on certain beats. A very simple example is to put a very low velocity bass kick a 32nd before all the major beats, such as before the snares and bass kicks. For sonic prposes, you will want to set the velocity sensitivity for the filter so that it gets a little(and I mean only a litle) bit brighter in order to be heard clearer. The timing you can either quantize and leave or offset a little ahead to get an added swing. I think that it is better to set the attack sensitivity to hit slower at lower velocities, then you dont need to always offset the sequence. If your sampler doesn't allow this type of parameer adjustment, just multisample creatively. Also try a snare hit, eqed a bit differently, a sixteenth or maybe 32nd befor emphasis beats. Remember keep it simple with your hits. Only put kicks where they are neede and try to keep the snares somewhat consistent. This type off restraint pays off when real complex or unorthodox emphasis is used. It gives it more integrity. But back to the swing. Two, you can use a bass hit (preferabley non-transient) a sixteenth before the main beats to achieve a sort of swing that is not really heard by the passive listener. Make the attack slow on the bass and set the filter envelope to sweep into the sustain filter cutoff you want by the time the bass kick or hi-hats hits on the main beats. A very good example of this that I highly recomend everyone to listen to is the code name scorpion song "stop bittin" or something like that. It is the first track on the cd. Rob the viking is the man. Three, try using triplets in your drum tracks. You can either base your whole rhythm on triplets or just use them for accenting certain areas . If you don't know what a triplet is, read up on rhythms and whatnot, it will help you dramatically. Alos, visualize a unity of the few instruments that are used in hip hop programing. Imagine a type of staggering crescendo. Offset main hits like snares, and don't be affraid because the hi hats can usually keep things solid. And you can put low velocity 32nds in the track if you do it in the proper places (which varies with each song). Some beats would call for a low velocity 32nd before the first and third beats while others could use accenting in more sporadically occuring areas of the rhythm. You want your bass kick and bass line to become one. It's basically all about dynamics and offset emphasis. All I can say is emulate whatever sounds to you like it swungs.
 
Expede you got some real gd points brought up in that. But might i suggest the use of paragraphs in the future! Its kinda like a huge block of daunting text and a lot of newbs will probably be deterred by it when there is really some good info in there.
 
keep it simple

dont worry about all that fancy stuff. Beats are about originality, the technical stuff comes when you been in the game for a minute. Listen to some hot beats out and go in that direction. Dont quantize and use creative sounds but not to much synth
 
Dear All,

I have just signed up to this site and think it is amazing that so many of you share my dream for creating music.

I listen to Hip Hop and Rap religiously and want to make a track of my own, I have an idea as to what I want to do but dont know how to start.

A friend of mine has lyrics but do i do the beat first and then apply lyrics or what. Please can someone tell me what the steps are and what i should do to make my track. Thank-you
 
Hey Hulla!

The best advice I've got is just try it! :)

Listen to your friend run through his lyrics and try to come up with a simple rhythm that will compliment it. It doesn't have to be much, just the kick and snare is enough at the start, to get the basic feel. Then get your friend to try rapping over the beat, to see how it all fits... You change the base rhythm, he alters his flow, you add a few more rhythmic elements and a funky bassline...

Good music is organic like this.

If you're completely new to production, I'd recommend picking up the FLStudio demo and giving it a try. FL started off as a drum loop program but has evolved into a much more versatile package since then. It's really quick and easy to get up and running programming beats with it, plus a lot of newer hiphop producers here are using it, so you've got a lot of people to turn to for advice :)

Good luck with it!
 
Hi Alex,

Cheers man for the advice I used to play drums so that will help i suppose. Were do i get this FLStudio and how much does it cost?

Cheers once again
 
do a search on www.google.com for

fruity loops demo

and you should get a site to download it
 
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