Making Beats: Does Practice Really "Make Perfect?"

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kyng

kyng

Shutup and just do it. .
We've all heard that term, but does it apply to creating music as well?

When I say this I mean does it apply to making better beats, not landing a #1 hit.

I don't make beats all the time, especially since most of the time I'm working or practicing for this audition I have in December/January 2014.

Does that mean that my beats are not going to be up to par with my competitors?

How does this effect you?

After I got out of bootcamp in 2010, my beats sounded irrelevant as hell (because I had weak sounds) but the techniques and arrangements of songs on the radio were easy for me to apply. After getting new sounds, it didn't take me long at all to make relevant sounding tracks.

I've seen dudes who make beats off and on and they are super dope (J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League said they don't even make beats everyday) and then I've seen guys who make beats everyday, like Epik Tha Dawn, and other dope soundclick guys and their beats are dope as well.

Is it like a natural talent thing vs consistent practice kinda thing?

I know I ranted a bit but let me hear your thoughts. . .
 
Yes. Practice does help tremendously. You learn a lot of small things from making weak songs that you incorporate into great songs.

Quantity has helped me to improve my quality. Even though I did not always have the best sounds, I knew how to arrange what I had. Once I got better sounds, I swapped out the old ones and I instantly had better songs.

I never aim for perfection. The way a song sounds in my head before I make it is perfection. Bringing that into the real world always alters it. Sometimes I totally devaite from my original though. But I still get great songs.

Don't be a perfectionist. Get a work ethic.
 
I think it does, as you do more you become more comfortable and especially if you push yourself with each track you make. I think it maybe helps most with the technical side of things like mixing etc, since thats more something you can compare your progress versus melodies and stuff like that is more just taste and opinion.
 
you aren't necessarily practicing making beats you should be practicing the techniques to make beats. and yes practice makes perfect. like any other form of music if you don't set aside time to practice to perfect your skill your skill will not be perfected.

Relevant sounding tracks to what? whats on the radio?

Don't concern yourself with making relevant sounding tracks to whats on the radio. do what you think is best. if you don't like it but its relevant sounding to whats hot today basically it sucks. challenge yourself a little.
 
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Practice definitely makes perfect, you learn to produce higher quality sounds and make your beats sound more professional. You slowly learn what sounds good and what doesn't. Your mind will automatically start to come up with better melodies, chords etc..... I can tell you this because I have been trying to learn techniques for past 1.5 years because my beats used to suck and I could never come up with any good ideas. And after listening to loads of different instrumentals from different sorts of producers, listening to different types of music, learning how to sample and watching beat making videos, I have definitely improved. I will link you my Soundcloud one day after I upload my recent beats, and when you listen through my beats you will see how much I have improved through practice. I have not necessarily reached the perfection stage yet tho, but I will.
 
think of it this way

Practice Prevents Piss Poor Performance and Application; it's not so much about getting perfect as maintaining your skillz and developing them.....
 
Great answers. I'm switching DAW's (FL to Reason) so I have to get into practice mode again. I think I'm going to crank out beats even if they are wack just so I can have that work put in.

When I think about it, I do agree with The Vizion because if I compared my beats now to a year ago the chord progressions I learned are more dominant.

I just can't stand putting out something that sounds wack to me. I think I hold myself to too high of a standard. I'm expecting to play like 93 Jordan when I haven't even made it out of high school yet.

You guys inspire me I swear lol.
 
kyng said:
Great answers. I'm switching DAW's (FL to Reason) so I have to get into practice mode again. I think I'm going to crank out beats even if they are wack just so I can have that work put in.

When I think about it, I do agree with The Vizion because if I compared my beats now to a year ago the chord progressions I learned are more dominant.

I just can't stand putting out something that sounds wack to me. I think I hold myself to too high of a standard. I'm expecting to play like 93 Jordan when I haven't even made it out of high school yet.

You guys inspire me I swear lol.
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Oh ye man even I dont wanna put out something thats wack, but its best if you throw away the beat that you think is not going well, instead of spending lots of time on it because that obviously is wasting time, and wen u look back at the beat and don't like it, it's pretty demotivational. Also, just out of curiousity, why are changing from FL to Reason?
 
You can practice all day long making "beats" but if you don't know the theory behind music... you'll peak at making "bangaz" and be stuck and be limited in creativity.

You'll be a lot like me... stuck at "That sounds good..." but not really fulfilled because you don't really know what the hell you're doing.

You'll really be just mimicking what you like. You won't be able to just do some Scott Storch freestyle type ish.

It's like a person that plays football on a Xbox vs. a person that plays football on a real team. Xbox guy doesn't really know how to play football in real life. He probably can't catch, probably can't take a real hit, probably is clumsy. Guy on the football team knows how to brace himself for a hit, probably has caught 1,000's of passes and works on his coordination.

Making Bangaz (with Arps and ish) = Xbox Football Guy
Making Music Freely = Real Football Team Guy

Practice will make you better but only to a certain point if you don't continue to "learn".

Now me... I'm pretty content with being the dude making "bangaz"... because I'm too lazy to really learn music. I'm the "that sounds good" guy. No amount of practice will get me past where I'm at unless I start learning chords, scales and "alla dat".
 
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The Vizion said:
Oh ye man even I dont wanna put out something thats wack, but its best if you throw away the beat that you think is not going well, instead of spending lots of time on it because that obviously is wasting time, and wen u look back at the beat and don't like it, it's pretty demotivational. Also, just out of curiousity, why are changing from FL to Reason?
Click to expand...

Before I get started on this LIST (Yes a LIST) let me say that I love FL Studio and I don't think I will ever stop using it completely.

1.) Reason Looks Good On Paper. There are no certification classes on FL (yet). It makes you look good when your resume reads that you are qualified expert at "(Software Name Here)." Yes, you can say "I have been using FL for ten years," but that certification plus those ten years will make you really stand out.

2.) Recalling Created Sounds. The Combinator. . . nuff said.

3.) Lack of Certain Features Forces You Be Creative and Find a Work-Around. Compared to other DAW's there are a lot of features that are not in Reason (yet). Forces you to be creative. Don't get me wrong it can be troublesome at times.

4.) THE SOUNDS. Before you get all crazy on me, let me say, PEOPLE DO NOT TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE FREE SOUNDS IN FL. Most of them can't anyway because they are not registered users. If you go to image-line's forum, you can add at least 500 more presets to the stock VSTs in FL for FREE. Then the downloadable content. . .even more sounds. People really underestimate Sytrus. I seen a thread the other day where a guy is working on a converter for sounds from FM8 to Sytrus presets. . .crazy. I'm going to post a sample mp3 of a guy from the forums who used Sytrus ONLY with convolution reverb and patcher and the track was crazy!!!

View attachment FunkyTechnician - All Sytrus.mp3

Everybody knows that when it comes to sounds Reason is a beast. Creating sounds is easier in Reason than any other DAW. Like I said. . .The Combinator. The SSL has me hooked and Kong has me hooked making drum kits.

5.) Processing. I can take Reason on the go on my laptop, or be at home on my desktop, no matter how massive the project is, it is still light on the CPU.
 
The cominator is like fl layer too me, i love fl layer, but some of my best beats were in reason, i made about 6 hot tracks that i still have from reason.. Iv used sonar and made some of my first beats with that, they are actually impressive... Cubae I made some hard ass beats, got people making songs out of em and shit. but i have made the most beats with FL and thats the program I have the most practice with i guess you can say. i have used hardware drum machines and keyboards in cubase with fl rewired all playing at once through the mixer. this was in a corner in my room along time ago. im back on fl and i love it, im never going back to anything else. i feel like an exspert (but still learning tricks here and there) I really think my time away has made me a beast in my own lane.

Wait a minit. gotta scroll up and re-read.. what are we talking about here? lol

oh yeah, ok.

Anyways, I have downsized so much, sold everything except the laptop hooked to 2 screen monitors and wireless keybard/mouse. two studio monitor speakers, an audio interface midi keyboard.... not much at all, and a few good plugins, and few trusty drum kits that I have for over 10 years now. yep.

STICK TO YOUR GUNS! i lost track what im talking about lol Reason was fun though.

---------- Post added at 10:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:55 PM ----------

EDIT: actually first beats were on playstation, you could sample on it and everything LOL just throwin that in real quick.
I'm a proud mouse clicker!
 
The Vizion said:
Practice definitely makes perfect, you learn to produce higher quality sounds and make your beats sound more professional. You slowly learn what sounds good and what doesn't. Your mind will automatically start to come up with better melodies, chords etc..... I can tell you this because I have been trying to learn techniques for past 1.5 years because my beats used to suck and I could never come up with any good ideas. And after listening to loads of different instrumentals from different sorts of producers, listening to different types of music, learning how to sample and watching beat making videos, I have definitely improved. I will link you my Soundcloud one day after I upload my recent beats, and when you listen through my beats you will see how much I have improved through practice. I have not necessarily reached the perfection stage yet tho, but I will.
Click to expand...

I agree with this.. Been practicing new chords, scales, & learning how to make new sounds. Just learning something new each day and practicing helps tremendously for me.
 
Yes practice makes perfect... no producer sounds as bad as they did when they first started.
 
BiggRome 2.0 said:
You can practice all day long making "beats" but if you don't know the theory behind music... you'll peak at making "bangaz" and be stuck and be limited in creativity.

You'll be a lot like me... stuck at "That sounds good..." but not really fulfilled because you don't really know what the hell you're doing.

You'll really be just mimicking what you like. You won't be able to just do some Scott Storch freestyle type ish.

It's like a person that plays football on a Xbox vs. a person that plays football on a real team. Xbox guy doesn't really know how to play football in real life. He probably can't catch, probably can't take a real hit, probably is clumsy. Guy on the football team knows how to brace himself for a hit, probably has caught 1,000's of passes and works on his coordination.

Making Bangaz (with Arps and ish) = Xbox Football Guy
Making Music Freely = Real Football Team Guy

Practice will make you better but only to a certain point if you don't continue to "learn".

Now me... I'm pretty content with being the dude making "bangaz"... because I'm too lazy to really learn music. I'm the "that sounds good" guy. No amount of practice will get me past where I'm at unless I start learning chords, scales and "alla dat".
Click to expand...

I agree that there is a tremendous amount of value in learning music theory, but where making beats is concerned, I'd say its a toss up between learning theory and just knowing what sounds good (subject to opinion) and mastering some software. Nowadays, If you've got "good ears" and your software game is right, you can make some ish that will even make scott storch bob his head....without any formal music theory knowledge.
 
Making a great beat is no different than writing a great song. You need to be a musician at heart. You need to be able to play an instrument, understand music theory etc. You can go far with "feel" and "knowing what sounds good", but music production is like any other profession - you need to really know your stuff to be the best.

Too many guys who get into producing get caught up with the image of a "beatmaker" and they focus on everything but the actual skill behind producing. Guys like Chad Hugo, Storch, Pharrell, Rotem etc are all highly skilled musicians and they were fans of music and musicians before they became rap producers.

No one would try and start a rock band, jazz band or perform in an orchestra if they didn't know how to play an instrument, so why should rap production be any different?
 
I bought this to avoid learning music theory...

ChordPulse - Practice. Improvise. Compose.

You can resize everything...

It doesn't feel "natural" but you just make your progression and export it to .mid, then you import that midi file into your DAW and slap some vst instrument on it. It exports the parts you create separately so you could end up with a complete song with one click.

I normally just duplicate the channels and change the octaves of some of the instruments and alter some of the midi in the duplicated channels.

It feels like sampling so I don't really do it often. Pretty useful tool though.

I have this too... it does the same thing...

Cognitone Music Prototyping

I have this also... it does the same thing...

Chordbot - Introduction

Got this too... and guess what... it does the same thing....

EasyBand Studio | Musicians, Play!

Chordbot and Easy Band are phone apps.

... so many ways to cheat and crank out songs now.... when you have the time.

I buy "something" almost every payday... just for the hell of it. Nothing expensive though.
 
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You forgot about iRealB for iOS and Android. This is my weapon right here.
You can build chord progressions in it and hear how they sound. Not only that, you can download over 1300+ songs to it for FREE. Its like sampling, but instead of raw audio, you can snatch the chords to any tune you can find for it. Almost anyone doing jazz music uses it for learning tunes fast. You can transpose tunes on the fly as well as see the roman numerals for each chord. Y'all niggas sleepin'.
 
The "Ten Year/10,000" hours to be a professional rule is real....just think of the all of the schooling for various professions that require 8+ years of higher education. Not to mention most really great athletes have played since pre-adolescence.

Was reading an article, about why great athletes fumble the win in clutch moments. Their years of practice train them to do every bit of the game subconciously, mindlessly and fluidly regardless of the situation, but when one is aware of what's on the line they start to over-think their movements and negate those years of practice. The analogy was how you're a great dancer when noone is watching but as soon as you're in front of people you overthink the movements and look clumsy.

Those years of experimenting and making wack to mediocre beats has trained you to subconciously know what notes and sounds go together in any situation so that when it's time to make bangers on a regular basis, there isn't much thought. You just do it.

For further proof:



Now this isn't to say you need LSD to do great things, but he stayed in the moment. He didn't think about his pitching skills at any point.


Great *insert skill* never come out of the moment.
 
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The term practice makes perfect is incomplete.

Perfect practice make perfect is more correct.

You can keep practicing and practicing, but if you don't practice correctly you won't get to or take a really long time to get to where you want to be.
 
Practice makes it perfect is an impossibility, what you wrote

Perfect practice makes it perfect is even more impossible

I offer again

Practice prevents piss poor performance

and that can relate to anything whether it is in business, sports, music or life (I enjoy practicing some things more than others; nudge nudge wink wink)
 
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