berserk
Monster Music
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 33
This a tutorial I wrote when i first stared out myself... I wrote it from a UK perspective with beginners in mind... If you have any questions or feel that you disagree just reply...
If you don't like beats made using samples - Stop reading now!
This is a tutorial on all the different elements of beatmaking on a budget by me - Berserk.
You might disagree with a few things or feel you need to add something extra.
If so just bang on a reply.
Digging
You don't need to have the world's greatest vinyl collection, by no means do you even need a turntable, you can sample off absoloutely anything; TV, Tape, CD, MP3. Even your pet animals and pieces of celery. So don't worry about going to collector's stores. What I tend to do is go to HMV and look for box sets, You can normally find lots of different varied music box sets for around £4.99 for 4 cds, Thats about 80 tracks, and about 30 tracks worth of sampling material and sometimes more. Just look around (I tend to grab Funk, Movie, Jazz & Classical). Once you got your box of magic download a grabber. A Good grabber/ripper is Audio Catalyst. Once you got this start ripping away tracks with either samplable intros/interplotations/breaks. A good way to find "hidden" samples is by checking the Left/Right Stereo sides and just taking them.
Looping
Once you got your samples ready you're gonna need to loop them somehow and make it a full song. Get yourself a fully working Cool Edit Pro and play about with the looping function for a bit until you got something that sounds nice. Once you got this loop save it and look for another loop from the same song, you're gonna use this for the fourth bar. If you can't find another loop don't worry you can always make a sliced beat, sliced beat's often sound immensely ill so i wouldn't get too stressed out if you can't find a loop. Now bang you're loops in Fruity Loops by dragging the saved file to one of the little grey boxes on the drum pallette. Now you're gonna have to play around with the bpm and where you place the sample. Making it faster by putting it nearer the top often makes an easier loop with an easier bpm to find. It also sounds better a lot of the time.
Slicing
If you want to have that stop starty feel to your loops in Fruity Loops your gonna need to take your sample back to Cool Edit Pro select the whole loop, right click and then click wave properties then look for a looping option which has a white box with new & remove below it. Click new and Loop1 should appear. Click ok and save the file. Go back to fruity loops and reload the sample and select, use loop points. Now when you insert the file on the piano roll change the length with the horizontal arrows; the loop should now stop once the length of the little bar is up.
Drums
Get drums from f***ing anywhere, internet, sampling - anything. Normally you want hard, un-cheesy sounding drums. The best beats are normally simple with a nice melody behind them, so don't try and over complicate things unless you're trying to be the next Timbaland.
Snares
Same with snares, jack f***ing everything. You want a nice live snare half the time. By live i mean it should have a goodd snap and not sound too computerised. If you have a nice snare but it isn't snappy enough put a glock or low clap over the top. If you have a mic, get a piece of celery and snap it over the mic, then put that on top of your snare. Lol, trust it sounds good. Some1 told me this as a joke and I did it and it worked.... Jokes on him...
Hi-Hat/Shakers
Hi hats normally need to be continous simple metronome pattern and any hi hat normally works if its a nice short tick. Shakers can be all over just experiment. Also with hi-hats and snares experiment with the panning, adds an extra dimension to the track.
Bass
Bass is a hard one, I can't make a bassline for s**t, but good basslines normally stick in your head, are simple and are thumping... I'm afraid that's all I can say.
I hope this has helped a few of you, cos it took me f***ing tiiime to write!
If you don't like beats made using samples - Stop reading now!
This is a tutorial on all the different elements of beatmaking on a budget by me - Berserk.
You might disagree with a few things or feel you need to add something extra.
If so just bang on a reply.
Digging
You don't need to have the world's greatest vinyl collection, by no means do you even need a turntable, you can sample off absoloutely anything; TV, Tape, CD, MP3. Even your pet animals and pieces of celery. So don't worry about going to collector's stores. What I tend to do is go to HMV and look for box sets, You can normally find lots of different varied music box sets for around £4.99 for 4 cds, Thats about 80 tracks, and about 30 tracks worth of sampling material and sometimes more. Just look around (I tend to grab Funk, Movie, Jazz & Classical). Once you got your box of magic download a grabber. A Good grabber/ripper is Audio Catalyst. Once you got this start ripping away tracks with either samplable intros/interplotations/breaks. A good way to find "hidden" samples is by checking the Left/Right Stereo sides and just taking them.
Looping
Once you got your samples ready you're gonna need to loop them somehow and make it a full song. Get yourself a fully working Cool Edit Pro and play about with the looping function for a bit until you got something that sounds nice. Once you got this loop save it and look for another loop from the same song, you're gonna use this for the fourth bar. If you can't find another loop don't worry you can always make a sliced beat, sliced beat's often sound immensely ill so i wouldn't get too stressed out if you can't find a loop. Now bang you're loops in Fruity Loops by dragging the saved file to one of the little grey boxes on the drum pallette. Now you're gonna have to play around with the bpm and where you place the sample. Making it faster by putting it nearer the top often makes an easier loop with an easier bpm to find. It also sounds better a lot of the time.
Slicing
If you want to have that stop starty feel to your loops in Fruity Loops your gonna need to take your sample back to Cool Edit Pro select the whole loop, right click and then click wave properties then look for a looping option which has a white box with new & remove below it. Click new and Loop1 should appear. Click ok and save the file. Go back to fruity loops and reload the sample and select, use loop points. Now when you insert the file on the piano roll change the length with the horizontal arrows; the loop should now stop once the length of the little bar is up.
Drums
Get drums from f***ing anywhere, internet, sampling - anything. Normally you want hard, un-cheesy sounding drums. The best beats are normally simple with a nice melody behind them, so don't try and over complicate things unless you're trying to be the next Timbaland.
Snares
Same with snares, jack f***ing everything. You want a nice live snare half the time. By live i mean it should have a goodd snap and not sound too computerised. If you have a nice snare but it isn't snappy enough put a glock or low clap over the top. If you have a mic, get a piece of celery and snap it over the mic, then put that on top of your snare. Lol, trust it sounds good. Some1 told me this as a joke and I did it and it worked.... Jokes on him...
Hi-Hat/Shakers
Hi hats normally need to be continous simple metronome pattern and any hi hat normally works if its a nice short tick. Shakers can be all over just experiment. Also with hi-hats and snares experiment with the panning, adds an extra dimension to the track.
Bass
Bass is a hard one, I can't make a bassline for s**t, but good basslines normally stick in your head, are simple and are thumping... I'm afraid that's all I can say.
I hope this has helped a few of you, cos it took me f***ing tiiime to write!
