Does your evolve/ Have you evolved your style?

[Ash Holmz]

Does your style evolve?/ Have you evolved your style? Have u progressed?

just wondering .. a number of us have been making beats for years, myself prolly 5 years give or take. My sound has seen some changes fo sho. I started out using wack vst sounds and creating overcomposed music that sounded like video game music lol. then i got heavy into sampling (once i figured out how to sample lol) and had a more raw, basic sound that was very sample heavy. got a little bored with that, then i got really into tweaking keyboard sounds and samples and combining them into new sounds and creating really unique stuff. Then that evolved further as i took elements from other styles of music and hip hop and mixed them with the unique sound I was making and thats where I kinda am now. I can look back and see how far I have come and I still can honestly say I love this music shit and Im proud of what i have done and what I will continue to do. My style and just my whole mode about beat-making is way diffrent than when i first started taking beats seriously. But at the same time I see alotta cats that are on the same shit they were 3 years ago not really progressing. And sometimes I see cats that get better over time, but they do other producers style beats and dont really have their own identity/style

I though it would be intesteing to read how other cats devloped their styles or what there thoughts on their own work is in terms of progression/development. I am also curios as whether or not cats think that they have developed a "sound" yet.

PS: Shout out to the homie NOMICS cuz dude actually inspired me to creat this thread after i checked out his latest stuff. Must be something in that SUNY water cuz dude def has his own style and I can see the continous progression and development in tha homie.

 

[Fade]

It's not about what you have but what you do with it.....


LOL j/k, let's not start that shit.

My style has pretty much always been melody-based, meaning that I'm always looking to do something with a smooth melody, nothing crazy, technical, etc. I sample lots of movies and classical music because they both fit perfectly and it just slowly turned into my niche. I definitely think I have a "sound" - I'm sure most people can pick up on my classical piano/horror scream style. :wink:

 

[samuelock]

my goodness...my style has changed SO MUCH since i started three years ago.

i was always melody driven. i started out with the demo of fl studio, using all those stock sounds, and cutting small samples of stuff with audacity. i definitely changed my style as my piano playing palette as well as musical taste broadened. i started all tech synthy, but then once i got my hands on some vsts and started listening to jazz, my whole style has changed.

now i strive for that 'live performance' or sampled sound, without sampling. i guess it's working cus you guys keep telling me that's what my beats sound like. my drums also used to suck. then i discovered drum breaks.

and this is ALL because of illmuzik. without you guys, man, i'd still be wack.

 

[dacalion]

ditto, same path as you, I sometimes overproduce even today but the difference between now and then is, on occasion I intentually overproduce just to have more options for a final mix on the same beat. I started a thread on exaggerating your beats, and I do it alot because thats my flow, the BAD thing about that is, I can easily be accused of overproducing today. If someone is feeling my beat then I'll cut it back to make it "rapper friendly" per say. I have grown alot, I even have my signature sound pretty much established, madness on the drums and a fairly complex bassline.

good topic,
-duh cal yun-

 

[Da IllFellaz]

wow....

much much much appreciated man. i aint know cats was checkin for us like dat. i wouldnt be where im at if it wasnt for my partner DJ Deuce both musically and business wise. i used to make beats wit no samples in FL when i first started. my shit was WORSE than video game music!!! i still got my FIRST beat i EVER made. i started to buy CD's of sounds from Ebay n shit . then i found out how to sample. it was over after that. i was jus choppin like crazy and didnt look back. i jus studied my favs, preem, just, etc. all my old beats sounded like them. it wasnt until i found out that they do nothin different than what everyone on this site does that i thought i can do this for a living. i started to focus on making SONGS instead of jus cranking out beats. after working wit numerous cats we ended up really tryna push our music. this is hard to do when you got nothing but samples. this lead me to start working wit my partner Deuce. da guy is a beast on da keys, (similar to you n Class). the first beat we ever made was crazy and the chemistry was instantaneous. shit was destined to be. so now, basically i jus sample him. ha. i still dig n got my crates but if we do sample, we will ALWAYS be playin shit on top of it. so after 5-6 yrs of this, i have come to the conclusion that i am STILL LEARNING and there is still SO MUCH MORE TO LEARN!!!! i still dont think we have found our "sound" yet cause we got so many differenty styles. what i do know is that da drumz is ALWAYS gon bang. haHAhaHA.

once again, good look son. that shit means alot to me cause the other nite, we got some Beat Block in the studio. haha. this makes me wana go bang some shit out rite now. i remember when i first started making beats, I used to go to Cleverwon's page ALL THE TIME and listen to his shit cause i thought his shit was fuckin BONKERS!! now me n him speak on da reg, swapping sounds, etc. dude was even tryin to find me a crib down in jerz. its a small world.

i know your pain about gettin put on. shit is frustrating when you get dat garbage on da radio and KNOW you can do this shit for a living. the way i see it, if shit was meant to be, it'll happen. u right there on the border man. u rite in the city too. on top of that, they put u as a featured producer on pmp n cats dont even know u. dat means ur music is speakin for u. thats da way it should be.

nomezzy

 

[Agent Smith]

wow my style has changed night and day...beats and rhymes.

right before i got heavy into hip hop, i was listening to a lot of experimental electronic stuff. that defninitely bled into my hip hop production. my stuff was sounding really electronic bleep bloppy...then i started incorporating dirt into my sound...which hasn't left to this day. then i got way into sampling and combining synths with really dirty samples. all i needed then was the funk. enter dr. dre. i changed the way i listened to him from a listener to a student and took a lot of influence from his drums...i'm talking his g-funk era drums, all the way to his aftermath, huge orchestra style. the final influence i found was madlib and dilla. their non-use of quantizing and their boldness in their composition really made me re-evaluate my style. that's where i am now- just refining that combo of influences and making sure i come original.

as far as rhymes go, i started out on some super abstract, mindbending content. Screaming in Cursive is where i put the button on that as a whole style. now i incorporate the poetry into something more tangible.

 

[ManDAmyth]

This is a dope post.

I'm still in the process of developing my production "sound". I started off messing with samples, and always getting a melody down before putting in drums. I didn't understand how or why heads did their drums first.

Lately, I lay down the drums first. I started doing this because if you muted all the instruments except the drums on my favorite beats of all-time, they all have an ill drum pattern that could hold it's own and still be an ill track.

I used to do nothing but sample, but now that I'm learning music theory I've been composing my own melodies with sampletank. I also plan on getting a Motif Rack (I used to hate this thing).

I also resample and mess with different bit rates. I also only used the presets in my VST's, now I mess with them a lot and get some real dope sounds.

On the beat tip I'm still learning.

On the rhyme tip I've been doing it for 15 years now.

I've definitely got my own sound on the mic.

 

[H&R]

I've been making beats for about 2 and half years now ...

When I first started out I was heavily into the "Heatmakers" style of beats
and I quickly perfected that. Soon after that I started to do the epic Dipset
type of beats with the heavy orchestra/opera samples until that became a
regular for me as well ... My style began to change and I kinda got lost and
didn't know what direction to move in next. I kinda lost my identity and the
sound that I was known for and had been producing for artists ... I noticed
that I haven been trying to get too complex and trying to be a jack of all
trades ... I'm going back to the roots and doing what I do best and the type
of beats that I love doing and paving my own way with the sound i'm best
known for and that got me into the game in the first place.

I've always been sample heavy from the begining ... Dwelved into keyboards
and composing a lil more but I'm taking it back to sampling, what I do best

 

[Hypnotist]

Ha... I'm in a "slump" right now too, for lack of a worse word. It's weird when you've been doin it for over 13 years and when you were 13, you were so damn innovative it wasn't funny. I've become so damn conventional over the years that most of the stuff I compose is just scratch. BUT... some of the stuff I've done in the past few years (very little...) COULD be rearranged with new sounds and spiced up into somethin FIRE.

Recently, instead of going about it the way I've been in the past, I've been takin my notes that I write and opening up another sound, draggin & droppin random notes from one track to the other track, so that the instruments compliment each other. But that's just a quick composition thing; nothin revolutionary like back in the day...

I gotta get back into creating new sounds. It's weird... if I'm in the studio and someone comes in with this beat CD and says, "YO LET'S FREESTYLE TO SOME NEW BEATS" then every word we spit is fire, cuz the sounds we hear are fresh, which inspire fresh ideas. So step backwards a little, and take it directly to the SOUND. Think about opening up a project with the same sounds you've opened before... HOW MANY TIMES HAVE WE DONE THIS? Why? Cuz it's SAFE. It's like: I made a hot beat with these drums and this EXACT bass, and maybe this time I'll switch up the other instruments and keep the same format... NAH! You gotta get the fire back... find some new sounds to play with or you'll go STALE.

I still got it. I'll always have it. But I'm tryina set it up so that I can walk into the studio and have everything ready for me. THEN I can go back to my OLD sound, my OLD style, which I got all my inspiration from. I admit that I haven't changed too much, which could be a bad thing, but also could be a good thing. I always was a jack of all trades, master of none... so why not master one style before I do all others?

YO NOMICS... Peepin ur track in the car on the way to work this mornin inspired the hell outta me. Tonight I threw a couple ideas down and that's thanks to you. Not to mention Common and Kanye for comin out with some hot shit recently...

Anyway, I'm done. Sorry if I went off topic a little.

-Hypno

 

[joeburnem]

Oh yeah! When I first started I used to try to fill every single available track with some sort of sound. It always gave my tracks a "muddy, murky" sound. I quickly learned from listening to a lot Havoc tracks (Big Havoc Fan) that less is better.

Also I use to argue that drums were not that important. I had an Alesis SR 16 with maybe 4 kits that I used CONSTANTLY. Today I will take special interest in my drums... gathering drum kits from wherever I can, especially snares.

 

[skidflow]

Yeah my style has evolved...I was dumb wack 3 years ago, now I'm stupid wack! lol Naw seriously, I have stepped my game up...I FEEL! What improved my style was attaining better sounds and improving my mix game. i'm still a work in progress. I started out trying to make every beat some hardcore boom bap shit but I started to listen to classical music and it influenced me as far as the way they layer sounds and how certain sounds spark some type of emotion. I just try to incorporate some the same techniques. Another thing is that I became better at tuning sounds where they fit better together...the overall tone of my beats is more balanced.

 

[Relic]

Its changed alot since I had a "synsonic" drum machine in 86, then moved to boss and yamaha drum machines, then to a korg S3, then to sp1200 then triton, now mpc..
Obviously back when I use to use cassette decks to create loops of beats stuff wasnt all that
The drum machines around the time I was foolin with yamaha the style was heavy bass and electronic sounding.
Once I got the korg S3(and still have that) I got the Jazz card to go with it so everything was very jazzy and I was all into tweaking the sounds.But all those beats got erased unfortunately.
The sp1200 at first had us just looping samples until someone showed us that we should be taking small sounds and use them to create original compisitions.The styles during that time were all over the place.
I dont think Ive made the same beat twice.
When I got the Triton rack everything went to str8 melodies, and the Child Abuse album was the result of that.
Now I been in the mpc2500 for a minute its sorta like the sp days but with much better sounds.
Since being here my stuff, I think, has improved tri-fold, the influences around here are awesome!
My signature sound? Crash every 8 bars..lol
I also like making wicked dark trax

Addh and I almost never use the same kit twice.

 

[shadeed]

Does your style evolve?/ Have you evolved your style? Have u progressed?

Absolutely. My whole idea of music isn't the same as most hip hop producers.

I came into the production game trying to do scores for indie flicks and documentaries since I'm heavily involved with that scene to this day. To use an analogy, I was more into creating the backdrop for the next Style Wars or Wild Style instead of making the next Illmatic.

Hip hop production is more condensed 16-8-16 etc. With a scene sequence, you have more freedom and it was tough for me to condense my ideas at first but I caught on eventually.

I think the best things that could've ever happened for me musically was:

My basement flooding and having to work out of another studio until all the repair work was complete

Learning to Play Guitar

The other studio I worked out of had a lot of diff. recording artists coming through and doing their thing and that's wherre I made the transition from beatmaker to producer.
I also got into the engineering side which helped me immensely with production.

I think that now I'm able to create a "mood" or vibe for an artist which provides a canvas for them to do their thing.

I prefer engineering over programming or beatmaking because I'm real creative and able to provide direction to the artist which helps with the overall product.

Playing guitar allows me flexibility in my sound - I could make riffs or loops - or I could just play a scale for 16 bars - the possibilities are endless.

I've always been a fan of live music so now I'm looking at ways to incorporate that live show feel into studio productions. The journey continues.

 

[Low G]

I made my first beat many years ago using a cracked version of FL. Back then it was all fun and games and I had no desire to take it seriously. This all changed when I started taking sound for film classes in college. That's when I learned how to use Pro Tools and all the studio equipment properly. I made my first sampled beat back then that was just a loop of Zapp and Rogers More Bounce to the Ounce track. Still this was just fun and I thought nothing of it. A few years after this is when I learned how to sample properly and I've been addicted since.

Right now as far as transitional stages go I'm starting to compose a lot more heavily over samples and even sometimes hardly using samples at all. I like beats with mellow and jazzy sounds in em and usually stick to that. As I look back I still think some of my original beats are way more creative than my new shit just that back then I didn't have the knowledge to make them properly. Either way I'm excited to see where I can get in the next few years and hopefully work toward a serious style of my own.

 

[KurtisRich]

I started messing with a cracked version of FL also. Didn't really know what I was doing really until I fucked with the slicer by accident and chopped up a sample. Then I added some kicks n snares and I was like AWW SHIT.... I'M DA SHIT then started braggin to your boys and be like... yo man the hottest producer muthafucka ... WHAT! Eventually I moved on to Reason... then i stopped and started using the mpc and motif.... and started tracking stuff out onto cubase... stopped using cubase when I started using Sonar.... stopped using Sonar once I got Logic....now that I've been messing with Logic I've been combining the best of both worlds Hardware/ Software. If a sound doesnt appeal to you in one place, you can always find it in another.

I like to keep things on the low key. I used to post up every new beat I made on soundclick everyday when I first started which is like... probably 2 years ago and now I don't post nothing anymore except if i decide to post suttin the showcase and after that take it down.

I used to sample a lot when I started making beats. Most of the time now I compose it. The only thing I sample now are kicks and snares. I love the sound of sampling but I'm too lazy to sample.
My style.... I duno, it's always changing. I can't seem to stick to one particular style cuz I'm always experimenting. It's like fashion when you see some new kix, shirt, jeans...etc. like damn I gotta cop me some of dat. Same thing with style for me, its like if i hear something fresh on the radio i say to myself, I gotta do suttin like that but better. I try to keep myself ahead most of the time who knows, maybe the beats I make today will sound current tommorow.

As of now. I'm just tryin to do an album for myself... actually taking my time to master it and etc. It's gonna be something out of the ordinary.

 

[manguino]

I'm still pretty new to making beats, started around March, but I still picked it up pretty damn fast lol. I dunno, there's definitely improvements each time I make a song but as far as style goes, I don't think my skills are honed enough to define a style yet. I started off pretty much just messing around with samples, and in the past 2 months have been working on my mix, and this month have just started incorporating my own sounds and notes. I have an idea of what I want to sound like, but I'm still at a learning stage where I can't really get to that point yet but it's still pretty damn fun. inspiring to read all of your posts too

 

[nonie]

Yeah very inspiring. I'm along the same boat as manguino.

I started off maybe a year and a half ago - 2 years composing beats with a cracked FL. My beats were horrible. I don't know why I was groovin to them. But yeah, I composed beats for about 8 months on and off so I didn't get much done. I was mostly studying up on how to work the programs and stuff. And then took a 8 month break cuz I let people's opinions get inside my head. Everytime I would make a beat, I would think it was whack. People's criticism made a standard for a beat inside my head and the beats I was pumping out weren't meeting those standards. So I quit for 8 months. Came back '07 summer and wanted to take a new route with sampling. I fell in love with this man. Sampling opened my eyes to what I was excluding cuz before I was on some "sampling is gay" crap. But I realized the power it had. So yeah. That's where it really started, I felt like a whole new beatmaker when I started again. Fresh mind, new alias. 3-4 months later, I'm here. Those earlier 8 months were like a learning period for me and now I'm putting that knowledge to use. But yeah, I don't think I've found a "sound" yet. I'm still learning as I make more and more beats. That's basically all I've gone through but ILL has helped me out a lot. I wouldn't have progressed this fast if it wasn't for people here. Thanks.