Too much gear not enough skillz

[antoine]

Yo was happenin peeps.

Yall have some good threads up yo! Keep it up .......Now i have a problem and was hoping you peeps could offer some advice!

I have been producing for about a 1.5 years and my passion is hip hop in particular dark gangsta beats with a story! Nu Jerzey Devil type shit.

Anyways my point i went out one day and bought a ***** of gear! Not to be showing off and all but i purchased the below and use these tools to produce!

A PC
Apple G5
Dual monitors
Korg Triton
MPC 2500
Roldan Juno G
Roland 106
A couple of Decks and Mixers
Sound Card by Focursite
Waves Plugins
And a **** Of other plugins


Problem is after all this gear i still want to sample and use loops, for godsakes mang i spent a shitload of money here but i still want to sample! Is this becasue i have no skillz or is this becasue maybe i am a samplist! I feel guilty when i use loops mang as i think this is other peeps work and not my own! Still cant even finish a track i am happy with either! Thinking this i went out and started to learn other types of music like dance and a little rock but after 5 months of no hip hop i am dying and want to get back to it especially after i hear a nice sample, just wanna chop up and do it mang!

Also i think i purchased too much gear too quick and have evry plugin under the sun! I dont know ya know i just wanna make music is all!

Maybe 1.5 years partime isnt long enough i guess!

Thanks yo

 

[Kontents]

I need gear...free gear at that. jk.

You need to fucking slow down with producing and just learn the tools you have. I would make it a priority to work on one piece of equiptment for one week and then move to the next the next week to really get to know your gear.

Then. You need to study other beats from producers and analys. Thats where you will develope as a producer, because their work will get you to think outside the box.

Oh.. and people who just sample arent stealing other peoples work, the reinvent the music to a new generation.

Take some music classes and just enjoy it as much as possible.

Pz.

 

[classic]

atleast your honest, most cats would never admint that, focus on one thing like your MPC and learn that insideout, then slowly build out..

class..

 

[Fury]

i agree wit classic work on one thing and as u get nasty wit that ull figure out how to incorperate ur triton so u can add keys to ur beats..and nuttin is wrong wit using drum loops but u cant just keepusing loops cut em up from the kick to the hat to the snare and make it ur own..eq and layer ur drums ..cut up dope drum sounds from records or get refills EXPAND UR MIND in the words of Immortal Technique...READ NIGGA READ!!!!

 

[bigdmakintrax]

Yeah man you are suffering from gear overload and it sounds like it is blocking your expression and creativity, I never owned more than one sampler at a time, and only really ever had 1 workstation at a time, I switched out or traded up etc as one would not fit my needs etc or I gigged in a band, but for sure you are correct, you got a lot of gear like classic said learn 1 then the other pieces especially if you have crossover gear that functionally does the same thing, ie, sample or chop.

For anyone that is not gear centric it is easy to trump any hardware setup with VST's and accumulate way too many toys in one place you will never use, as far as tools and the number of instruments at your fingertips that if it was gear you would not have enough room to store it in your studio and because of the advancements of virtual instruments etc it has made understanding midi much less important as when I first started with my first sampler, everything was gear and it was necessary to have an in depth understanding of midi busses and channels, a lot of pure musicians stayed away from that side of it because they wanted to strictly be creative not gearheads sort of what i kind of hear you saying you want to do.

I say that for me i leapfrog from software to gear and back and forth depending on what i want to produce, i think using the computer as far as organizing and instantly recalling or archiving a song with many tracks it is much easier as is editing waveforms and chopping, to start something, save it and go to another idea and come back, sampling as a whole is an art, some producers can completely do everything from their mpc, while others must have that workstation/synth chained via midi bus.

My advice is pretty close to Classic as far as learn one inside out or if needed on workstation or sound module configured in tandem, if you are good at playing riffs or sound modeling with the triton, you can play and and sample your stuff into the mpc and then organize it all like that.

The most important aspects of my setup are functionality and organization along with being able to quickly change between ideas and concepts, this is what drives my configuration, the most important is saving what i did and be able to call it up later and edit as much as I want, if you are using that midi setup your best bet is have massive storage or just print your tracks to a DAW and edit everything in there, you can even build the skeleton of the song with hard gear dump it into protools and then go add pieces with the Virtual instruments or samples on the computer in protools, the sky is the limit.

All in all It really depends on how far you want to go and what you are trying to accomplish with your music or projects, do they need to be portable so you can work with the tracks elsewhere? are you selling the to 3rd parties that need something that can be easily transferred to their DAW ? etc.... there are lot of approaches you can take, you will have to find what suits you best through good old trial and error.

 

[Relic]

learn that mpc and stay up here necessitty will dictate the rest, look at it like this too, you dont have to go shopping for a loooong while.

 

[Agent Smith]

fuck a week...you could spend a year just on the triton. first of all, figure out which of the three workstations (computer, mpc, triton) you're gonna use as the main brain. second of all, you can still sample with all those options. third of all, choose between the pc or the mac, and return one...you don't need both. fourth of all, you dont have to seperate sampling and composing...in fact its better if you do both (imo).

 

[antoine]

Thanks yo u all have some good shit to share!

Yall right in many ways

what about using commercial midi files i am sure this will help learning chord progression and harmony nah?

 

[Relic]

kik some of that loot this way!

 

[Fury]

kik some of that loot this way!

ill knife fight u for it

 

[skidflow]

Yo was happenin peeps.

Yall have some good threads up yo! Keep it up .......Now i have a problem and was hoping you peeps could offer some advice!

I have been producing for about a 1.5 years and my passion is hip hop in particular dark gangsta beats with a story! Nu Jerzey Devil type shit.

Anyways my point i went out one day and bought a ***** of gear! Not to be showing off and all but i purchased the below and use these tools to produce!

A PC
Apple G5
Dual monitors
Korg Triton
MPC 2500
Roldan Juno G
Roland 106
A couple of Decks and Mixers
Sound Card by Focursite
Waves Plugins
And a **** Of other plugins


Problem is after all this gear i still want to sample and use loops, for godsakes mang i spent a shitload of money here but i still want to sample! Is this becasue i have no skillz or is this becasue maybe i am a samplist! I feel guilty when i use loops mang as i think this is other peeps work and not my own! Still cant even finish a track i am happy with either! Thinking this i went out and started to learn other types of music like dance and a little rock but after 5 months of no hip hop i am dying and want to get back to it especially after i hear a nice sample, just wanna chop up and do it mang!

Also i think i purchased too much gear too quick and have evry plugin under the sun! I dont know ya know i just wanna make music is all!

Maybe 1.5 years partime isnt long enough i guess!

Thanks yo

WITH ALL THAT GEAR YOU SHOULDNT BE WORRIED ABOUT SHIT. BUT THE LESS THAT YOU HAVE THE MORE CREATIVE YOU BECOME...I COULD USE THAT MPC PARTNA!

 

[Relic]

ill knife fight u for it

OOOOOoooTaay!
We'll do it native American style with our wrists tied together!

 

[DJ Excellence]

You French btw ?

 

[Fury]

OOOOOoooTaay!
We'll do it native American style with our wrists tied together!

shutup u just always wanted to act out the scene from Westside story dont use the poor native americans to disguise ur truth

 

[Relic]

Hahahaha ^^^

 

[bigdmakintrax]

Thanks yo u all have some good shit to share!

Yall right in many ways

what about using commercial midi files i am sure this will help learning chord progression and harmony nah?

Actually a combination of things will help, if you had someone that actually is good at playing thats a good person to hook up with to teach you stuff on the fast track with keys, or get videos, or as you suggested and I have also done is get midi files of the stuff that is out right now, I use band in a box, this way I can open up any song and it will show me the exact chords and notes that are play and it allows you to improvise too that is a much slept on way besides going on youtube and checking some of the people out that figure out how to play songs and show you the basic way to play the song with the chords etc and then begin practicing.

 

[static]

sell the triton to me?

 

[breal]

The sad fact is gear does not make music. people do.

 

[P.Noccio]

but gear makes it a hell of a lot easier

edit: some gear do, some just make it harder

 

[2nd_Man]

Gear is there to accomodate for the person. Gear should do what you want it to, not you doing what the gear allows you to (though often this is the case)