Gotta hear yalls opinion on this -

Im conflicted on the matter -

on one side, my respect-the-pioneers, lotta-dope-beats-be-straight-loops self screams IF IT SOUNDS DOPE, WHATS THE PROBLEM?!

On the other hand I would never dream of doin it myself. Why? Because I know how easy it is to do, and to me, it leaves a feelin of not "ownin" the beat, not havin put enuff of myself in it!

That feelin is somethin I try to NOT apply when listenin to other peoples music, cause I really wanna be able to just enjoy it for what it sounds like, not how it was made.

I know now I cant do that fully - my way of listenin to music is simply to connected to my way of judgin my own compositions!

I know its silly but a beat auto becomes better to me, when I can hear how complex it was chopped, or how dynamic the bassPROGRAM is!

That, in itself, is another contradiction, cause I look for the beauty in dynamics in stepprogrammed or padplayed lines, but have no interest in REAL acoustic lines, sampled or played live, in a beatmaking setting!!!

For the record, that doesnt take away from me enjoyin or praisin say a dope soul or jazz joint - it only applies to the type of music I make myself.

Whats your take?

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NEW Edo.G album FreEDOm coming soon!!!

some of my favourite tracks are loops. there is an art to finding/chopping/rhyming over a dope loop, ala roc marcy.

for me, if i am making a beat myself, i will loop up breaks if the track calls for it. Generally i will use one if i am chopping some stuff on top of it/layering stuff - i will almost never layer an instrumental loop over a drum loop and call it a day

Wont downplay that part - the technical side tho? Not impressed.

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I don't view to be lazy.
But I guess my opinion depends on what they do with it.
I think it come off lazy when you don't do anything to make it uniquely your own.

It just really depends. What did you do with the sample work or instrumentation? Are there lyrics? Turntablism?

I tend to check things as a whole I guess.

peace
HIM
www.PlazaMelodic.com
"Lo-Fi Holiday" Now Available!!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/lo-fi-holiday/id985794237
https://plazamelodic.bandcamp.com/album/lo-fi-holiday
http://soundcloud.com/beatroom88

Thats what I mean by ownership of the beat!

Funny thing is, sometimes, when your sound is established it dont take much to make somethin uniquely ur own. Fcourse theres years and years of groundwork to get to that point, but thats another post...

Take Premier for example, urbody knows his drumwork from the jump, and that alone is a stamp of uniqueness to me. Add to that babycuts, that planet phatt bass he uses and youve got a formula that stays HIS no matter what break he chooses as the melodic line, and how chopped it is...

I love the 2nd Childhood beat, and I only recently found out that its a straight break, only thing he did was pitch it down. BUT, he still got all the other elements that are HIS.

Hell, I wouldnt be able to shake that beat even if it was just two breaks combined... Thats one of the few cases where I just hafta give up on my rules lol...

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Loop, fantastic chop, layers. As long as I like what I hear.

I can acknowledge and appreciate exquisite chopping and layering and it's certainly a factor when ranking who's "better" or more talented, but if the beat gets me going I'm not too concerned with how it was put together.
__
I don't like the beat anymore because its just a loop. ALC didn't FLIP IT ENOUGH!

Flip it enough? Flip these. Flip off. Go flip some f*cking burgers.(c)Kno

Allied State of the National Electric Beat Treaty Organization (NEBTO)

All these years I wanted to ask you.

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....that I asked myself the same question lol.

I think it was mostly with his "Russian Roulette" (2012) album and some other tracks here and there. I could be wrong, but some of those joints sounded like they were lifted right off the record with nothing done.

No drums or bass added (I remember some tracks having NO low-end bump at all).

No drops or chops to the sample.

None of the beatmaker/producer touches you expect when it comes to samples/loops. Nothing that would clue someone in to the fact that they were listening to a sample-based hip-hop beat and not an old Russian record with English raps recorded over them.


__
I don't like the beat anymore because its just a loop. ALC didn't FLIP IT ENOUGH!

Flip it enough? Flip these. Flip off. Go flip some f*cking burgers.(c)Kno

Allied State of the National Electric Beat Treaty Organization (NEBTO)

Thats the best-of-russian-breaks album lol...

I cant believe he let that outthere. Mustave been some good green involved in that process.

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it's only about the process to other musicians/producers... in terms of listening it's the end result that really matters.

Its too late for that tho. Too caught up in the process.

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>it's only about the process to other musicians/producers...
>in terms of listening it's the end result that really
>matters.



Let my love slide in and never slip out

...the "I did this" is way more fulfilin, and gives me greater pleasure and pride than the "James Browns drummer and Millie Jacksons string section did these, and I tempomatched and put the crossfader at 50/50"! Thats more of a dj function in my mind really, all respect to that...

Other than bein on my own d*ck, I also want other beatmakers to be able to feel that pride (ohh how noble) about they own music and have other musicians acknowledge they game, thats why I choose to give advice on how to take it further technically...

But I agree, the wrong OR right critique can hinder or halt a beatmaking process!

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Some of the best songs of all time just happened, fell out of the writer with minimal effort.

And I would never say that either. Beautiful music is beautiful music.

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There's a skill to looping and finding great loops, you can't just get anybody and have them do it. Chopping is another technique, nothing more. Doing them both at a high level takes a keen ear and imagination. If you can't match things up properly, like having a loop with drums underneath that clash with what's happening in the loop itself, then you're not really going to end up with a great result.

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CHOP-THESE-BITCHES!!!!
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Garhart Ivanhoe Poppwell
Un-OK'd moderator for The Lesson and Make The Music (yes, I do's work up in here, and in your asscrease if you run foul of this

i agree with all of this...

the caveat i would add though is... relatively few songs since the early 90s have technically been "loops". even if the pattern is sequenced exactly as it was on the record...95% of producers chopped it in multiple places... if only to make sure that they had more control over where the kick and snare drop... especially so you don't get the flam-ing that results when also using a musical loop that contains its own drums

the loop would be recreated so to speak

http://howardlloyd.bandcamp.com

different techniques, I mean, yes they are, but theres more to it than that.

One of, if not THE 1st thing you learn when coming up in the beatmaking world is finding loop points and tempo matchin them.

Thats a STEP on the way to becomin your own...

I acknowledge and respect that somebody had to find out how to do it sometime in the 60s, probably a HUGE task, loopin stuff on reel, for me to learn that that was even possible!

As somebody stated earlier, theres and art to findin great loops and combinin them, but the tech side of things is def. a starters game nowadays...

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I can listen to some newer productions and hear drastically incorrect things. It doesn't take more skill to chop, it takes a different skill than looping.

__________________________________________
CHOP-THESE-BITCHES!!!!
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Garhart Ivanhoe Poppwell
Un-OK'd moderator for The Lesson and Make The Music (yes, I do's work up in here, and in your asscrease if you run foul of this

Takes mo skills to make a multichop line sound whole and dope, than to make a loop sound whole and dope, since it probably was that way from scratch. Wudduyu say, agree on that much at least?

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I have a tendency to prefer looped breaks over chopped-and-programmed ones simply because a lot-though FAR from all-producers have a tendency to get lazy with the programming and just give the rappers that flat, mid-late 90's "underground" Hip-Hop groove where the drums are just some kind of backdrop for the mcs to flow over rather than a distinct entity in *itself*.

A classic break on the other hand always have a distinct, ear-catching quality. Granted, if hundreds of producers sample the same break, it might not sound as distinctive anymore but the point is that the break *iteslf* is still distinctive; "funky drummer" and "synthetic substitution" might be some of the most sampled breaks ever and "noone" needs to hear more songs on those breaks unless chopped and varied but they are still ill on their own terms.

If you can dig up "new" breaks with similar quality, distinctiveness and power, more power to you and I prefer that over just some lazy programming...

Now if you can program your beats in a dope way, more power to you too but I think even dope, programmed beats have a tendency to sound more "for producers" than listeners, like people listen to Dilla and be like "Wow, listen to that ghost-note on the high-hat" and while I can hear it if I concentrate, it's not very visceral, more dorky...

I never FELT live drums and the sound of them, so Im probably one of those people that downplays the value of REAL DRUMMING.

That bein said, I still have a certain way I need MY drums to sound, but to an acoustic musician that would probably come across as over-compressed, squashed or whatever...

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I know I "shouldn't" but I still feel like I sometimes should have done "more." But to tell the truth I spend way, way more time on my drums when chopping up a break than I ever did programming my own drums on a drum machine.

I used to have a rule that I couldn't use all of the sounds from one break and I still do that a lot. Like I'll use the kick from one break and the snare and hats from another. Or use a break but use a different snare. Sometimes I'll layer parts of 3 or 4 breaks, and I'll often layer individual drums sounds with breaks (like stronger kicks or snares).

I was surprised that I found myself being a little disappointed in The Jungle by Marco Polo (on Pharoahe Monch's PTSD) because the second I heard it I recognized the break with just a different snare on it. (I confirmed that from a making-of video on Youtube.) It's a fantastic beat and I love the song maybe it's just the fact that there's less mystique surrounding it but that just comes with being more aware of the production process.

I had a similar experience when I first heard the break used for Hip-Hop Hooray years ago. I think that's dumb though. If it's dope then it's dope. Of course if it's dope and was tough to make then it gets some kind of bonus "head points".

I also have another rule that I use sometimes that says that you can use a full break as long as you change the drum pattern. Of course I wouldn't follow this every time as a producer is most likely going to be getting a pile of inferior patterns if they did this 100% of the time.

You guys have any other self-imposed rules?

Yeah Ive got rules a plenty. Stupid rules but good rules.

When Ive got a break chopped up in pieces, Ill (almost) NEVER play one of the chops out in the same pitch as another from the same break. Its an integrity thing, I feel, for me to call a composition my own, Ill have to distance myself from the chord or note progression that was in the OG break. Also, it allows me to get more creative in my own head...

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...I follow that might give yall a good laugh:

- I chop every startin point of every sample to the very center, the zero-sound point in a given channel, before even buildin a line. If that point is impossible to find, say in a very dense stringchop goin from one pitch to the other, I simply dont eff with it.

- I dont do stereo drums, since I need complete control over the sound distributed, and I feel Ill lose that if the signal differs from left to right.

- For the longest I even monoed ALL samples, also due to the control issue, with the result that thousands upon thousands of my earlier beats sounded dead and flat due to the lackin dynamics in between the L and R channels.

- I have a strict mathematic schematic that I follow (when making beats), and that goes for all parameters, be that volume, tempo, delay, etc. etc.. Even after playin somethin out on the MPD, I tighten it up and adjust the individual parameters to fit that scheme.

- I have a loudness issue, a certain passion for very loud drums that forces me to pull them to the front and max em out every day all day, completely destroyin the possibility of other elements takin the lead or shinin brighter.

- I do all my beats in double the BPM to have more lines to program in between lines, I.E. 90 BPM becomes 180.

- I tell myself that I can squeeze the masterin process into the same session as the mixin, which gives me rather good soundin beats, since I know my ear/gear, but leaves absolutely NO ROOM for professional mastering afterwards.

- I often keep whole sampled songs as .WAVs in the beat arrangements, resultin in MASSIVE loadin times, at times even causin my DAW to crash.

- I worked solely on a notebook for 5 years. Yes, a notebook.
Now Ive upgraded my machine park – to a laptop. And a cheap lookin plastic box with some pressure sensitive buttons, which I dont use, cause I need all signals goin in to be maxed for them to fit in my abovementioned mathematical schematic.

ALSO, Herb, these weeks challenge is the one you requested, with the teamwork stuff goin on, check it out!!!

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some beats have been lessened by chopping where looping would've
sounded better.

http://i54.tinypic.com/2j51hj4.jpg

Ive heard soo many dope samples completely destroyed by countless abrupt cuts and off tempo stitches etc. etc., dont just chop to chop.

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An MC/producer told me once about 15 years ago that chopping was getting out on control, and that some producers, determined not to loop anymore, were chopping all the soul/swing out of the stuff the sampled.

As long as you get dope results from whatever method you use, I gives not a fuck.

-----------------

www.albumism.com

Checkin' Our Style, Return To Zero:

https://www.mixcloud.com/returntozero/

and I can see how beatmakers, dead set on taking it somewhere else overdid the "NEW WAY" a while back...

Bout the rhythm and feel bein killed - some of the most fun I have producin is tryin to get that bounce to somethin thats programmed from chops with no true rhythmic remains... Def. a hard task but rewardin as fuck when you get it!!!

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>An MC/producer told me once about 15 years ago that chopping
>was getting out on control, and that some producers,
>determined not to loop anymore, were chopping all the
>soul/swing out of the stuff the sampled.
>

Agree 100%. Even my favorite producer, Premier, is guilty of this sometimes.

******************************************
Falcons, Braves, Bulldogs and Hawks

Geto Boys, Poison Clan, UGK, Eightball & MJG, OutKast, Goodie Mob

>An MC/producer told me once about 15 years ago that chopping
>was getting out on control, and that some producers,
>determined not to loop anymore, were chopping all the
>soul/swing out of the stuff the sampled.
>

again, one of the reasons why I think shadow is the greatest is cuz he's always preserved the swing and honored his sample sources.

he chops the shit outta his drums, but it's done to serve the break's essence while adding dynamics so it's not repetitive. and his chops are always to make the different loops/samples cooperate with each other.

and all that comes from him studying marley, pete rock, bomb squad, and early premier.

Happy 50th D’Angelo: https://chrisp.bandcamp.com/track/d-50

In creation, nothing is finite or static.

In accordance with this maxim, even tho I tend to lean more towards drum-programming for idiomatics, I'll use breaks if the beat-at-hand calls for it, nahmeanz....

But even with breaks, I'll still try to flip the EQ on them and
track-out the kick&snare so-as to utilize my own pan-treatment, further enhancing the idiomatics.

https://chriswind.bandcamp.com/track/massage

"You can take an African out of Africa, but you can't take Africa out of the African"
Afro-Americana/Afro-Caribbana/Afro-Latino unite. We are ALL Black!

My beatmakin OCD cant tho...

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When I first started making beats, break loops & drum loops is ALL I used for five years straight, but once I got my MPC I didn't feel like looping drums, just used them to chop up them up to just kick, snare, high-hats, only for the past year have I decided to now using them again in beats but not often cause I need to get back into using them as half bar loops instead of the entire bars to four bar loops.

I never considered people using them lazy cause kats like Showbiz & Pete Rock found some good ones and used them well same goes for a lot of kats especially in the late 80's to early 90's, but now it's not the norm and kats love drums that come in sample packs.

https://tinyurl.com/y4ba6hog

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"We in here talking about later career Prince records
& your fool ass is cruising around in a time machine
trying to collect props for a couple of sociopathic degenerates" - s.blak

that laid the groundwork was def. right for doin loops at that time, they hadnt, I wouldnt be where Im at with this, so this is NOT to take anythin away from the greats!!!

Im talkin bout loopin in a modern day environment, where soo much more can be done to further ones own involvement (is that a word?)/dig deeper into the work and hereby become a "bigger" part of the composition...

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Not just any sample pack tho.

Just about one or two outa the millions floatin roudn satisfies my needs.

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>Not just any sample pack tho.
>Just about one or two outa the millions
>floatin round satisfies my needs.

See I can understand that cause the same goes for me when I get a drum record, I only use a few of the dozen they had and now with DAWs have plenty of packs that come with them and kats hunting down the packs like a comic book collection, they get use to just using those to the fullest, not sometimes but everytime, and that's where a population of new producers end up using the same sounds cause the heavily used from UB&B collection have been chopped up and looped for everyone now and most don't even re-e.q. or pitch them, just straight out the packs.

Being lazy is when legendary producers stick to the same drums to the point you know they will end up using them in their name song or remix.

https://tinyurl.com/y4ba6hog

---------
"We in here talking about later career Prince records
& your fool ass is cruising around in a time machine
trying to collect props for a couple of sociopathic degenerates" - s.blak

refusing to use loops does not make you a better or a worse beatmaker

the loop (in the form of a DJ running the break back to back to back) is the foundation of the musical aspect of the culture that distinguished it from all that came before it...

that said...loops are better served as backdrops for rappers than standalone beats in 2015...but yeah, it's how you hook it up with the rhyme style troop...

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whenever you did these things to the least of my brothers you did them to me

I know it is tho, but I have a genuine interest in what the posters that are here now has to say bout the subject.

Sure, I couldve browsed the archives, but I wanted to use my personal stand as the jump off, since I had a feelin it could spark some friction, and I might learn from that, in a more direct way than as an observer...

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Isn't it weird that so many of the same breaks are still being used, year in, year out? Its not like there aren't live drummers anymore. I played a friend some classic breaks and he played some drum patterns inspired by them that I recorded... and they were dope! I feel like some of these break-loving producers could easily pay some drummers to record thousands of new breaks specifically for that purpose.

for what?

and i think most record collectors know how many random sources you can pull drums from without going for the big boys...

but the classic drum breaks will never completely go away, just like certain standards will always be played by musicians...these are the patterns and sounds that birthed the musical side of the culture...cats moved onto drum machines and then quickly back to breaks in the 90's because they have an essence to them...

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whenever you did these things to the least of my brothers you did them to me

>for what?

well... breaks are samples. recording new ones give you both complete control and also complete ownership/credit for your composition.


>and i think most record collectors know how many random
>sources you can pull drums from without going for the big
>boys...

True indeed. and they should always continute to do that. But they had the money to buy all those records... a session with a drummer is not expensive. many talented ones would do this for free.


>but the classic drum breaks will never completely go away,
>just like certain standards will always be played by
>musicians...these are the patterns and sounds that birthed the
>musical side of the culture...cats moved onto drum machines
>and then quickly back to breaks in the 90's because they have
>an essence to them...

agreed. and they shouldnt. i use breaks myself. that said, its weirdly fetishistic and stagnant to me that breaks are thought of by many as only coming from records and old recordings when recording technology is so cheap now and the potential for new ones is everywhere.

there are some other ones too i think...

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whenever you did these things to the least of my brothers you did them to me

haven't heard anything from him in awhile i'll have to check that out.

http://www.redefinitionrecords.com/products/lunchbreaks

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whenever you did these things to the least of my brothers you did them to me

.

http://howardlloyd.bandcamp.com

thats the point. theres a place for things sounding the same... and shit that sounds different. some people get bored of things sounding the same.

nah.. u probably misinterpreting what i'm saying or i wasn't clear enough

i have 1000s of breaks and they all sound different... but nothing recorded in 2015 will have THAT type of fidelity

the tape/tape machines/rooms/reverbs/drum sets/mic techniques etc ...its almost impossible to achieve

very few cats have gotten close...but a 70s break record... is hard to duplicate

theres still lots of breaks cats aint been on... its a sampling sport!

http://howardlloyd.bandcamp.com

>nah.. u probably misinterpreting what i'm saying or i wasn't
>clear enough
>i have 1000s of breaks and they all sound different... but
>nothing recorded in 2015 will have THAT type of fidelity

You probably right

>the tape/tape machines/rooms/reverbs/drum sets/mic techniques
>etc ...its almost impossible to achieve

Almost impossible indeed... but there is diversity among them and people these days that create with old school analog equipment.

>very few cats have gotten close...but a 70s break record... is
>hard to duplicate
totally agree. I love breaks I just think the idea of them could also be a springboard to creating similar but not identical sounds. The recording equipment aspect of breaks is of HUGE importance to their sound.

>theres still lots of breaks cats aint been on... its a
>sampling sport!

Well shit I'd ask for some recommendations but you should probably keep em close to the vest

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whenever you did these things to the least of my brothers you did them to me

Thats the main reason I only sample. I could never come close to achievin the sound I wish for, playin a module by my no-instrument-playin self lol...

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