12 replies to this topic

[dylaniriz]

I searched to see if there was a similar thread but did not find one. To the chase: would anyone care to share their techniques and processes for either or both sampling and creating bass lines? This would very much help me out since I am almost brand spanking new and I've been thinking about this facet of beat making in particular very much lately. I will appreciate any tips I can get regardless of whether or not you use hardware or software. My reason for asking people to share this with me is because I would like to gather some options for myself when working on a beat; the more paths that I am aware of for coming up with dope bass the more creative I can get I suppose. I am fairly new to FL but I did watch quite a bit of Warbeats tutorials a while back so I am at least have an amateurs knowledge of FL's interface and plugins. and I know the basics of choppin up. I am also a little dumbfounded about what to do about the different BPMs between uncut samples and loops and the actually drum beat. I thought about matching up the tempos with software but then I thought: well would it be impossible for me change a samples tempo mid song? Can anyone offer any advice on this matter?

I am actually planning on pursuing a career in Film, and this is what I study in school, but I realized that I like doing this in my spare time and I would really like to become at least proficient in structuring a beat. In the past I was having fun recording and making beats with a couple buddies, originally just dubbing new vocals over instrumentals and then using a friend's FL Studio to make a couple of serious tracks; and I soon realized that I would really like to learn more about recording and producing. So I got FL and an MPD24 before I left for college which I regretted several months ago because I brought them both to school and didn't touch either of em. I sometimes get very much inspired to make a beat and then I lose that inspiration when I realize I don't even know where to start to scrape these damn ideas off the walls of my head. If I would just experiment more and think less about creating what I am thinking I feel like I may actually start progressing but because I can't help myself I always get really frustrated. Anyways nuff of my shih man hopefully I get some responses. Thanks a lot.

dylaniriz

[lwj]

Haha funny. A lot of people in film make music. It's kind of the same thing I guess.
The way to do it really depends on what kind of music you wanna make, but yeah you can timestretch in FL, in all kinds of ways, most of them pretty easy. SliceX has a lot of options. But indeed a lot of times you're not going to be able to play with the pitch anymore, but a simple workaround is to render your stretched sample and replace the original with that. But I can't give any tips unless I know what you're trying to make. You could do it one way and call it one style, but there's probably other people doing it the exact opposite way, having their own style. So find your own thing and stick with it, you can't be the new premier or madlib, those positions are already taken.

[dylaniriz]

me and my buddy somewhat figured out what direction we'd like to go in with our music. I will soon get an example or two up of what we started or have close to finishing because I just got my new computer after being without one for a good while. When I opened up some projects in FL it couldn't find some of the sounds so I have look for them. I'm really unorganized man.

Some songs that initially inspired me were KRS One's Step Into A World (Rapture's Delight) produced by Jesse West, J Swift's production of Pharcyde's Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde. Originally I really wanted to make beats that blended ambient sounds and abstract samples and which was really inspired by what I was hearing on Adult Swim that started in 2006. Which is how I discovered J Dilla's name and realized I had been listening to his joints off A Tribe Called Quest's last albums. My buddy and I were also really inspired by the compositions off of the games Jet Set Radio and Sonic Adventure for the Sega Dreamcast. Good example:
We really admired, and still do, the playfulness of the music which at the same time was real bumpin and had dope breaks. I don't want to compose for video games and I don't want my music to sound the way JSR's sountrack did but I do really like the energy of it.

So when I get it up you'll probably see this; one of our first songs samples from Jet Set which originally samples a lot of funk and soul it includes James Brown, early 90s hip hop influenced samples like the "sweet soul brother" sample that Pete Rock used on Mecca and Soul Brother, things like that. But what I did was I chopped up the entire song really fine and strung together about a handful of little blips of the song to make a beat. The samples if lined up probably only equaled about 2 or 3 seconds in length total but we love the way it sounds. I'm gonna finish it and put it up

Anyway man thank you very much for the feedback!

[the.real.spyda.tek]

Hey...that my sheeit back then, JSR definitely had me addicted to the music. All those breaks they used, CLASSIC! Anywayz...speaking as a producer that also uses FL Studio (for 6years). You can do so much with samples. Anything you wanna do, you can do it. If you wanna match the sample to a tempo without changing the pitch, you can. I've done so much sample flips with it, its ridiculous. I'm just not good at teaching or giving tutorials, but I CAN tell you it's possible. So best of luck fam.

[mplsSOUL]

record everything, just press the button, even if its bullshit its better than nothing right? pretty soon the bullshit will turn into something

[sugoisounds]

My 10 Bass Commandments. 1 - transpose keyboard or synth so the root is c and in tune with sample. 2 - learn minor 7th. Basically c d# f g bflat c. Combine this with 1 and that is the only scale u need to learn! 3 - try to convey as much as possible with as little as possible. 4 - like 3, try limiting urself to 2 or 3 notes per bar. 5 - try humming/speaking a hook that goes with the beat and 'convert' that into a bass line. 6 experiment with keys and pads as ur mode of inputing/playing bass - u get different feels from each. 7 - visualize something in motion to the beat and play to that vision. For ex. My last beat i was thinking about chicks asses as they walk... It's in the other 'bump' thread 8 - simple sine wave bass, it's unobtrusive. 9 - play bass on the kicks 10 - play bass on the off-beat

[dylaniriz]

What kind of filtering do you guys put on really convoluted tracks to pull out drums? I'm trying pull the hat and snare out of this thing i like and im only either drowning out the bass or the drums completely dang

[OKG]

dylaniriz, on Jan 22 2010, 02:20 AM, said:

What kind of filtering do you guys put on really convoluted tracks to pull out drums? I'm trying pull the hat and snare out of this thing i like and im only either drowning out the bass or the drums completely dang

if you're trying to isolate the hat an snare, then you're probably cutting the lows and sum mids to get them, which means u won't get any bass by definition... ?

if your sample is just a clean drum break, just chop the individual snares and hihats out that u want and use those to make a new pattern

if your sample has other instruments on top of it then there is only really so much u can do to eliminate unwanted sounds/frequencies/instruments

i dunno what you're after exactly

[dylaniriz]

its not just a drum break its actually a got other instruments over it. its dirty

[CertafiedBluntHead]

if taking drums was that easy then buying records wouldn't be as ill as it is, dig for some breaks homie

[ZeusIV]

dylaniriz, on Jan 9 2010, 12:39 AM, said:

I searched to see if there was a similar thread but did not find one. To the chase: would anyone care to share their techniques and processes for either or both sampling and creating bass lines

The great thing about samplers is the ability to fuck about with them and accidentally create something from it. The first bassline I ever made on my sampler was actually a kick drum looped and filtered, and played back at different pitches on the pads.( and a bit of fuckin' bout with sequence data...)

I've got lots of open bass guitar samples over the years, but I've never used any.

It also helps to sample records outside the jazz/funk/soul/hiphop box.

dylaniriz, on Jan 22 2010, 12:20 AM, said:

What kind of filtering do you guys put on really convoluted tracks to pull out drums? I'm trying pull the hat and snare out of this thing i like and im only either drowning out the bass or the drums completely dang

Sample the drum break, chief.

but to be fair, listen for breaks on the left or right channel. you'd be amazed how many people still miss drum breaks because of a guitar on the opposite channel.

sample any and every isolated noise on a record.

[Munoz387]

Can we hear the break so we know how bad it is?

you can invert the phase of the break, then transfer it to mono, this removes anything in mono from how the track started
test it with "trunk music" by Strong Arm Steady, the end result will leave you only with vocals

[dylaniriz]

I need to correct myself from that earlier post. There is no break in the song but I was looking for the part with the least amount of instruments so I can take out the hat, kick, and snare for later futzin.