So…What’s the key to making great Hip-Hop / Trap Beats? THE GROOVE!

The groove is that factor with makes people ‘break their necks’ dancing to the music. Something so easy at first sight but sometimes so complex to achieve. The groove of our beat also allows the rapper or the singer to flow much better on the beat.

Do you want to know how to improve drastically your beats’ groove? Keep reading these 5 tips!

1. Take your time to choose the samples

A big rookie mistake is picking whatever you find first. “This sounds okay, I will fix it later during the mix” “I will change it with EQ” Wrong!. Take your time until you find the sound you have in your head. This way you will be off with a good start and end up saving time.

2. Try ‘playing’ instead of programming your Hip Hop Drums

You don’t have to be the next John Bonham to play your drums with the keyboard or pads. If you don’t have any MIDI controller I encourage you to get one. You can find pretty cheap ones and they will allow you to play whatever you need. Furthermore, you don’t have to play the whole drum set at the same time!. If you are a beginner is completely fine to play it by layers, first the snare, after the kick, hi-hats etc. And don’t worry if you have to edit manually or quantize something later, that’s okay. The point here is to try to achieve that human groove, that little imperfections humans make when they are actually playing. Over time, you will find that playing your Hip-Hop drums will turn out in a more natural result.

3. Don’t over quantize

Remember Hip-Hop is about flowing on the beat. Traditionally, beatmakers have always used sampled drum breaks played by soul, jazz or rock drummers to transport that groove and ‘imperfect’ tempo to their beats. It just sounds pleasant to our ears. We don’t want grooves and rhythms that sound robotic and completely fixed to the grid. It is perfectly fine to correct excessive off-grid notes but be careful quantizing everything 100%.

If you are confused about terms like ‘Quantize’, ‘Gride’, ‘Velocity’ etc, I encourage you to check this website MIDIWORLD. There you can find the theory behind these terms to understand how MIDI works.

4.Layering your samples

This will helps us when it comes to creating a richer and more appealing sound. For instance, you can ‘double’ your snare sample at certain points to create a subtle variation. You can do the same with the different drum elements in your beat, hi-hat, crashes etc. Change, alter, modify or layer your samples along the track. This will be unappreciated by the listener at the first moment but it will definitely make your beat more catchy. In order to layer several samples to create one unique sound, you will need to EQ and filter each layer properly.

If you want to learn how to use EQ while you are mixing or producing check this post.

5. Change the ‘Velocity’

The velocity factor is a MIDI value between 0 and 127. We assign velocity to each note to determine the force which the sample is played. This will give you an idea about what happens if you keep a fixed Velocity value along with the whole song. All the hits will sound with the same intensity, and therefore, robotic and boring. Think about a real drummer playing, can he hit the snare every time with the same strength?. When you are programming a default velocity value will be set for all the MIDI notes. Try changing them over time, assigning higher Velocity values to empathize or lower values to create a softer contrast.

Conclusion

Adding groove to our Hip Hop drums is about humanizing them. The better grooves and hits of the Hip Hop history probably come from sampled drum breaks. Drum breaks played by great drummers with a groove that makes us shake our necks and hit the floor to the tempo. Remember, the groove is the key to achieve a banger beat.

The post Programming Hip Hop Drums: 5 Tips to Take your Beats to the Next Level appeared first on Go Mixing.

Being a music producer has become a very wide term within the music industry and its meaning can vary.

Traditionally, the music producer was the person ‘in charge’ of the whole production process. The music producer used to lead the band during the different production stages, be in touch with the record label, giving instructions to the engineers etc. They usually had the last word when the good takes or decisions had to be taken.

The music producer was supposed to understand the musical concept the artist was trying to achieve and have an overall vision of how everything should be.  In conclusion, the person in charge of the album’s outcome as some kind of project manager.

Nowadays, when we talk about a ‘music producer’ we have to take into consideration multiple factors such as the music genre or the context. This is the only way we can understand what type of music producer we are talking about.

Tasks of the Music Producer

Here you will find some of the duties normally attended by music producers. This doesn’t mean this is the case in every production. However, it can give us an overall idea of how important the music producer role is.

Overseeing and managing the whole process

The music producer acts as the glue which assembles all the elements that take place in music production. Making a good album can be authentic chaos and they are in charge of putting the thing in order.

Coaching and getting the best from musicians

They need to manage to earn respect from the musicians so they can be heard. Many times the own musicians hire the producer because he is somebody they already admire for his previous work. The music producer must encourage and understand the psychology inside a recording studio in order to bring out the best from the artists.

Coordinating all the teams involved

When we are talking of big production there are several teams or departments involved in making a new record. The artists, the engineers or technicians, the record label, the marketing department etc. Part of the job of a music producer is to be in touch with each one of these sides of the production. All of them must work together in a productive way so they can come up with a big success.

Sorting the album and the song’s orders

Sometimes the artists aren’t the best judges for their own music. A new fresh point of view can help when it is time to decide possible discards. Songs’ order and selecting the singles are also important decisions where the producer has a great deal to say.

Selecting the good takes during the recording

Some artists or engineers can become obsessed with the perfect take. Time inside a studio is always gold and the producer normally takes the lead managing the timing.

Giving guidelines to the engineers

They should have a general idea or vision about the sonic approach the album must have. Sometimes they choose who should be the mixing or mastering engineer. Others, they are responsible for transmitting instructions to the technical department.

Types of Music Producer

The Engineer

When most people think about a music producer, they see a person in front of a huge mixing console managing faders, smashing buttons and turning knobs. The engineer music producer normally has professional technical knowledge about recording and mixing and manage with ease the gear inside the studio. Actually, most of them are recording studio owners. They normally base their decision on technical aspects and are very concerned about a very specific sonic vision for the project.  They take care in detail about each process within the mix and spend long hours in the studio trying to achieve a sonic masterpiece.

The musician

Makes perfect sense that successful musicians become music producers at some stage of their careers. They have proved they know how to succeed in the music industry and are backed up by their recognition and musical skills. This type of producer is normally more focused on the artistic side of the production and provides the artist with advice and guidance about lyrics, harmonies, musical arrangement etc.

The Beat Maker

In the Hip-Hop or Trap genres, when we talk about the ‘producer’ we are usually referring to the beat maker. They are those who make the instrumental or the beats for the main artist. However, the beatmaker doesn’t necessarily have to have control over the final result. Sometimes they just ‘lease’ or sell the instrumental to the artist under a determined license agreement. Depending on the project, the beatmaker and the producer could be the same person or not.

A great beatmaker(maybe a hitmaker would be a more accurate term) who is also a music producer would be Timbaland. He is one of the top Hip-hop producers in history. He has worked with many top artists from Flo Rida, Ludacris to Mariah Carey or Demi Lovato. During the late 90s, he was so successful that the ‘Timbaland sound’ become really popular. If you want to learn more about Timbaland click here.

The Guru or The Mentor

Some Music Producers aren’t highly skilled in a very specific area. They seem to have some kind of aura surrounding them since they seem to know how to make a record to succeed.  Most of them are big audiophiles or music enthusiast who ended being involved within the music industry. They are some kind of respected authorities and musicians trust and listen to them when it’s time to make important decisions. They are a coach for the musicians but also decide who should be the engineers and give them guidelines about the album’s sonic concept.

The most famous example of this type of Guru Producer is Rick Rubin. He has worked with an endless list of big names within the industry; AC/DC, Adele, Aerosmith, At The Drive-In, Audioslave, Black Sabbath, Coheed And Cambria, Damien Rice, Danzig, Dixie Chicks, Ed Sheeran, Eminem, Frank Ocean, Gogol Bordello, Jakob Dylan, Jay Z, and an incredibly long etc.

Click here if you want to know more about Rick Rubin

The Bedroom Producer

This type of producer has become extremely popular within the EDM or electronic music genres. They are normally talented young people who make music from home with the basics. I believe there have been two main factors in the rising of the bedroom producers.

In the first place, music technology has become more accessible and more affordable. Practically anyone can afford to set up a basic home studio. Nowadays most of the tools we need to start making music are a nice computer and a pair of speakers. There is no excuse anymore, making music is for everybody.

Secondly, all the information and tutorials around the web. Many years ago, before the eruption of Youtube, if you wanted to learn something you had to join a course or find somebody willing to teach you. Those days are over and no matter which DAW we use, we can find hundreds of tutorial and post online about how to make any music genre.

These type of producer usually don’t have the best sound quality since most of them don’t own top-notch equipment and are self-taught. Once, they stand out within the genre they have access to better resources and sometimes end up being big stars.

If you want to learn about Music Production, Mixing and Mastering visit our Blog clicking here

A good example of successful Bedroom Producer is Flume. He is a 27-year-old Australian Future Bass producer who starting as a kid making music in his room. Now he has become a big name within the industry with important awards under his belt. If you want to learn more about Flume click here.

The All in One Producer

I call this type of Music Producer the ‘All in One’ because they seem to be able to do everything and auto-sufficient. They are not just the the main artist. All in One producers are in charge of the whole production process leading all the decisions. They play, record, mix, master, promote, design and are in control of everything related to their music.

This is quite coming among amateurs or upcoming artist. Mainly because they don’t count with a budget for hiring or getting more people involved. It is difficult to find this kind of solo approach within the top level production, where typically there are several roles involved. However, we can find some cases where big artists decide to do almost everything on their own.

This is the case of Prince with his famous “Produced, arranged, composed and performed by Prince”. He was a real On In Producer playing several instruments, composing, producing, acting and I could go on. Check all the info about Prince in his Wikipedia page.

The post What does Music Producer do? Different types of Music Producers. appeared first on Go Mixing.

1.Think before you touch anything

One of the most common mistakes among beginner producers. They start immediately adding plugins without even listening to the whole song. Don’t’ rush and try to analyze how is the sound and what it needs. Think about how it should sound and which frequencies can be the problems’ cause.

2. Less is always better

You don’t have to equalize everything. Don’t go crazy with those gains unless it is absolutely necessary. Unless we are trying to achieve some kind of artistic effect, we usually want things to sound natural. Extreme cutting or boosting will result in an artificial sound most ears will find strange (even though they don’t know why).

3. Try cutting before boosting

Sometimes when we feel ‘it needs more low end’ our problem is excessive energy in the high-frequency range. Cutting overpowered frequencies a part of the spectrum can cause the sensation or boosting the opposite part.

4. Don’t do everything in solo. Listen in context

This is a rule of thumb. Something can sound okay on its own but don’t fit the mix when the whole song is being played.

You have to SOLO the sound for certain things but remember to listen to everything in context before applying the final adjustments.

5. Q factor too narrow

High Q factors can be useful when we are trying to reduce resonances. However, if we overuse them (especially boosting) can result in an artificial sound. Think that in the natural world something affecting the sound in a very specific area is an uncommon thing, and therefore, our ears will notice something wrong is going on.

Don’t know what is the Q Factor? Check this post to understand equalizers.

6. Filtering against masking

Remember that high and low pass filters are our best weapons against masking and overcrowded mixes.

7. Over equalizing is the most common mistake

I am sure this situation has happened to you. You have some vocals that don’t sound as good as you would like. Then, you start equalizing here and there and you end up using 8 filters, boosting and cutting +6dbs everywhere but you finally achieve something you like. When you come back to the mix the next day with fresh ears you realize it sounds terrible and the original sound is actually better. When you spend to much time playing around with the same sound you can lose the reference of what sounds natural. Our ears adapt to what we are hearing at the moment. Take this into consideration and don’t spend too much time equalizing the same thing. Take a break, go to do another thing and come back after a while.

8. Readjust the balance after equalizing

When we equalize a sound, we alter its loudness. Equalizing can alter the volume balance within your mix. Remember to readjust gains after equalizing, especially if you are making drastic changes.

9. Use the bypass button

Another golden rule. Always check if you are actually improved you mix or you just simply changed it for the worse.

10. Boosting the high-frequency range? Careful with ear fatigue

Excessive energy within the high-frequency range can lead to a hard unpleasant sound. Sound guys, audio technicians, DJs, musicians in general, we are used to spending our in front of loudspeakers and may have less sensitive for high frequencies than normal people. If you also have an excess of acoustic foam around your home studio, you could tend to boost in excess these frequencies.

11. Be subtle. Respect the sound.

Most times, when you don’t use equalize for changing the sound. What you really want is to improve it or correct fine details. This point

12. Improve your recording. Choose better samples.

If you need to equalize drastically in order to ‘fix the sound maybe you are doing something wrong. Try changing the position of the mics, improving your acoustics, setting up thing differently. If you get good takes from the recording stage you won’t have to spend a crazy amount of time mixing. If, instead, you are using samples, try to find samples that already sound the way you like. This may sound silly, but spending some extra time selecting the proper samples is always worth it.

The post Top 12 Tips to Equalize better your Music. EQ Mixing Techniques and Strategies. appeared first on Go Mixing.

Find your song’s musical key or scale

First of all, you need to find the key of your song. You can know the frequencies that correspond to each note, but this is useless if you have no idea about what are the most important notes in the song you are mixing. Experienced musicians and music producers can detect this immediately or just playing a few seconds a keyboard while they are listening to the song. However, if you are new to the music production you may find this difficult, so here there are a few easy ways to find the key of your song.

Check the key signature

Firstly, If you have access to the music sheet (or maybe you are working with a famous song and can just google it “name of the song + sheet music”), you can check the key signature at the beginning of the sheet. If you don’t know anything about music theory, don’t worry just find the ‘symbol’ in this chart and you will have the key of the track you are working with.

Use your DAW’s pitch detector

Most of the recent DAW versions in 2019 includes their own pitch correction or pitch analyzer plugin. You can also use third party plugins like Melodyne or autotune. These plugins will analyze the musical notes a track is playing. You can analyze the vocals or the piano and check the notes on the piano roll. After this, you only have to go to a piano scales chart like this (this website also has a complete piano scales chart) and find out what scale or music key corresponds. 

Use DJ’s software

If you are a music producer, there is a big chance that you also are a DJ or at least have access to  DJ software. Most of these software in their recent versions have a key detector, so it is as simple as loading the file in them.

Use specific plugins like ‘Mixed in Key’

Some plugins manufacturers have brought this technology so common in the DJ’s software to our DAWs. They are made to analyze the musical key of all our audio files.

I don’t recommend getting used to this kind of plugins because they will make your ear ‘lazy’. From my point of view, the best way to go is always a little bit of practice and training. This way, you will be picking the key of any song in seconds. In other words, you won’t have to do any of this!. On the other hand, if you are a complete beginner this kind of tool can help you to take off. 

Note to Frequency Chart

Now you have several ways to guess the key of your song, and therefore, your root note, you need to know which frequency corresponds with that root note. For that purpose, we have the Note to Frequency Chart.

Okay, I know the root note and its frequency now… what?

In the first place, you can use this information to pitch your samples. This will bring a more musical result to your tracks. Moreover, when you are equalising your tracks with low-frequency content!. For instance, imagine you are mixing a Hip-Hop song and you feel that the bass line isn’t defined within the mix. Are you going to boost any random low frequency? No! What you need is to boost the frequency which corresponds with the root note of your song!. Let’s say your track is in Em, you can see in the Note to Frequency chart that the rote note (D2) corresponds with 73Hz. It’s that simple. You can do the same with your Kick, Snare, percussion elements etc.

Do you want to know how to use an EQ? Check this post with everything you need about Equalization in Music 

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1. Send only the tracks you want to be in the mix.

Nowadays, the digital domain and technology in general, allow us to record as many takes as we desire, this can often end up in a huge stack of files and a huge headache for the mixing engineer. Picking your favourite takes should be part of the production before the mixing stage starts, and therefore, it is not normally part of the job when you hire a mixing engineering (unless there is a previous agreement for that)

2. Name your tracks appropriately

The best way to go is to try to keep it simple and clean. Short and simple is usually the best way to proceed (Kick, Snare, Lead Vocals, etc.).

3.Organize files by folders

The engineer will appreciate if there is a good organization and the .zip files and folders have easy to understand names. The more time your engineer saves during this organization process the more time he can dedicate to your mixing.

4.Remove effects

Make sure there are no processing effects on the master bus or any other channel; remove eq, compressor and any other plugins. It is always better if you let the mixing engineer work over raw files instead of files which are already processed. However, you should keep creative effects, preferably exported as a separate track (filters, delays etc.)

5. Make sure all the files have the same length

All the files should start at the same time. One of the most important points is to ensure all your files have the same starting point and the same length so they will line up properly when they are imported into another session.

6. Leave headroom. Don’t normalize your tracks

Regarding audio levels, please consider to leave some ‘headroom’ and ensure that no audio channels are peaking or with any kind of undesirable distortion.

7. Export in WAV/AIFF. Forget about mp3

All the tracks should be delivered in a professional lossless audio format (WAV, AIFF) and at least 44.1 KHz sampling rate.

8. Add useful information

Extra Information you should include with your files: Tempo (BPM), Key signature, Your rough mix,

9. Try to provide references and clear instructions

Some times is hard to deal with technical words within the audio world. Your engineer will appreciate if you send him a few references, similar genres’ tracks that you like how the sound. It’s much better if you give him these references and clear instructions than abstract concepts like “I want it to sound deeper”.

10. Check if everything is okay

You don’t want to expend a lot of extra time sending something wrong and doing the whole process again. Remember to verify each song before sending it. This way you can ensure that there is no missing tracks, bad edits, clicks, weird transitions, synchronization’s problems etc.

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