Jewel Droppin': Bangout, Pt. 2

Drawing Inspiration from Other Beatmakers is Pivotal

Bangout interviewed by Amir Said (Sa'id)

Sa'id: What would be the first thing that you know about making beats that you would want to teach your son?
Bangout: The first thing… Fuck with the drums, learn how to sequence drums! That’s what I want my kids to do. Put your heart and your soul into your drums, that’s your rhythm right there.

Sa'id: Do you have preset drum patterns or do you always start drum patterns from scratch?
Bangout: I literally start from scratch every single beat. But I got my program that I always load up, my Bangout kit. It’s got all of my favorite kicks, all my favorite snares, all of my favorite claps and hats. I load it up every time.

Sa'id: How do you approach arrangement? Do you look at arrangement as sort of a typical Hip Hop producer or more like Gamble & Huff?
Bangout: I can tell you how I arrange shit… I make the whole fuckin’ beat, I’ll fill the beat up as big as… like I’ll make the hook first! The hook is all the sounds in at once. Then after that, I start breakin’ the beat down. Then I start finding out what part is the verse or what part will be right before the hook come in, what part could be the bridge…

Sa'id: Most people don’t start with the hook. You fill it up, then start breaking it down. Usually, most beatmakers start with 2 bars, 4 bars, copy, then they build it up. They get to certain segments, then they build the hook part up. Not too many dudes can do it the other way, let alone try doing it the other way… Making beats is a "moment" thing. You go on immediate feeling, you know what I mean. So if you invest a lot of time in filling it up right off the bat, by the time that you get an ill groove you may be burnt out from that beat. So that leads me to my next thing. You must kick off beats real fast! Do you have a time frame that you try to deal with?
Bangout: I can kick off a beat in 5 minutes, and it’ll be a fuckin’ smoker. But I take my time to get there, to the actual beat. Every sound gotta be there for a reason. I’m not caught up with how fast I can make a beat. Sometimes I’ll spend a whole day on a beat! And as far as erasing beats, sometimes I’ll have something in mind that I’ll want to get out. And I’ll go to the beat machine, and I’ll try as hard as I can to get that shit out. And I’ll listen to it for a while, then I’ll be like: ‘You know what, I ain’t gonna commit to this, ‘cuz this ain’t it. It’s almost there, but that’s not it. And I’m not going to be able to get that sound in my mind, if I keep listening to this.’ Cut the machine off!

Sa'id: Sometimes you measure a man sometimes by what he can give up, not how much he can try to get. I’ve been tryin’ to tell dudes that it’s better to sacrifice 10 joints that could be good for 1 joint that’s an absolute flame! That one flame is going to be the last thing in your mind, and your mind mentally is going to tell you to make something at least as good as that. A lot of producers, they got it twisted. They concentrate on quantity, not quality.
Bangout: I be seeing niggas produce, and they’ll take anything. And I be like: ‘That’s why you ain’t got no placements right now’. I got mad beats that niggas would never hear, ‘cuz the thought is not complete. That’s why I erase so much shit at times.

Sa'id: When you’re doing your joints, since you start off with the hook, do you start off with 8 bars or do you start off with 2 or 4?
Bangout: I start off with one bar, my nigga…

Sa'id: That’s what I do… In the third edition I talk about getting one bar, one main groove…
Bangout: Exactly!

Sa'id: But the way that sequencing is being taught, by certain people, it’s so strict…
Bangout: Yo, I’ve seen niggas do beats and literally do the whole drum pattern for the whole 4 minutes, come back and play the keyboard for the whole 4 minutes, come back and play the bass line for the whole 4 minutes. Now that shit is amazing to me [Pause] but it was whack! [Big laughs] It was amazing, but it was very whack!

Read Jewel Droppin': Bangout, Pt. 1

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The BeatTips Manual by Sa'id.
"The most trusted source for information on beatmaking and hip hop/rap music education."

Jewel Droppin': Rsonist (of the Heatmakerz), Pt. 3

Getting to the Point of the Beat, a Timely Matter

Rsonist interviewed by Amir Said (Sa'id)

Sa'id: Outline the typical session for The Heatmakerz, what goes down when it’s time for you to make a new joint?
Rsonist: It depends, like, I’ll just come in and grab a whole stack of records, and I’ll just run through them… even if it’s records that I heard before, ‘cuz a lot of times, if you sample, you run into a lot of the same records. It’s rare that you’re going to find new records. So what I do is… I believe that your ears are different everyday! I can hear the same sample today and I can hear it again tomorrow, and tomorrow I can get a whole new idea for it… So depending how I’m feeling, I’ll gravitate towards something and then I’ll work with it… Like I’ll go to the record store and come home with like 40 or 50 records. And when it’s time to make the beat, I’ll be like, ‘what was I thinking when I bought this record’. But then again, I’ll come back to the record like two months later, I’ll find the record and forget that I bought it, then be like, ‘aw, this sh*t is crazy!’ To me, making music is strictly on feelings!

Sa'id: How concerned are you with time?
Rsonist: I mean, for me… see the thing about it is, I’ve trained myself to work fast… I try to get so much done… Let’s say I got five samples I want to deal with. I like getting them all done. I don’t really like coming back the next day because it’s just… I mean I’ll come back the next day and work again. But I don’t believe in sitting… and this is just me. Some producers will sit with a beat for like 10 hours, whatever they do. But for me, I believe that if you sit with something for more than 10, 15 minutes and it’s not going nowhere, then it’s not gonna go anywhere. Thrilla works different. He’ll chop up a beat, and then go chill, then come back, and then put it together and then after he puts it together, before he puts the drums, he’ll go chill again. But me personally, when it comes out of you in like 5 minutes, NOT the WHOLE beat but the basic idea… when the basic idea comes out of you in 5 minutes it’s just a matter of O.K., now… ‘cuz the way that I do it is I chop the samples up first, then I’ll add the drums. So if I can chop it up and put a good melody together with the chop that I got, I know that it’s going somewhere.

Sa'id: In your sampling process, do you loop the sample inside the sample edit parameters or do you chop it up and play it in the sequencer, you know, let the sequencer loop it?

Rsonist: Yeah, I let the sequencer loop it.

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The BeatTips Manual by Sa'id.
"The most trusted source for information on beatmaking and hip hop/rap music education."

Jewel Droppin': DJ Clark Kent, Pt. 2

Creativity Linked More to Imagination than Technology

DJ Clark Kent interviewed by Amir Said (Sa'id)

Sa'id: Now, equipment can do more. But music is so mimicked today. Do you think that this ability to do so much more with equipment is creating a lack of creativity?
DJ Clark Kent: When you give somebody 30 to 40 minutes of sampling time, stereo, what do they have to be creative with, if they got all that time? Like I can take [just] two bars of a song and create 8 different musical loops with it. I can create you 8 sections to make off of a 2 bar loop. And the best part about this interview is that my engineer is right here. He’s seen me do it, hundreds of times. Look at “Brooklyn’s Finest” [Biggie and Jay-Z], it’s a five bar loop. First of all, everybody was lost on how I made that beat. But if you listen to the beat, I did things inside of the beat, inside of the five bars. It wasn’t a loop!!! It was pieces that I had to put together so it would go without the singing.

Sa'id: I believe that song ushered in the whole style of being able to layer drums over loud samples. Because remember people use to be heavy on filtering and bringing the mids and the highs down.
DJ Clark Kent: I’ve been telling people. I’ve been using vocals in samples, at least 5, to 6, to 7, to 8 years before anybody started using vocals in samples. Like I did it forever ago. So when I look at the things that I’m hearing now, you hear vocals go through samples, I’m just like ‘That’s hot, now?’ I did that like 10 years ago. That’s not new to have a vocal going through. I’m like, "O.K., so now it’s cool." When I was doing it, people thought it was crazy.

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The BeatTips Manual by Sa'id.
"The most trusted source for information on beatmaking and hip hop/rap music education."

Jewel Droppin': Chris Athens, pt. 1

Sterling Sound's Senior Mastering Engineer Drops Jewels; Despite Some Thoughts to the Contrary, Mastering Still Remains a Worthy Step in the Contemporary Musical Process

Chris Athens interviewed by Amir Said (Sa'id)

Sa'id: What is the fundamental concept of mastering?
Chris Athens: Mastering is the last creative step in the record making process, prior to an album being sent to a pressing plant for mass production. In general, the process of mastering usually includes the sequence of songs, the spaces between the songs, fades, any last minute editing that has to be done. Then of course, the last minute flavor, which usually has to do with EQ—compression, leveling.

Sa'id: What’s the primary difference between mastering and mixing?
Chris Athens: Mastering is an interesting stage, cuz when you’re a putting a record together, typically a mastering engineer is very objective about what you’ve done. Mix engineers tend to get involved really deeply into a record; it takes a long time. Mastering engineers usually come with a fresh perspective, and sort of a very immediate sense of how things should sound. So it’s opportunity for the record to be fine tuned, and really the best of the record to be brought to light. That’s the main function of the mastering engineer.

Sa'id: Is there a different skill set required?
Chris Athens: Yes and no. It’s hard for me to say specifically because I’ve done both. But I would say that what you’re looking for in mastering is to maximize the things that are best about the mixes. In general, I don’t know if the skill set is all that much different. Mix engineers have to have great ears, they have to be very creative. So the art of listening and evaluating tracks is really not that different from mixing and mastering. The techniques are a little different.

Sa'id: Is it generally understood that the mastering engineer should be someone separate from the mix engineer, or if a person could do both, do you recommend that they do both?
Chris Athens: The end result is all that really matters! But by and large I’d say there’s two advantages to hiring a mastering engineer that is a professional at doing that specialty: one, you get the aforementioned objectivity; the other is, from a technical standpoint, most mixed environments are compromised sonically. So when you’re mixing in a control room in a mix room, there are certain anomalies acoustically that usually happen that aren’t normally present in a well designed mastering room. And there’s a number of reasons for that. Usually it has to do with the quality of the acoustics and the focus on monitoring. Mix rooms focus on functionality, how to blend that many tracks into whatever. Mastering rooms tend to focus on the quality of playback sound. So it’s easier to evaluate something. So just as a quick for instance, a lot of mix engineers prefer to work off of small two-way systems—Yamaha NS-10s or your typical two-way monitors. My monitors are very high resolution three-ways with a really good sub system; I use Dynaudio C4s. So it can be really to difficult to be objective when you’re mastering a record on the same speakers you mixed it on.

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The BeatTips Manual by Sa'id.
"The most trusted source for information on beatmaking and hip hop/rap music education."

For more information on Chris Athens, visit Sterling Sound.

Liner Notes: "Loves Gonna Get'cha (Material Love)," BDP

Liner Notes with Amir and Amir Ali Said: A Frank Discussion About Music, Between a Father and his 13-yr old Son

By Amir Said (Sa'id) and Amir Ali Said

Sa’id: Listening to that song, “Love’s Gonna Get’cha” by BDP (KRS One), what’s your impression of that, when that joint comes on?
Amir: ungh… [long pause] I like that song, and in that song, KRS One is making a lotta good points. Like, he’s talking about his mother struggling; she’s working hard, and that’s what happens when you live in the hood... poor areas, the projects and whatnot. I like how he's talking about when he comes home from school, he gotta deal with these dudes in front of the building… Then, he's talking about he only has bread on his shelf. He also talkint about he gotta help his moms out, cuz they not pullin’ in as much money, so…

Sa'id: Right. But as far as the music goes and what he’s sayin’… like put it this way, the points that he’s describing, he’s making serious points, but do you feel that you’re being taught or do you feel that you’re being taught and entertained at the same time?
Amir: I feel I’m being taught and entertained at the same time!

Sa'id: Why would you say that?
Amir: Because he’s making points, but then he’s also joking around in the song, sayin’ "I come home hug my mother, kiss my sister, punch my brother." [laughs]

Sa'id: That’s cool, he’s using humor, but when I say “entertainment," can you imagine this being something that bangs out at a club or is this something that you just listen to in the crib?
Amir: I think it sounds like a song that would be like something you would listen to in the crib.

Sa'id: Well, then it doesn’t have that much entertainment quality. Because these songs was playin’ 10, 12, 15 years ago in the club. So, that sounds like you only answered because you thought I was leading you one way. The point that I’m trying to get across is that what dictates so-called "club music" is not the idea that you’re going to make something for the club. Club music can be anything! Hip hop/rap started from various breaks of music that didn’t even have vocals. A lot of times what was going on was that people were playing music, DJs were playing music… alot of times if it was some early funk record. The DJs would cue up certain parts in the music where it was just breaks playin’… where it was just like the drum break. And people in the crowd would listen to that music and go crazy. They didn’t know that in some cases it was The Band, which is a classic rock group. They didn’t know all these things were going on. Sometimes you could go to a party and you could bang out to “Funky Drummer," by James Brown; you could bang out to all sorts of James Brown music; all sorts of music from The Jimmy Castor Bunch. And then you could hear another group, you know, a little bit of disco. So that’s what I’m trying to get you to understand that what constitutes “club music” isn’t the idea that you gotta consciously think that this is going to go over big in the club. The idea is that you make quality music first, and quality music is going to find itself anyway!
Amir: Right. It's just like the music from the movie, A Piece of the Action. Curtis Mayfield made music for the movie, not the club...But that didn't mean that the music couldn't be played at parties and stuff like that, back then.

Sa'id: Indeed... Great point... And yo, Another thing that determines what you’re going to hear in the club is the tempo. This isn’t a song that in today’s contemporary Hip Hop, you’re going to think like, I’m going to dance to this. But if you listen to the music, and again this is what I mean by if it was your club, your spot… if this is being played in any atmosphere, whether it somebody’s birthday party or whatever, people who have never heard this before…
Amir: Ain’t gonna go to it!

Sa'id: Right, exactly...
Amir: They wouldn’t know what it was…

Sa'id: Right, but they’re not going to hate on it. They’re going to be drawn to it. If you put somebody that’s your age or somebody that’s a little older and hasn’t been prejudiced one way or the other against any music, they’re going to listen to this music and it’s gonna sound good, because it has a common theme. The things that you talked about, as far as the points that it made, that’s what I’m getting to: the points are being made right along with good music! So it’s not like anything wrong is going on with the joint. That’s why I’m sayin', you know, you maybe won’t hear of too many people doing dance routines to the shit, but that whole idea of music being played in the club, it depends on a person’s perspective of what they like, you understand.
Amir: Right, I understand that.

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The BeatTips Manual by Sa'id.
"The most trusted source for information on beatmaking and hip hop/rap music education."

*Amir Ali Said's own writings can be seen at his blog, Amir13.com

For educational purposes...

BDP (KRS One) - Love's Gonna Get'cha (Material Love)"

Jewel Droppin': Mixing with Cus

For Mix Engineers, Hip Hop/Rap Presents a Set of Challenges

Interview with Mix Engineer, Cus, as told to Amir Said (Sa'id)

Sa'id: What’s the biggest challenge when it comes to mixing hip hop/rap music?
Cus: [Laughs] The biggest challenge to me, and it’s not really a big challenge for me anymore, but it’s one of the things that I would tell people is that Hip Hop is really drum driven, so understand: once you turn up one thing, you gotta turn up other stuff. So once you try to make the drums as big as you can, you gotta make everything else bigger, especially the bass line. So the whole thing is to try to give it as much maximum power as you can, without over killing it.

Sa'id: What sets mixing hip hop/rap apart from other genres of music? Is it more challenging mixing a typical rock song or a typical Hip Hop-Rap song?
Cus: I do both, so I don’t have a problem with any of them. But an engineer more so used to mixing Hip Hop would have a problem mixing rock. You have to understand that the bass lines in Rock music are not really over everything, they’re just an undertone just to keep along with the drums. Whereas a bass line in hip hop a lot of times is the actual melody, (in a sense), ‘cuz it may not be that much instrumentation. Plus, the bass line is supposed to drive everything. So the bass line is supposed to be on top, where as opposed to Rock music the bass line is supposed to be just a simple undertone to carry the drums, where the guitars are on top!

Sa'id: How did you become a mix engineer?
Cus: I went to Queensborough Community College for Audio Engineering. I started in ’91. In ’93 I started interning at the infamous Powerplay Studios in Long Island City. I graduated [from college] in ’94… Powerplay was a studio that used to house such clients as Diggin’ In The Crates, EPMD, Boogie Down Productions… everybody came through Powerplay. One of the first mixes that I assisted was the “It Ain’t Hard to Tell” Remix with Nas, produced by Large Professor. Interning was interesting, ‘cuz I was able to get into the rooms more. And as I was assisting, I started to get small gigs engineering… After I really started engineering, this was like the tail end of ’95, the beginning of ’96, I started to do some assisting at Unique [Unique Recording Studios-NYC], so I was back and forth engineering at Powerplay and assisting at Unique… Then in ’97 I was full fledge mixing at Unique!

Sa'id: What was the thing that took you to that next level, from assistant to full time engineer?
Cus: I don’t really remember what session it was but… people just like throw you in the fire. Other established engineers would be like, I don’t feel like coming in, all they’re doing is vocals. Yo, you go ahead and do it. (So that’s how I caught a lot of gigs, in the beginning).

Sa'id: What areas should you be concerned with, when mixing Hip Hop-Rap music?
Cus: DRUMS! After you get your drums right, everything else falls into place. Once you get your drums right… I’ve been in situations where I’ve mixed songs and something was wrong with the drums and it made the whole mix go haywire. And as soon as I got the drums perfect, to my liking, I didn’t even have to do anything to the other stuff. If you get your drums in place, then every thing else follows suit.

"Minnesota: A Bronx Frequency Runs Thru It"

Minnesota is a critically acclaimed beatmaker/producer. His drums are customized, and his range is broad—indeed, his production credits include work from everybody to Ghostface and Big Pun to Trick Daddy and Lil Wayne. But the one thing perhaps not well-known is the fact that Minnesota is respected as much for his beats as his knowledge of beatmaking. For a sample of the science that Minnesota drops, check out the interview I did with him, exclusively for BeatTips.

"Minnesota: A Bronx Frequency Runs Thru It"

—Sa'id

Jewel Droppin': True Master

As told to Sa'id*

"I sample off of records, sample CDs. I got live drummers that let me sample snares and kicks. I’ve sampled off of T.V. programs, anywhere that I could find a snare or a kick... One of my greatest inspirations and mentors is a brother named, Eazy Mo Bee. He taught me a lot with drums. ‘Cuz really, drums is the essence of the sh*t. You can have the illest sounds in the world, but the drums gotta have a certain feel to ‘em, you know what I mean. They gotta hit a certain way. Drums is the pulse and heartbeat of the whole sh*t. I give credit to Eazy Mo Bee, as well as RZA, for inspiring me. But Eazy Mo Bee was the one who definitely showed me how to get ‘em tight. He used the SP 1200. I never used the SP 1200, but nevertheless, I learned a lot from him. How to truncate sh*t. He showed me tricks…
With hi-hats and snares, volume changes… If you take your kick, and let’s say, you copy it, three times, then lower the volume on one kick, then keep one volume the same, then lower the volume on one. So it’s a three-hit flow. One hit is softer, one hit is milder, you know. That’s one of the tricks… Adding an echo to one hi-hat is another trick. There’s gotta be some unique ingredient while you’re doing your beats. ‘Cuz a lot of times it’s more of feelin’ your way through it, as opposed to knowing exactly where you want to go!

*Excerpt from exclusive interview with True Master. Interview conducted by Sa'id for BeatTips. Full interview first published in The BeatTips Manual, 4th Edition

9th Wonder: The Importance of "Feeling" in Making Beats

In this video, 9th Wonder touches on the importance of having "feeling" in the beatmaking process. Also, he speaks a little on the influence of soul music over his craft. Note: 9th Wonder, who's widely known for having used FL Studio (aka Fruity Loops), is seen in this video with the Akai MPC 2500. Makes you wonder why the switch.
In related news, The BeatTips Manual, 5th Edition contains one of the most extensive interviews with 9th Wonder ever recorded.
-Sa'id

Maestro Knows - Episode 1 (9th Wonder) from Maestro Knows on Vimeo.

Jewel Droppin': Rsonist (of The Heatmakerz), pt. 1

As told to Sa'id*

"What I do with my tracks, 9 out of 10 times, depending on like… if it’s American samples and not Reggae, I’ll filter the bass line all the way out of the original; I won’t even use the original bass line! Because it’ll be so thin that it won’t even make sense to use the original bass line, because then you might hear it a little in the background and it might throw the beat off. So I’ll filter it all the way down, and just have a lot of the highs and the mids in there, and then I’ll play my own bass line in there, to sort of give it some new life. A lot of the older bass lines were straight live bass lines… I’m not a dude who plays the bass guitar, but I can play the keys enough to figure out a bass line and get it poppin’. So what I’ll do, like I said, filter out the bass line, then I’ll put in my own bass line. But my bass line will be real hard and straight forward. It won’t even be as, you know, musical, as the original that was in there. But when we do it like that, that’s what brings our sound to life."

*Excerpt from exclusive interview with Rsonist. Interview conducted by Sa'id for BeatTips. Full interview first published in The BeatTips Manual, 4th Edition