Production composing beats

[i!!ustrious]

programming composite beats on ableton and cubase.

any tools of the trade i should be aware of before diving in? ie; correct measures, layering dynamics, proper intervals, track-build and structure, etc. etc.?

i will be making prodominately 4/4 and broken beats.

[superchibisan]

Re: composing beats

always look to the offbeat. the 3s and whatnot.

layer snares/claps for good effects...

throw beatmangling glitch plugs over, record the output, then mix it with the original beat.

lots of things to try... try to avoid cheesy-ness

[bobjuice]

Re: composing beats

As far as layering goes Matt, it's a creative thing so a guy like your good self will be filling his boots. Once you have a loop you feel you can work with, my best advice is to layer it thrice - take the high freq out of one, the low freq out of another and leave the third as you built it. Compress the shite of the result (across all of it) and then you start gettin creative.
Add reverb to the top end (track) and a bit of delay to the bottom end (track), leave the original as it was and then adjust levels until you're happy and so is the compressor.
If it sounds right, it's right.

House (4/4) beats are pretty pedestrian till you give em some bass so do it early - the interaction between the beats and the bass is pretty much everything so do it now rather than play with your loop.
Compression and eq are (again) the big things so get them sorted till you have something you're happy with. Once you are, you have a groove.

As far as building it from there goes i'd say just keep movin - it'll be tempting and easy to sit there playing with sounds/fx and changing notes etc but there's a chance you'll play with what you've got for too long and finish up with basically the same loop after 2 hrs or worse, somethin that lost what you had originally so just move on.

Work on the break, work on the intro, add something else, whatever, just don't go round in circles - chances are you'll be tempted to vary this, vary that, blah blah but the best records have a groove that just sits there and really doesn't change much at all. Work on building it and dropping it rather than any grand structure.
Any help ? fuck knows

[i!!ustrious]

Re: composing beats

thanks guys.

superchibisian: good deal man, you can count on my ass to never drop cheesy bullshit, ever.

those are helping a lot b0bd0g, i fucking love you man. learning how to produce without having to pay to go to any school is fucking awesome, kinda tough, but a blast creatively fosho.

[lilsensa]

Re: composing beats

Sequence the "meat" of the track first...Then subtract track by track to make the intro and outro.

Make sure your music makes sense.

Example: obviously, 4/4 beats have sixteen beats every four measures and 32 beats every 8 measures. Try to stick to those counts every time you finish a phrase with, let's say, a crash cymbal. Make sure that the crash ends on the 1 count at then end of 32 beats and not on any other count when using it to end a phrase....Hopefully, that made sense.

[jeffrey collins]

Re: composing beats

get yourself on youtube and look at every ableton video you can, it will help you tons more than what anyone can say on here. Watching helps you learn a lot more than just reading about it.

[Digger]

Re: composing beats

hehe same advice as me but that help alot...just found a good source of video, i should put them here.

[chanty]

Re: composing beats

^ Yes..please do! Videos are great for learning.

[moonis]

Re: composing beats

...just found a good source of video, i should put them here.

looking foward seeing them

[udolph]

Re: composing beats

do videos heheheh

[lilsensa]

Re: composing beats

Do pornos jejejeje