Share Production Techniques/Tricks You Learned From Other Producers

[King Musa]

9th Wonder - Filtered sample with an Un-Filtered sample chop with a slight delay at the beginning of each bar of the verse.

Example.... @ the 0:41 sec mark



Just Blaze - Prolonging a single sample chop for a majority of a bar.

Example.....@ the 0:11 sec mark



Anybody have anymore techniques and tricks?

 

[ThaRealness]

I used to always try to match my kicks to the pitch of the bass... But if you set it like 1 or 2 pitches apart, you get like a good 20-40 hz of frequency space between the fundamental tones of teh bass & kick

 

[nahnah]

I have a strange thing for reversing samples. Sometimes a nondescript sample can sound dope as fukk when reversed. It doesn't even need to be at the forefront of the beat - just in the background it can add texture. I've been bumping banks mixtape of late which has a couple examples...

 

[ibrokemyneck]

On mobile so don't wanna get elaborate but will return to post

 

[HypeMan]

I''ll drop a few gems on here:

1) When you sample, if you are working with a loop, try to add bits and pieces from other parts of the sample on top of your sequence. Filter out the low end and mids of the additional bits so that they sit well with the mix when you place them on top of your loop.

2) Always add a bassline to your sample, either via vst, or a live bass guitar. The days of using the low end of the sample as your bassline are kinda over, you will look inexperienced if you don't add a real bass. (If you must use the sample's bass, just duplicate the sample and remove all mid and highs, cut everything past the 350khz frequencies, this will give you a bass from the sample)

3) When sampling, add a delay and reverb to your sample, this will help if your sample chops/slices cut short a bit. I either use a 1/4 or 1/2 delay (depending on bpm) with feedback at 25% and 20% delay. For reverb I use 20% with the pre-delay at 0%, and reverb time anywhere between 1.5 to 3.0

4) Use Time-Stretch and Pitch Shifting in your favor. When sampling 60s/70s soul, I always go for that 2000s feel, so I always time stretch my samples up by 3 semitones, then I pitch shift it up another 1-3 semitones to get that nice (chipmunk feel from the 2000s).

Example: here is a beat I produced using the techniques I listed:



Compare that to the original sample: (I used 1:18, 2:13, 2:40, 2:55, 3:10, )



I think I ended up time stretching the whole song by 2 semitones, then pitch shifted it up 3 more.

The reason I do a time stretch then pitch shift, is because I like working around the 82bpm and up when sampling, and sometimes if you just do a straight up pitch shift, the sample will be way too fast at the pitch I want it, so I time stretch it as a way of getting my sample at the pitch and bpm I want to work at.

Here is a mixing technique I've learned from my mentor NY Bangers:

1) When mixing, make your kick and snare (and sometimes bass) the loudest elements of the mix. This will make your beat sound more crisp and raw. You will need to use a limiter/compressor when using this technique, because you can easily get distortion when doing this method.

Here is an example of that from NY Bangers:

 

[SchrodingersStrapped!]

Low pass sample down to the baseline, bounce that, slice it up and use slices as an actual baseline, you can also use this technique to easily find the key and or progression of the sample.-9th Wonder

I also use a harmonic exciter before low passing samples.

Sampling just like a hi-hat sample which last like 2 beats and looping it, so it runs over 2 bars, sidechain these hats to kick and snare - Pretty sure Cardiak does this sometimes, when his not using actual live hats or vsts

Autopanning most high frequency heavy rythmic elements

Bitcrushers on snaps, claps and crashes - Boi1da

Sidechaining actual frequencies rather than the entire instruments/elements s.o to jaycen joshua

Using a square wave to design 808's - 80 percent sure this what metro does

 

[head shots101]

@TheHitKingz

Been making beats for about 5 years and I still can't time stretch....Thanks for the advice in this thread. .... I really like your work bro

 

[ThaRealness]

Low pass sample down to the baseline, bounce that, slice it up and use slices as an actual baseline, you can also use this technique to easily find the key and or progression of the sample.-9th Wonder

I also use a harmonic exciter before low passing samples.

Sampling just like a hi-hat sample which last like 2 beats and looping it, so it runs over 2 bars, sidechain these hats to kick and snare - Pretty sure Cardiak does this sometimes, when his not using actual live hats or vsts

Autopanning most high frequency heavy rythmic elements

Bitcrushers on snaps, claps and crashes - Boi1da

Sidechaining actual frequencies rather than the entire instrumenta/elements s.o to jaycen joshua

Using a square wave to design 808's - 80 percent sure this what metro does

When Im working on a beat I think could actually amount to something, and its no sampled drums.... I almost always find a break, filter out the kick & snare, and layer that over my own hats... Im an old head so shyt just doesnt sound right to my ears unless it has that texture

Anything with 16th note hi-hats, I use Joy by Isaac Hayes

 

[ThaRealness]

I''ll drop a few gems on here:

1) When you sample, if you are working with a loop, try to add bits and pieces from other parts of the sample on top of your sequence. Filter out the low end and mids of the additional bits so that they sit well with the mix when you place them on top of your loop.

2) Always add a bassline to your sample, either via vst, or a live bass guitar. The days of using the low end of the sample as your bassline are kinda over, you will look inexperienced if you don't add a real bass. (If you must use the sample's bass, just duplicate the sample and remove all mid and highs, cut everything past the 350khz frequencies, this will give you a bass from the sample)

3) When sampling, add a delay and reverb to your sample, this will help if your sample chops/slices cut short a bit. I either use a 1/4 or 1/2 delay (depending on bpm) with feedback at 25% and 20% delay. For reverb I use 20% with the pre-delay at 0%, and reverb time anywhere between 1.5 to 3.0

4) Use Time-Stretch and Pitch Shifting in your favor. When sampling 60s/70s soul, I always go for that 2000s feel, so I always time stretch my samples up by 3 semitones, then I pitch shift it up another 1-3 semitones to get that nice (chipmunk feel from the 2000s).

Example: here is a beat I produced using the techniques I listed:



Compare that to the original sample: (I used 1:18, 2:13, 2:40, 2:55, 3:10, )



I think I ended up time stretching the whole song by 2 semitones, then pitch shifted it up 3 more.

The reason I do a time stretch then pitch shift, is because I like working around the 82bpm and up when sampling, and sometimes if you just do a straight up pitch shift, the sample will be way too fast at the pitch I want it, so I time stretch it as a way of getting my sample at the pitch and bpm I want to work at.

Here is a mixing technique I've learned from my mentor NY Bangers:

1) When mixing, make your kick and snare (and sometimes bass) the loudest elements of the mix. This will make your beat sound more crisp and raw. You will need to use a limiter/compressor when using this technique, because you can easily get distortion when doing this method.

Here is an example of that from NY Bangers:

Good shyt breh

I think the bolded is an interesting claim
I think of everything in terms of its value to the frequency spectrum... when Im working with a recording that doesnt dip down below 100 hz, sometimes I let the kick occupy the 30-60 range... Granted, its easy to layer a sub bass sample to give the bass that depth... but I think its equally professional if you wanna duck the bass and give the kick as much power as possible

But Ive never made any money off this shyt

 

[ibrokemyneck]

the subtleties make all the difference, some times i'll mess with my snares timing and tuning, but not uniformly. so maybe only the 4th snare will be pitched up or detuned by a minute bit and a little early in timing, or something to that effect. or layer with a tambourine maybe every other snare hit. these subtle layering tricks can be so effective. almost to the point that even though they are repetitive i find that the ear doesnt immediately notice. almost distracts the ear imo.

did that w the snaps in the first track here:

 

[901Cory10]

When layering drums and claps or snaps or whatever manually adjust the time of one...Gives it a separation between the two sounds I like

When I want hats with "texture" I often load up a drum loop in FL slicer and just play the hats from there in a let's say 4 bar loop every hat/ohh is a slightly different pitch and velocity...Easy to make swing and Grove

 

[ibrokemyneck]

Something else I'll do from time to time is analyze a track that I'm really feeling and break it down by frequencies. I'll download an instrumental I like and run it thru an EQ to see how the elements make up the spectrum. I've learned a lot this way.
You'd be surprised how much you can find out this way. Some tracks have kicks with big bottoms and nothing above 350, some snares exist with presence in the mix starting 600-1000 and sometimes heavy at 250-300 range. Seeing how high end is managed and where hihats and cymbals must be highpassed. This works best with an EQ like abeltons eq8 where you can listen to the frequencies that are being removed.

The sound of the final project is usually. A full complete sound, but scoping out what's "under the hood" is a great learning experience and has helped me when trying different styles

 

[SchrodingersStrapped!]

Does anyone have any tips on applying reverb to kicks and Snares, I generally hi pass the reverb and let the kick play in a section of song where I remove most of the low end ..




Also any tips on getting this Big Drum Sound, the snare sounds like it has that 80's gated reverb on it?

 

[HypeMan]

@TheHitKingz

Been making beats for about 5 years and I still can't time stretch....Thanks for the advice in this thread. .... I really like your work bro

Appreciate that breh, we should get a collab going.

Time stretching is fairly simple, I'm not sure how to do it on a Maschine, but in FL Studio if you are working with a sample loop, lets say 4 or 8 bars, make the bpm of the project so that the sample waveform lines up with the grid of the timebase, so 4 bars of the sample would be equal exactly 4 bars to the project. Once you line it up, right click on the sample to bring up the settings, and right click on the Time Manipulation knob, set it to project. Now when you change the bpm/tempo of the project, the sample stays in grid to the 4 bars, and will automatically stretch according to the bpm / tempo. I learned this technique from NY Bangers.

In Logic, you can time stretch by dragging the audio file (literally stretching it) to quantize it to the grid.

In Pro Tools, they use a thing called elastic audio where the audio automatically time stretches to the tempo/bpm.

In Presonus Studio One, you can automatically stretch the audio to any bpm if you input the original bpm of the sample.

For MPC you can pitch shift or time stretch, and then transpose.

For Ableton, you can use a function called Warping which is similar to time stretching.

I don't remember how to do it in Cubase or Reason; I've used many production DAWs in my career.

Good shyt breh

I think the bolded is an interesting claim
I think of everything in terms of its value to the frequency spectrum... when Im working with a recording that doesnt dip down below 100 hz, sometimes I let the kick occupy the 30-60 range... Granted, its easy to layer a sub bass sample to give the bass that depth... but I think its equally professional if you wanna duck the bass and give the kick as much power as possible

But Ive never made any money off this shyt

The way they taught me at my job at the music studio, was that if the low end is very weak, we use a cheat plugin called "RBass" from Waves, and what that does is it doubles the low end, lets say on a weak kick or bass. It will increase the intensity of the low end frequency and make it sound louder and more heavier.

I also learned that if you have a heavy bassline in a beat / song, to cut out 50khz below for the Kick, this will clear up any muddiness in the low end from the kick and bass.

I was also taught various side chain techniques, like making the Bass sidechain to your Kick. Everytime your Kick hits, it lowers the velocity of the Bass for the Kick hit. Very useful like you mentioned when you want the Kick to overpower the Bass.

I usually use a lot of bus techniques in my mixes and masters. So I instead lower everything to -12db and lets say I'd have the Kick and Snare overpower the whole beat at -6db, and the bass at -9db, then I'll raise the volume to industry level using plugins in the master channel.

 

[GPBear]

I have a strange thing for reversing samples. Sometimes a nondescript sample can sound dope as fukk when reversed. It doesn't even need to be at the forefront of the beat - just in the background it can add texture. I've been bumping banks mixtape of late which has a couple examples...

I mean this was the GOAT use of this technique


J Dilla was the GOAT because he used techniques in the 1990s that 10-20 years later other producers still can't really do as well. Both of his Pharcyde singles were revolutionary. Drop for its backward sample and Runnin' was the first to sample brazillian records in hip-hop.

The other thing about Runnin' was originally it was different every 4 bars, Pharcyde was like "that's too hard" and just sampled one loop. Dilla would later use this technique on Busta's Still Shining, he said it took him 2 weeks to write the rap to fit to every kick switch up. And me like a month to memorize it