LO 19: Collaborative Hip Hop Beat

I collaborated on a beat with a Hip hop producer from SAE institute Brisbane. During the discussion of what we wanted to strive for and get out of the project, we both have a very wide knowledge of hip hop so it came to an agreement that we would put together a hip hop beat that could also be beneficial for us in the future to rap over the track and bring a west coast vibe.

I was working on the drum loop on FL studios, it is one of the few DAWS I am familiar with. When making the drum loop, I thought about the classic drums in a hip hop beat which are kicks, hi hats, snares and claps while the producer I collaborated with, created a synth by using Bob James’s song ‘nautius’ as a sample. When trying to think of a drum loop, I decided to get a reference track, “drop it like it’s hot” by Snoop dog and Pharrell Williams to help me with inspiration.

Drum loop

After finishing the drum loop, I exported and sent the wav file to Simon so he could rearrange the synth and drum loop together. I also sent him more wav files of my samples gathered over the past 2 trimesters studying at SAE institute Brisbane. When placing the drum loop with the synth, the drums didn’t match the synth and it was a bit messy, and when changing the BPM to 100 and 110 it was still not the sound we were hoping to get. So instead of putting together another drum loop, we kept the same drums and just slowed it down in the mix and it fit perfectly especially when we added more samples and sounds later in the production stages.

After hearing the draft of the product, I asked, “does it sound like there needs to be more drums? It sounds a bit empty.” After reviewing the draft we decided to add extra drums in the mix and with my samples such as the submarine beep sound from my sample library, which was sampled from hitting a metal stick on a glass bowl and effects were added afterwards such as reverb, eq and delay to the sample. We used an industrial and crash sample from FL studios sample pack which created a second layer of drums. Below shows the drum loop and the samples used for the beat:

Submarine sample

Crash sample

Industrial sample

These samples were arranged in the mix to make the beat less empty. These certain changes were experimental which helped us diversify our styles into one and the weird samples were what made this hip hop beat unique. We predicted that the bass would be a bit too loud in the mix, so we then exported the final mix and played it out loud on the speakers in the raven. When critically listening to the beat, the bass was a bit too loud in the mix and it didn’t work. It overpowered the entire beat and it made it difficult to hear the other important sounds in the mix such as the melody.  We equalized the bass to 10,000 kHz and turned down the bassline to minus 4.5 decibels.

After analysing the beat we thought we could experiment with more sounds within the mix, so I started working on a little guitar riff to put in the instrumental at the end of every bar to produce a unique sound but it was later scratched due to masking problems, distortion and it didn’t fit in well with the beat as well as we hoped for.

Intro sequence

1^st loop sequence

2^nd loop sequence

This was my second collaborative beat making project that I have completed and it was a great experience because it opens your eyes to how collaborative work can excel your skills more in that sort of field and open your mind to other creative paths because you can learn from each other and you have 2 different ears for critical listening which can help with feedback and producing the sound you want.

We made a good connection during the project and knew what we wanted and how we were going to approach the project and we both had ideas that we experimented with during the production stage which was new experience for the both of us. There is still some aspects of producing especially making my own synths that I need to learn. There is no doubt that we will work together again in the near future.