Please help me break down this beat. It's one of my favourite melodic hip hop beats. I'd love to hear more like it if you guys can point me in the right direction. Please keep Chris Brown's personal life out of this thread as he really has nothing to do with the beat. Obviously the guitar effects chain has a huge impact on the sound but there's also some awesome low-pass-filtered synth in there, which gives it a real soft feel.

Writers:

• Brown
• Youngblood
• Kendrick Duckworth
• Merlin Watts
• Pitts

Producers:

• B.A.M
• RoccStar

 

Last edited: Dec 15, 2015

I don't know in what way we are supposed to push you. There are guitars and double-tracked guitars, with chorus and reverb. There are pads layered in. I think it's pretty straight forward.

 

i think what makes this song so hot only because of the beat but the vocals too, the phaser and reverb thats going on with vocals are crazy. and even the 1/4 nt delays on kendricks adlibs for his verse too.Absurd

 

Yes, the automated filtered delay on certain parts of the vocals is effective, although quite common.

 

Straight forward for you, but not me, hence why I asked, my friend.

 

Ah, sorry. Try plugging an electric (strat/tele) straight into your audio interface and run it through any decent amp/pedal simulator. Record some chord plucking, record twice and counter pan them out. Add some light chorus and splash some reverb on them.
The solo guitar is basically the same.

Chop and copy some "selected bits" of the vocals and paste them on a new channel (aligned and in sync with the original). Turn down the volume of the new channel, but send/aux the signal to a delay and/or reverb. Then add a bandpass filter (or any filter you like) on the return from the delay/reverb. Automate cutoff for more interesting movement.

The 4th-note delay and reverb on the vocals that seem to run through-out the track seem to be SC compressed to the vocals. It also seems high-passed and low-passed (to remove lows/low mids junk and sibilance, etc) in order to avoid overlapping with the original vocals and making a mess. Google Abbey Road Reverb Trick or check this:

 

Last edited: Dec 16, 2015

Thank you. That will give me something to play around with next time I write!

 

The guitar voice code or layer during Chris's break was done well. (1:55)

 

Last edited: Dec 17, 2015