I made this recently. It's a demo for now, maybe forever because I don't know if I should give it up or keep it. It's kinda long right now without a vocalist or rapper

I normally make progressive house, etc. EDM stuff, so this and my previous beat are really stretching for me.

Thank you for lending me your ear, your time, and your comments!

-Mark





EDIT: I'd edit the subject line if I could. I've been corrected. Sorry for the confusing subject line.

 

Last edited: Jun 2, 2024

sounds pretty good to me Mark. I feel like the kick could be heavier, for more boom less bap, that could be my taste tho. speaking of taste, have you started chopping up samples? i used to make exclusively sample based hiphop stuff, i was elitist about it of course, but like A) chopping samples is super fucking fun and B) it sounds awesome when done ok and it add's a lot of movement/energy imo. the first thought that crossed my mind was i would chop up the guitar and see if i could do something else with it, who knows what until you've got it chopped up and start playing with it over the drums. i used to use abletons sampler/simpler for that task, now i use hy slicer on reaper cause i never figured out how to do it although i'm sure it can. i bet it would give it more of that boom bap vibe if you were to go down that route, which i encourage you to do for the above reasons.

anyway, im just a dude winging it on shit so fuck if i know anything!

 

Drums (hi-hats mostly) feels odd for boombap. Choice of the sounds.
Feels weird in stereo field.
Guitar sample sounds like it from samplepack. GTR notes is very very predictable. Timing wise.

No vibin, no swing. Kick drum triplets feells more or less right - but everything else lacking groove.

It is not trip-hop and not boombap.

You need more listening practice.

Trip-hop examples

Boom bap examples

Analytical listening with pen & paper. Pump trip-hop and boombap masterpieces...pause and make notes.
You need to dig in the actual records - NOT sample packs.
Using ready samplepacks is not right, it makes you lazy, it limits you with very pour sound pallet.
And most important - none of "producers" )who down with somebody samplepacks all time) raise their own style.
Sampling records - is good.
Sampling ready sounds from samplepacks - is WHACK.

 

Thanks for commenting! I must have watched a thousand YouTube videos by bedroom boom bap artists on their MPCs (etc.) and I'm blown away each time. I bought an MPC One three weeks ago out of curiosity and I'm having fun with it. It's another toy and it's total fun because I don't take myself very seriously anyway. I'd love to flip samples like those guys, but I don't have the time to dedicate to that. My mistake was putting "boom bap" in the subject line.

 

@MFSAKA Thank you for the info!

 

@MFSAKA Thank you for the info!

EDIT: Double post

 

I don't understand this amount of repetition. In everyday life, repetition is for things that are either very important and necessary for the continuation of life, or are unavoidable to be left out. When there are so many software, samples, sounds, different mixing methods, why don't you use them?
Repetition in music has two meanings. Either that idea is so important that it must be repeated in different ways, or that the artist cannot create a new idea and has to be content with the one idea he made. This song shows that you have a great ability to create ideas and mixing, I think it is better to combine several ideas in your work.

 

I'm guessing you started with an 8 bar loop and expanded it out into an arrangement.
As you expanded it out to a song, it should have become more obvious that there wasn't enough musical content to give the track the necessary variety and contrast. (i.e. the same guitar part is there throughout).
I'm not a fan of the lo-fi bass noise. Not sure it blends well with the guitar. Maybe the other elements of the track should be more lo-fi sounding if that's what you were going for.

 

Yea, that guitar is fairly boring. Perhaps adding a second line in conjunction with the first that is different and never repetitive would spice it up a bit and give it a human feeling.

 

well not sure about your time schedule, but seriously if you have an mpc right there take a few minutes... ok maybe longer but still, not that long to go grab a record (or a youtube rip of a song, it doesnt matter. even a premade loop from some sample pack just to learn how to chop stuff up, although i agree with MFSAKA taking samples from sample packs for songs is pretty lame most of the time. i dont count drums though personally i get mine from packs all the time, not trying to dig through records to find an isolated 808 just to say i did) find a loop, any loop within the song, and learn to chop it up. besides the learning part of how to chop it up on the mpc its not like learning scales or something. its simple. throw that guitar into it. or use a different slicer vst on your computer and skip the mpc if thats easier.

if you're trying to branch out into other genres than progressive house i don't understand the resistance to learning a new technique, besides learning stuff can be a chore sometimes. it wont take THAT long and seriously its a great technique for making things un-boring. YOU CAN DO IT!

not gonna lie that looks pretty easy to do on the mpc one, less hassle than on my old 2000xl i had 20 years ago.

 

Thank you all for your comments! It looks like I have a long way to go. I'll take that and improve.

 

imo, the drum beat and the guitar track have different groove, they dont work with one another rhythm wise even if the timing for both suggesting they can and it doesnt feel out of place, tho for me it does feel like that a lot. if you're trying to make the song more to a trip hop vibe, I suggest try mangle with the guitar track and play with the timing and recreate a new rhythm. an example is like give it a glitchy trip hop vibe but messing with the timing, cut and rearrange parts of the guitar track, kinda need to be super creative with that until it forms a new rhythm with proper swing then you build the drum over it or drum first then the guitar, whichever works for you. EQing it creatively, in this case making it darker and fall behind a bit, also adding some weird timing FX should help make it feel like it was sampled and processed (which is the cool part of the genre) rather than just a sample from a sample pack. Making the guitar solo in the intro also suggesting it's a different kind of song at the beginning and things become chaotic the moment other instruments appear because it doesn't share any rhythm fingerprint from the drum beat when in solo, because the brain expect the song to be different, even different genre based on the guitar track with how it is mixed alone. aesthetically, the guitar EQ-ed wrong as in it doesn't fit the whole vibe when all the instruments present. understanding different rhythms that share the same groove (or can work together) is a difficult thing and require a lot of listening skills especially when the track is constructed based on (I assume) a melodic line with a mellow/slow rhythm. sometimes EQing it wrong can also kill the potential because our ears will perceive it differently. trip hop or even boom bap although it can be melodic all you want, it's naturally a beat-based music where the foundation of the rhythm has to be strong at the first place. those melodic thingy suppose to add/shape overall track's vibe not driving the whole song and making it feels like a melodic track that will then make the track feels like a mellow song having an over-hyped drum beat or the guitar track was forced on the track just because it can somehow start and end together. just my two cents.