So I'll admit this, I'm not that experienced when it comes to sample based beats but I'm just curious. I have lately thought about this crazy idea to try my hand at some other genres and find out stuff that I can play with and use in my main genre.

Anyways here is something that I have always thought about, do people put effects/creative mixing choices to the main sample in samplebased hip hop/rap beats?

I'm not talking about drums, I'm talking about the actual sample.

Like do people put reverb, delay, distortion, compressor etc.

Why I'm wondering this is that when you use a main sample it has already been processed so does it even make sense to add effects/creative mixing or will the sample just get muddy?

Any insight on this would be appreciated!

Thanks

 

what do you mean by the main sample? although it doesnt really matter because the same applies.

the most important thing to remember here is to use what you need to use to get the results you want, and if you do not know why you are doing something then do not do it.
if you are using a sample from a sample pack that has already been processed you might find you do not need to do anything else to it other than things needed to blend it into your mix, or you might find that you need to completely change it using effects, splicing or whatever.
both are okay and everything in between.

 

Like tun said, if you're using a sample from a pack it's been processed so you might not necessarily want to apply effects before you start composng the beat. But, that's still kind of an either or.

As far as sampling an actual song, that's an either or also.
I used to use soundforge for all of my pre chopping that way i was able to process everything in real time and if it didn't sound right, a quick undo and you're right back where you started.I actually prefer that way.

Especially with timestretching and sort of analog effects like E.Q, Tapestop, and Vinyl effects.(dust,dirt,hiss)

Basically, it's up to you.Just all depends on your workflow and what you prefer.

Good Luck.

 

Well it all depends on how the sample sits in your mix. If it needs to blend you will need to tweak/process it (even if it's been processed already) so it sits clear in your track.

To be fair it's pretty common to tweak/process a sample further so it sounds right on the specific track you are laying out as other aspects of your track will many times not sound proper without further processing.

 

yes, boom bap producers love playing around with filters for example

Every track becomes muddy if you process it the wrong way, its about what do you with your tools
Also, the music has already been processed, true, but just to make it work with the track they produced back then, not YOUR track (talking about vinyl samples cause I'm not a fan of sample packs for hip hop)

At some point in this talk yung guru talks about using multiband compression to re-mix the entire sample to make it fit more with the instruments you add on top of it.

Compression in general seems to be very common since sometimes you have annoying volume differences in your sample similar to if you record a singers performance, you can also chop the sample and change the volume of the individual chops by hand if that makes more sense in that situation.

EQ is also very important if you layer other instruments (or sample) and get frequency masking, or generally filtering out resonant peaks but that one is more cosmetical than creative

I'm also pretty sure that all the lofi guys use RC20 retro color and similar plugins on their samples

 

Last edited: Mar 15, 2020

Effects are often used to try and make a sample more "your own", more unique sounding and make it fit your new track. From a sound quality point of view it's probably a bad idea to use all those new effects on top of everything else that has already been applied to the original mastered sample, but in this context it doesn't matter and people don't care.

Giving that the sample a new "unique" sound wins over sound quality any day.

 

effects only change the characteristics of a sound, whether it be frequency, dynamics/envelope, phase, etc. it does not make the sound more or less usable.
e.g. (an extreme example) if you have a kick sample that is already heavily saturated you could be pretty sure that 99% of users of that kick sample will not want to saturate and distort it any more, but if you make something like gabber you might want to push that kick through even more saturation/distortion to get the sound that fits your needs.

there are also more subtle examples, which are more common, like simple dynamics of a sample. each sound within a track requires its own dynamic shape, and if you have the perfect sound already that just needs to be a bit more punchy, or boomy, or whatever, then you would be an idiot to redesign the sound from the ground up when you can just apply some subtle changes.

i could list examples all day.
i think its important for people to understand their own goals before applying effects though. dont apply them for the sake of doing it, or because you heard it was what you were supposed to do. thats the worst thing to do :/

edit:
i actually, honestly, 100% believe that if you have used a sample in your track and you have not applied any further effects to it at all then you most likely have not put enough work/effort/love into your music. either that or you are unnaturally lucky.