Discuss the various methods you use in music production, from compressor settings to equipment type.
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By young_keyz Sat Oct 30, 2004 10:29 pm
I think a few months ago i ask everybody the question about how do just blaze make his beats break down at the end of his tracks. Nobody could answer me as if what i was hearing was a hoax. Well ill give ya a song to understand what im talking about(Memphis BLeak "Mind right") How when at the end of the track it all breaks down before the song ends. Well alot of producers do this not just Just Blaze and i wanted to learn how to do it. I guest somethings are better to just learn and i have figer it all out...check this. Its all in the time signatures! In a nut shell before "I break it down" all it is (4/4, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16)! Ok this is what i did to find all this out. i made a 4 bar loop using drums from the mpc and midi from the motif and copy that to seq. 2 and truncate those 4 bars to 1 bar and kept the time signature (4/4) and edit and copy the bars back to 3 bars. After that i took that seq. and copy it seq. 3. After that truncate the 2 bars back to 1 bar and change the the time signature to (1/4) and edit and recopy the bars to 4. Copy that to seq 4 and retruncate the bars to 1 bar and change the time signature to (1/8) and recopy the bars to 8. Copy that seq. to seq 5 and truncate the bars to 1 and again change the time signature to (1/16) copy the bars back to 16. Goto song mode and connect it all and cover it to one seq. so that it all happens at one time. This is a lil scetchy but this is the way i have to doing it and its what i have learn from my music theory cause music is all math! Note you might have to change the bars a little if it dont all end at the right time thats all you have to do to get this effect is change the time signature.
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By young_keyz Sat Oct 30, 2004 11:36 pm
I check it out and its pretty much the same thing that i just said but i thank you very much. the way i did it work to so im gona just use mines cause at the end of the day we all learn and work differently and ill be damn if i work so hard thinking how to do this to change now cause it works. I wish you would post this a lil while back when i was looking for this info but becasue you didnt i be came a better person by playing with my mpc more and using my ears and learing to do it myself. Im gona make a copy of what you posted and check it out later and see if its easier than the way i do mines. Thank you!
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By DjChronoBeats Sat Oct 30, 2004 11:40 pm
you gota get something to arrange the tracks in.
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By binger0 Sat Oct 30, 2004 11:41 pm
DjChronoBeats wrote:you gota get something to arrange the tracks in.
:?:
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By DjChronoBeats Sat Oct 30, 2004 11:45 pm
binger0 wrote:
DjChronoBeats wrote:you gota get something to arrange the tracks in.
:?:


nevermind I didn't read his post right I thought he was asking how Just Blaze arranges his beats.
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By binger0 Sat Oct 30, 2004 11:57 pm
what he is doin is breaking up the bars instead of 4 he gets 1/4 which is like 1 click then he makes another seqs with say 1/16 which is 2 bars and u got 2 clciks. then u make diff arrangements of the same sequnces to add up to 4/4. if u set it to 1/8 u have 1 beat outta 8 bars. its a little hard to explain but if u do it like in that jontakiff post, maybe on the nextpages of it, ull see what hes talking about. It will rearrange the loop in little pieces. to add up to 4/4 using like 1/8 bars and etc... this is only for the time sig too were not talking about the timing correction. i hope i made this clear its kind of a hard concept to understand but its pretty easy when u think about it. a cool little trick.

just think bout the clicks on the mpc, the metronome.
1/4 timing is
1 2 3 4

1/8 notes are like this

1 e 2 e 3 e 4 e (the es are not on the click off the metronome if its in 1/4 time, u just have to picture them)

then 1/16 notes are

1 e n e 2 e n e 3 e n e 4 e n e

so if u take like 6 seqs and knowin what 4/4 time is u can construct bars with diff signatures to equal parts. diff seqs then u link them together to form a whole regular 4 bar seq.
this works if u have a drum track and what to remix or break it down really cool, u just copy a few seqs then fig it out to what the bars and the time sig should be set at to make it a 4 bar pattern.
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By young_keyz Sun Oct 31, 2004 1:48 am
Hey "B" i just got back from tring out the way the guy said to do it ----->seq 1 (3 bars long at 4/4, 96bpm) repeat 1 time
seq 2 (1 bar long at 2/16 96 bpm) repeat 1 time
seq 3 (1 bar long at 3/16 96 bpm) repeat 2 times
seq 2 - repeat 1 time
seq 3 - repeat 2 times
back to sequence 1.

And the way he said to do it and way he said to do is all the same just mathmathicaly different and he said " seq 3 (1 bar long at 3/16 96 bpm) repeat 2 times" and i want the break down to go from one bar and get smaller and smaller and with the 3/16 sig, it really gets bigger. If you look at the way i said it should be done youll see that its still the same thing just the 3/16 knocks it out of wack! I also showed how to set it up with each seq. by changing the bars to the same number as the time sig. 1/8 equals 8 bars so on and so on it will all fitt in a 4 bar loop, the guy just tells you to reapeat stuff in song mode and we all dont use song mode i just used it to convert all 3 seq. into one! I wil use his cause it works but ill add to what i feel is a mistake and that it should go (2/8, 2/16,2/32). Hey its all good. Im just glad that i can have a convo with ya about this cause this shows me im gettting better cause before i would be lost.
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By binger0 Sun Oct 31, 2004 1:51 am
yeah i think he had a few errors in there. its a cool thing to try out.
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By DOVESKI Sun Oct 31, 2004 9:34 pm
thats probably pro tools, if you got your tracks on the midi grid all you gotta do is change the time sig, change the scrubber to grid instead of slide and chop and re arrange. its seems kinda a long winded to program something like that in the MPC.

By cooocooo1 Sun Oct 31, 2004 10:59 pm
I agree with Dove, seems like ya'll are makin this harder than it should be, while I understand that some cats look at music from a mathematical stand point I tend to look at it from a musical stand point, if I want change ups in the sequence I play change ups, just like a drummer, imagine a drummer for a live band sayin' "yo, could I get a MPC so I can program those change ups at the end of the song".

I'm not knockin' the above mentioned methods, they just seem to make things more complicated than they need to be imo.
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By cyrus Mon Nov 01, 2004 1:20 am
its not really that hard to do it in the mpc. Ive been doing it for a while. you just gotta copy several times to another sequence then edit each sequence to the right timesig.

i espeically like to use it for the stutters before the beat drops, or for a break down every 8 bars or something.
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By binger0 Mon Nov 01, 2004 1:47 am
yeah i dont even use that. i mainly use step edit for my drums. but i never go into that with programing my beats. The time i tired it i didnt really get good results.
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By cyrus Mon Nov 01, 2004 4:35 am
yeah^^^^^i know what your sayin.

personally, it took me a few tries to get it to work good. It helps when you get some kicks and notes on the 1,2,3,or4s. Not so good with samples depending on how the loop works.

I guess im good at telling whether it will be easy or a pain in the ass with certain beats. If it will be a pain, i wont bother.