keyboard beats easier than sampling

I mean, obviously this is gonna be the thread for war.... You got people who sample whos gonna say "Man, samplin is way harder than keyboard beats, and what I do is harder than what you do.." and vice versa.... It's just like askin me and my brother "Who's instrument is harder?" I'm gonna say, "The Piano, because you're playin multiple keys at once..." he's gonna say, "Saxophone, because you gotta coordinate your breathing and hitting the keys at once..."

Let's look at it for what it is.... They both take a lot of skill, and just because you can do one doesn't mean you can do the other...

Keyboard beats take a certain kind of creativity, you have to start from nothing and make something... Thats a hard thing to do.. You have to come up with a melody in your head, find out what keys you're gonna play to drop it, drop it, then build...

Sampling on the other hand takes a different sense of creativity, it takes that you have to take what someone else has, flip it, and make peeps say, "Damn, that shit is ill" But not only do you have to take what they have... You have to take something thats theirs, and chop and split it until it's so unrecognizable that it is no longer theirs, but now it's yours...

This is a retorical question....... it has no answer, and there will never be one answer... Different strokes for different folks... Keyboard beats, samplin, in the end, if you got skill, you're gonna have a hot ass beat... right?

i use both my mpc's kind of as a keyboard. I dont really like sampling from vinyl and just havin it loop. I make my melodies on the mpc. I think people just use keyboards because its easier to get to alot of sounds. On the mpc you actually have to do work to find samples.

Heres a track that I did all keyboard Xp-80 and the mpc as sequencer no samples

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/4/thepr ... zmusic.htm

Phatz

phatz nice track !! whats teh tmpo on that , and liek teh swing level and or note ? thx i woudl liek to knwo so i can try toi make a track that feels liek that

The tempo is 82.0, the swing was set at 50%, The timing I used was 1/32 it gave me a lil elbow room. Thanks for the response........





Phatz

Philly N Da Houz!!! Bruh, I've had an MPC for about a year and a half now but my beat-making skills have been subpar! (at best) I have beats in my head all day, but they get lost by the time I sit at my mpc. I have come to attribute part of it to my sound palette. What sounds did you use for this track? And, could you describe the (entire) process for making this? (is that asking too much?)

I'm an educator by trade (electrical engineering) with beat-making as a hobby. I suppose it would help if I had some musical ability.

Thankx for any help.

-- Michael (a.k.a. Dj Izm)

Phatz wrote:The tempo is 82.0, the swing was set at 50%, The timing I used was 1/32 it gave me a lil elbow room. Thanks for the response........





Phatz

I think it depends on the vibe you have with whatever method you decide to create tracks. I know if I hear a sample from vinyl, I know how to chop it up and I can create a track easily. If I hear a melody with no sampling involved, I can be creative just as much as sampling with just sound modules.

talking sh1t about keyboard beats is the kind of things that rappers and little boys do... we're supposed to be producers here, and above that.

i've never heard a track that i thought was good and then stopped playing it cause i learnt it had "keyboard beat" or felt vindicated in playing it cause it was "sampled."

on the other hand, we've all had the experience when someone plays the original of a track we thought was the sh!t and we realize that all the producer did was loop two bars and play boom click over it.
but what does that mean? that the track was never good? that just seems like eletist bullsh!t to me. and when you start subscribing to that kind of eletism your music invariably stagnates.

point is, if it sounds good, i dont care how you made it, and if it sounds like sh!t, then why should i care how it was made?

anyway, i think if you want to be a good producer (and isn't that the idea?) you wont limit yourself just cause of what jay-z or madlib sez... thats just stupid, and your tracks probably will reflect your stupidity.

descartes wrote:

point is, if it sounds good, i dont care how you made it, and if it sounds like sh!t, then why should i care how it was made?

Im feelin that. Thats the truth.

descartes wrote:on the other hand, we've all had the experience when someone plays the original of a track we thought was the sh!t and we realize that all the producer did was loop two bars and play boom click over it.
.

ahhhh, some truth. Every single great Hiphop producer is guilty of this. From Premier, Muggs, Rza, Dre, etc, they have all been guilty of just looping and adding drums at one point in thier careers. But, the beats were still sick. One night I heard the WakeUpShow and they were doing a "WakeUpShow Classics" special, I was crazy dissapointed afterwards. They played MANY of the original records of lots of the illest Hiphop beats and as I was listening, I felt a bit let down knowing that all the producer did was loop the sample and throw a kick, snare and hat on it,but the beat they looped was still nice. But from an artistic view, my respect for them went down a notch, because the golden rule of Hiphop to me and many others is, NO BITING!!!! and if someone is going to just find a sample and loop it, to me, that equals biting. .

BUT, you have to understand that the early use of samplers in hiphop were just an extension of THE BREAKS. It was the next step from spinning two copies of a breakbeat on two turntables. You wouldn't call a DJ backspinning (looping) breakbeats "biting", would you?
Of course the natural starting point on a sampler was to loop up beats.

It took some time for sampling/production techniques to evolve into something more intricate and creative.
We have to remember that the sampler is a very young instrument. It was invented within our lifetime (well, my lifetime anyway.)
It's barely been more than a decade since samplers became affordable enough for the non-professional to buy.

We should respect the sampling pioneers no less for straight looping. You have to walk before you can run.....and if these guys didn't do the walking first, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

itchyvinyl wrote:BUT, you have to understand that the early use of samplers in hiphop were just an extension of THE BREAKS. It was the next step from spinning two copies of a breakbeat on two turntables. You wouldn't call a DJ backspinning (looping) breakbeats "biting", would you?
Of course the natural starting point on a sampler was to loop up beats.

It took some time for sampling/production techniques to evolve into something more intricate and creative.
We have to remember that the sampler is a very young instrument. It was invented within our lifetime (well, my lifetime anyway.)
It's barely been more than a decade since samplers became affordable enough for the non-professional to buy.

We should respect the sampling pioneers no less for straight looping. You have to walk before you can run.....and if these guys didn't do the walking first, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

very true and a good point. I always respect the pioneers without a doubt, but I guess I was a lil let down by hearing classic songs being JUST loops. I mean, I had always thought those compositions were from those producers, not just a beat jack.

Hello all. Guess this will be my mpc-forum baptism post.

I've been writing/arranging/producing hophop for about 13 years now... on MPC's, PC's, keyboards, etc etc. I recently bought an MPC 1000 and thought I'd drop into see what I can add in terms of knowledge about my new box. Great to read all these posts. Thanks for the info.

About "keyboard beats" vs. "sampled"... pretty subjective topic, but I will add that IMO making a beat from scratch with NO samples is probably the hardest thing to do BECAUSE it is next to IMPOSSIBLE to create that TRUE street hiphop sound with a bunch of keyboard patches, especially drums. I can make some perfectly wicked music on my Motif, but it aint got the bounce and pop that (eg) Timbaland's stuff has, Not even close. I gotta rip some $hit to create that.