Common Myths Re: 90s ERA Beats!

Golden_era wrote:one other misconception that bothers me? The E-digging makes you wack talk. Again, the reason alot of older heads used Vinyl because that's what was mostly available then. It's not like guys could just walk into the dollar bin and find 70's Turkish Prog. I guarantee you if RZA, Primo etc could've used the web to dig online they would have. I think only sampling off vinyl limits you greatly.

^The irony in that statement is that when you go online 99% of the time your downloading someone else's real life digs... Lol

^^^

Edigging is whats causing todays music to sound like a cymbal shimmering up a giant bumble bee's ass. Like in that Kia Soul commercial with the three blind rats.

Also, Pete Rock used to chop up samples on the 2k as a crude timestretch technique.

RepRSP wrote:what about the mixing/mastering engineers?? I guess they also played a BIG role as far as the sound from the classic blasts from the past goes.

discuss

peace

the forgotten heroes

You are not necessarily stealig someone else's digging if that source is just an vid music collector and not beat maker. You know what i mean?

I've found stuff off Prog Rock blogs where the blogger is strictly a rock fan and has no interest in sampling it for hiphop.

I know in certain parts of the country that sick vinyl just isnt available thats why dudes like RZA sampled off tv and vhs and stuff.

I also agree with my man here who said quantizing with timing off doesnt equate to sloppy programming if you are good at it.

Dj Premier aside, i think alot of the loose sounding 90s boom bap sequencing was simply from guys quantizing at 1/16. You guys get that feeling as well?

To me the 90s era boom bap sound is gritty drums with gritty hi hats programmed at full velocity with the TC.

Golden_Era wrote:You are not necessarily stealig someone else's digging if that source is just an vid music collector and not beat maker. You know what i mean?

I've found stuff off Prog Rock blogs where the blogger is strictly a rock fan and has no interest in sampling it for hiphop.

Whether he's a best maker or not, they dug for that gem and you clicked a button. I don't disagree that the Internet can be a good resource (ill never make my own recording of 10,000 bees). I just thought it was ironic that you advocate more e-digging because chances are that person went out and physically found that record, and if they took your advice you wouldn't have a record to download. Someone HAS todo the digging at some point, id rather have it be me. It's nothing personal, I just think we already rely on the Internet way to much in general.

sample from whatever you want

who cares!!!

if it works and you make it sound ILL then that's all that matters

people won't know what you sampled from anyway if you use all kind of effects on it

that being said, i mostly sample from vinyl only becuz i like how it sounds

but for a few tracks i've used mp3's, cassettes, cds, youtube

after i run it thru the asr-10 and the effects you can't tell anyway

i just prefer vinyl cuz it sounds cool and the whole physical vibe of records

my favourite part of sampling vinyl comes when the thing im trying to sample happens to be on the vinyl im sampling from...

sure, youtube 4 years ago sounded like garbage, today it's 10 fold better but not as good as it will be in 4 years (maybe)... that being said, I dont sample youtube. But I used to download odd foreign .flac rips from an unnamed torrent tracker.. or actually I even downloaded vinyl rips from records I owned in my collection when my needle was broken. Also, sometimes I have a music CD I found and it has some cool sound on it... who **** cares.

Yes, I prefer chopping a break from scratch on every song instead of doing that ahead of time and using the 1-shot samples in future songs... cause every time you'll do it different. That leads me to the quantize thing mentioned above... sometimes people relate swing to timing being off.. or on triplets... or as a result of the swing feature. Don't rule out loose chopping. I often do loose chopping with gaps of air in front of the snare for example... that is one reason I am not a huge 1-shot drum sample user.

All this talk about programming with quantise off. Don't forget that even with quantise off, the PPQN (internal resolution) of the sequencer still determines note placement. A sort of 'soft' quantise if you like. So even if you fly notes in live, they won't play back exactly where you programmed them.

And is it just me, or were some producers making R&B classics in the 90's? Why do cats only ever relate production skills toward hip hop when a lot of other producers were using MPC's to program bangers?

having used even a lowly mirage since 1990 to sequence, i can assure you that it behaves exactly like a tape recorder, there is almost no way you can tell what this soft quantize is doing, what you hear is exactly what you played

Clint wrote:And is it just me, or were some producers making R&B classics in the 90's? Why do cats only ever relate production skills toward hip hop when a lot of other producers were using MPC's to program bangers?

I think some of it comes down to a romanticised view of a cat sitting there with a few records and an SP/MPC, and dropping bombs with 10 seconds sample time.

While a lot R&B albums had bigger budgets and a bigger overall production, a lot of people just respect the simplicity of the way those 90s Hip Hop classics were pieced together. Like someone else said though, it's the engineers that played a massive role in getting the right sound.

I was hearing a lot of R Kelly, Keith Sweat, MJB, and H-Town back then, and a lot of Dancehall. Maybe it's because I'm in the UK where hip hop took a bit longer to penetrate the 'top of the pops' generation. There was some Public Enemy floating around when I was finishing school. "Don't, don't, don't believe the hype" that shit was raw, straight up.

Any good 'golden era' playlists floating around, hip hop of course? To give a flava of what this thread is about.

i bought the weapon is my lyric (or was it lyric is my weapon lol) lp back then. effing amazing, he was the only mc to ever come close to chuck d vocally

also.....

'demons, demons, demons.....on earth' (if you can place that intro sample! also from uk)

here's an obscure joint from just before the boom bap era. bought the tape when it came out. when this song came on i started jumping around the house like a mad man (also did that first time i heard illest brother by gangstarr)

Golden_Era wrote:...90's era boom bap beats ala Large Pro, Pete Rock, Showbiz etc.

Fist things first:

Large pro is/was great at loops.
Almost always terrible at drums.

Pete Rock made 2-3 good songs in his career.

Showbiz made...

I'll swap out Diamond for Showbiz,
Diamond D made 2 good beats.

Mister Lawge made more better beats on the first Black Sheep then Pete Rock or Diamond D ever did.

(I guess he just understandably wore himself out after all that.)

And Oh my gosh,
your gonna need Chinese arithmetic to compare all the great beats Premier made compared to any of those dudes!

(Before he also wore out and became effectively useless.)

Marly Marl Made more great beats then any of the 3 you mentioned before they ever even made a beat.

(BTW: It turns out that Tip made all the Quest beats. So put that in your calculator also.)