Making songs not beats.

Can somebody help me with this. I have good beats but I get the same comment everytime about how they are to repetitive. How can I make them sound more like songs using only a sampler and records.

Alright, listen up Juinor. It's all about the breakdowns and change-ups. Your beat should have distinct sections where ANYBODY could point out the hook versus the verse. Usually it's just taking something out or putting something in. If you have an artist on it, it's not as big a deal , because the artist will make the difference, but if it's just a beat, you gotta break it up. As a rule though, the hook should be catchier than the verse, that way listeners tend to look forward to it, thus getting them "hooked" on the song, see?

a lot of times when im sampling and I find a song i want to sample, i get lazy and sample a sinple loop and a few other sounds....knowing i should listen through the whooole song and find some break downs and change ups to sample...its kind of good to know where you want your beat to go when your doin it. that way you know what sounds you want for it, and you can get straight to it...

but when im building my sequences i usually make sequence1 my hook, sequence2 verse 1, sequence3 verse 2, etc....i like to play the bassline over every time i start a new sequence so it changes every sequence. also switch your drums up every once in a while. a drummer gets tired when they bang them drums all day, so they need a break every once in a while...give em a break by muting them drums sometimes....maybe the hats, or snare or maybe the kick....

Thanks for your help. I will try some of that stuff on this beat I'm working on now.

another lil tip. when you're about to bring in somethin new don't always wait for the next seq to start. try to work it in on the last bar or two of the previous seq if that makes sense. kinda hard to explain in words.

Oh yeah. I know what your talking about.

i figured you might, i like that beat you have posted. sometimes in general its the little stuff people overlook.

peace

have your song start off in one "room" and move to another...

www.myspace.com/nymantics

listen to "world collapse." when i wrote this i was trying to picture a house through which the listener was walking. i made it solely on the mpc and with records.

don't get too hooked on your one sample. find something that matches up with it and transform from one to another. change your drumset, go to halftime or doubletime. make a bridge with a vocal sample to a completely different part of the song. in other words, try and back out to get a better look at what you're trying to do--when you make a beat you're reading too closely, 1 line of a whole page. better to slide back a little.

i know exactly how you feel, it's frustrating as hell. however, if you make it a goal to make SONGS rather than BEATS the results will get better and better.

I was just about to make a post like this...

This is very helpful!

i think this is an incredibly important post for every hip hop producer to read.

too many beats, not enough songs. why? a lot of rappers are pathetic and can only rap about themselves. switchups in a song imply progression/switchups in the lyrics, and rappers can't do that when they're just signifying, signifying, signifying...

hip hop started with the dj. then the power moved to the rapper. now it's time we grab the whip and use these bastards like rove used the religious right.

ir we could rap over our own beats.......i admire that most anyway.

thats so tru^^ some one got to sticky this mug up top.

Antonym man i heard some you sht , sound dope dont really sound hiphopish but it's dope a style of it own could fit in trip hop down tempo
dig it man.

thanks for those tips
i've been trying some thing like this but wasnt sure how to progress it

Here's another example of making songs on the MPC. This is some stuff I've been working on as part of an album I'm producing, and EVERYTHING is on the MPC here. I even just mixed down right on the device. Aside from some drum samples, every not of every instrument is played by me. These are without outboard compression or any mastering effects, but they sound pretty **** tight as they are.
Hope you like.

http://www.myspace.com/mysocalledknife

MSCK

work wit some mcees n youll learn waht it really takes to create a song. you should be thinkn about the mc when you make a beat intended to have someone rhyme on it.

this should be a sticky, but i'm afraid the interest in songmaking instead of beatmaking is limited.

Well, at least on this board. But, man, I always wonder...why would anyone limit themselves? We get our hooks and samples from songs. We obviously like songs...so why do we avoid them? Just cuz you like beats, that doesn't mean you gotta remain loyal to a specific ideal of hip hop. ****, man...Afrika Bamtaataa was sampling from Kraftwerk.

MSCK