How'd you get your start?

This was originally gonna be a reply to the "How long..." post, but i'm mad bored, and when I get mad bored i babble on and on, so I made it a new post.


I new I wanted to make beats since back in the day (like 1990 style), listenin to 3rd Bass and Tribe Called Quest, the only thing was I had no idea how to do it. When I was a freshman in High School (back in 94), I saved up all my dough and copped a Dr550 drum machine. This is where I learned the basics (and I do mean the basics…) of sequencing, Quantizing, etc.. I used that baby for a few years, too.

The 550 was alright but my beats didn't sound like "hip hop" enough for me, the drum sounds were wack... So once I got a real job and had some money to blow I copped a Dr202 and was lovin it. Ill drum sounds, Ill bass sounds, It was and still is one of my favorite pieces of gear i've ever owned. Plus it ran on batteries - how dope is that? I would take it over my boys house and we would just get blunted and bang out beats on the 202 and freestyle all night. It really was a pretty dope little machine, and I might even cop another one sometime as a scratchpad.

Eventually, I wanted to start sampling cause i was sick of my beats being just drums and bass so I bought an Akai s20 off ebay and started diggin into all my records looping up whatever I could. I figured out by trial and error how to get my 202 to trigger the loops in the s20 but I didnt have a mixer so I could only hear one machine or the other. Thats when I decided to buy an "All in one" sampler/drum machine. The Zoom Sampletrak just came out (I think I bought it the second day after it came out) so I sold my 202 + my s20 and dropped 300 bills on the sampletrak. I was lovin it, but for some reason or another (probably the weed makin me not think straight) I sold it about 6 months later and copped a DJX and a Roland R70 drum machine. The DJX was my first keyboard and I was lovin it, but the sequencer was a joke on it. I couldnt do anything with it. I disliked the R70 for the same reasons I disliked the dr550 so I sold them both right before I went into the Army in 2000.

When I got out of basic I copped a yamaha su200 sampler but it was garbage - no sequencer either. I sold it, copped an alesis SR-16 and a yamaha Su10 and really didn't do anything beat-wise for a while.

Then when the SP505 came out I copped that, paid 495.99 the day it came out at some backwooods music store in Savannah, GA (i was stationed there in the Army), I loved it for the first day until I realized I couldnt alter the pitch on samples. It only had booty ass budget timestretching, which sounded like shyt... The only good thing that I could say about it is it got me into chopping samples. Before the 505 I was just using loops, but the 505 made it really easy to chop your samples up. I was so frustrated with not being able to change the pitch of my samples that I downloaded fruity loops and started messin with that. Thats what I made the majority of my beats on untill I deployed to Kuwait/Iraq in 2002. I got back in late 2003, with mad dough saved up (can't spend your paychecks during a war, lol...) so I copped a laptop, the real version of FL studio, an oxygen 8 a JV-2080, and a Mackie Mixer amongst numerous other non-production related crap. I got out of the Army in december, finally sold my 505 and copped my MPC2000XL and been lovin it ever since (even though its been in the shop for the past few weeks).

As for now, I’m actually thinking about selling everything and coppin a Fantom X. I’d hate to part with my MPC, though. Might keep that for drums…

Yo ive been rapping since like the 2nd grade. But I was just like you back in the days, wondering how the flowers do they make these hip hop beats????? I had to find out because i knew it wasnt a band. Or keyboards. Once I found out, I had to get somethin to make beats with. I was lucky enough to get a boss dr5 for free from a friend, and that thing was so cool to me. this was like 5 maybe 6 years ago. maybe a year after that, that same friend sold me my mpc2000, a zip drive, a stand alone cd rom drive, and a mic. Ever since then ive been making beats non stop. doing lots of full songs. trying to sharpen my skillz so if i ever make it, my ish will be polished. I copped a little recorder recently, a roland vs890. So Ive been recording at home now, as well as the studio. Im just trying to finish my first little "album" right now. Wish me luck

i always loved hip hop since i can remember. about 7 or 8 months ago i got a fat income tax check so i went out and bought a mpc2kxl not knowing anything about anything when it comes to producing. but i didnt know u needed other shit. so it sat there for about 2 or 3 months. then this site schooled me on what to get. so i copped a turntable mixer and a soundcard and started makin beats. since then i copped a asr and now i am completely happy with my setup and i am completely happy to make beats.

"...I had to find out because i knew it wasnt a band. Or keyboards..."

Word, that had me trippin too. Before I found out about sampling I would wonder how they did it. I knew it wasnt keyboards cause it sounded like a live band, but the way the beats would loop, I couldnt picture a band playing like that. What really opened my eyes up (and this was like a breakthrough kinda moment for me) was when I was listening to an old Ahmad Jamal album (the Awakening) my freshman year in high school and I heard the sample from "The world is yours". I was like, yo thats dope. I went home and recorded the sample it into ghetto ass 'sound recorder' on windows and played that shyt on repeat. Thats why I really started collecting old records, to find songs that people sampled. Im glad I did cause once I got my first sampler I already had a pretty nice lil collection to sample from...



Butcher - Damn, son, you came a long ass way in only 7-8 months. Im really impressed. I would have though you been makin beats for at least a few years .

thanx alot man. def. hold on to the mpc decept. u will regret not holding on to it and probably buy another one.

butcher, i thought youve been doin this for a while now too. you learn fast.

I started making pause tapes when I was in Junior high. I actually used to use the breaks on Hip Hop songs. Then I used to use a shitty turntable to record scratches on top of that using the mic jack on a ghettoblaster. Then I started layering stuff and figured out basic EQ (taking out the bass) to layer sounds.

I think it really hit me about sampling when I found a 45 of the SOS Band in my basement it was one of my oldest sister's joints. It was the joint that Black Sheep used for Strobelight Honey. I was in grade 9 and made a pause tape of it layered with something else and me scratching over top it.

It didnt really hit me to start digging though until the Diamond D album Stunts, Blunts, and Hip Hop came out and the rest of the Diggin' in the crates crew came out. They made it very apparent how they got their sounds...Digging! And that's about when I started digging. Then I got lazy stopped digging... went to college...dropped out....didn't **** with anything for a few years...found out about cool edit from a friend..copped it...looped some stuff up that I dug from years ago...caught the bite again started digging again...got a nice tax return check last year...started doing research on equipment...found out about ASR's and MPC's...Copped a MPC 1000 in January...learned it...got another nice income tax check...copped a 4000 which I'm waiting on...and trying to sell the 1000.

man, i wish i was getting tax return checks!

what up "one"

Awww shyt, Stunts Blunts and Hip-Hop? Classic. You making me reminisce, man. Bout to go find that tape and blow the dust off it, now. Damn, I wonder if my tape deck even still works...

i busted out slick ricks first tape the other week. its all ive been listening too! i crashed my whip a couple months ago, so luckily my new car has a tape deck (for now). Ive been pullin out maaad old stuff. NWA. old dj jazzy jeff and the fresh prince. some Freddie Jackson. all that! I love goin back to old music.

I always wanted to make beats, but had no idea how it was really done. I used to think an SP1200 was a huge switchboard with knobs and stuff like you see on the walls of submarines in old military flicks... I thought a producer was a dude that knows how to play every single instrument in existence... then I met this dude that worked at the job I was working on at the time, and he always asked me what I was listening to in my cd walkman.. so one day we started talking music and he told me he used to make hip hop tracks and moved on to house. He invited me to his house to check his equipment and we talked music for hours, playing records, and he wanted to get back into hip hop. So we reached an agreement that I would show him where hip hop was at during that time (he stopped listening like in 1990 or 1991), and he would show me how to make beats. He never really gave me alot of hands on time in his studio but I would pick out sounds and samples and records and he'd do the arrangement. One day I decided that I didn't like the flavor he was coming with and I had started saving for my own equipment already. I was reading every magazine from electronic musician to future music to recording, ETC. and I knew I had wanted an sp1200 or an mpc, so when I saved up enough I bought my mpc2000 and never looked back and have been doing my thing since... So for all that he showed me there was 10 things he didn't show me and that motivated me to do this on my own, with my own style and flavor my own way and now I'm happy.

I played the saxophone for six years, between the age of 9 and 15 I think. Picked up a guitar in '93 (at age 13) and started playing in various punk and hardcore outfits. We recorded a demo on a busted old fostex 8-track, one of the songs made it on to a really, REALLY bad compilation album.

Then I stopped making music altogether, apart from screaming my head off in a grindcore band.

In '98 - '99 i started making electro-ish music using a program called Buzz.

Started a label in '02, we've only got three releases so far and we've lost money on each and every one of 'em, but it's rewarding anyway. Released a CD-EP of my own electro-ish music in '03, it's now sold out (alright, a third of the stock was destroyed in a shelf accident at home, but the records that weren't destroyed have been sold).

Nowadays I'm just sitting around, trying to make something new that'll grab me, haven't succeeded yet, but I've had a lot of fun in the process.

So as far as gear goes it's been: saxophone -> guitar -> buzz -> reason -> cubase -> today (mpc, cubase etc).

Started DJing raves in the mid to late 90's, then I started throwing big raves in the late 90's, made a bunch of money and blew it all on building a studio - haven't left the studio since except for a few gigs here and there

I have never made any kind of music but I have always loved music Hip Hop mostly. I was always interested in the Music industry and how people made beats. I never could rap but everyone I knew could and was rapping but I've always been more business minded. Finally I got a small idea of how people made beats but could never find anyone that wanted to show me how it was really done till I met my current Girlfriend whos Step-father is/was a big time producer back in the mid to late 90's. He never really thought me anything but in the last couple months hes let me sit in his studio and watch him make beats every blue moon. So now i done decided to get my own Stuff and do my own thing. Now I'm 24 and saving up for a MPC1000

I started producin a couple years ago when I was in 10th grade... My boy had just moved back to Philly and was tryin to get his name around the battle circuit and he was like, "Yo, you're good wit computers.... you think you could record my vocals over some Instrumentals".... I looked into it and copped Cool Edit Pro... After coppin a new Instrumental mixtape every week or so I started sayin to myself... Yo, I could do this... I looked into it and copped FruityLoops... I used that and learned all my basic sh*t from that program... Mad heads knock that program, but on the real I made some nice sh*t on there and the effects are pretty good for mastering when your first starting out... It definitely got my feet wet... That was like back when I was mostly into mainstream sh*t and was tryin to do keyboard beats... Basically by the end of 11th grade me and my boy were movin in different directions... I started gettin heavy into Underground Hip-Hop (Jedi Mind Tricks, Demigodz, Aesop Rock, MF Doom, etc.)... I been in love with hip-hop sonce Dre and Snoop first rolled on the scene, but to be straight... nothin inspired me more to step up my game than RJD2's DeadRinger album... I started hearin how he mixed samples and shit and realized that you could make fully instrumental solo tracks using samples... I never saw it like that... Since then I been workin harder and harder... I copped a Boss SP-505 and rocked that for a while... It had some really nice Chopping features on it with some nice FX, but overall it lacked some essential things... Well a few months back I picked up my first MPC... 200XL to be exact... I'm in LOVE... This machine inspires me and the pads responsiveness allows me to get my ideas out of my head and into a sequencer ten times easier than with any competitor (hardware or software)... I'ma be doin this till the day I die... I'm going to College next year for Music Production... ANd right now I'm starting my little production company.... Just puttin together a couple remix albums and workin on a solo Instrumental album... Me, my brother, and my boy Homer are gonna be droppin some stuff... Tryin to get our name around handin out CDs after shows and sh*t... And that's how I'm doin it... Good luck to anyone else gettin their hustle on tryin to make a name... Keep your dreams alive and never let em get you down... Keep Diggin... That scene needs to thrive... oNe