I'm starting to get the hang of choppin', but....

I want to get some insight from you guys about what to do next. I mean, how do you go about putting those chopped up sounds into your beat? Yes, I know that is ultimately going to come down to my own creativity and styles...but it's nice to get some feedback/tips on how you use them. I've just starting working with chopped samples and need a little guidance.

Thanx,

Season

what i do...remember that i'm certainly no expert on this...but

say i got a 2 bar loop..that's 16 beats, i just chop it into sixteens- or maybe twice that depending on what the sample is, e.g, with piano instruments you can chop it into smaller pieces but not with something that might sustain itself over the whole beat, like strings might

so once i chopped it i put it onto the pads and then just experiment until i got something that sounds good. i'll normally try and fill out the whole bar with somethin but i suppose that isn't important. i also experiment changing the pitch of certain chops to see what that sounds like..

A good way to learn is to listen to some of your favourite producers tracks, and listen how they chop stuff up and flip it.
Remember less is often more!

Yeah, now that I've gotten into the production game myself, I know that I listen to the music a lot differently....maybe my ears aren't totally trained yet, but how can you really tell what's chopped? I mean, if it's done good is it hard to pick the chopps as opposed the normal loops? I've been messing around w/this nice bass loop....it's 2 bar loop and I've chopped it into 8 sections. Once I had them on my pads, though I guess I felt that the flow of the loop was gone.....or maybe that's the point. It's still new to me, but I want to be able to get comfortable w/in my own style so I can work w/some good chopped samples instead of just straight loops.

Thanx for the imput.

Season

Quote from the the Art of Sample Based Hip hop "Sometimes i`ll put a loop on and let it play for, like tow or three days. When you do something like that, you get to hear all different parts and pieces and elements of it that you never really heard before.....It probably sounds strange to a lotta people, but yu get to hear stuff that the muscian didn`t try to put in there." DJ kool Akiem.

Me, I tried it for a couple of hours then chop to extract the parts I need and make a new chopped loop.

I hope it helps just got the info.

Also check out www.decepton3107.com chopping tutorial

like you said it depends on creativity and styles sometimes you can make a beat just using one of the chops of a 8 beat loop chopped into 4, using the 16levels and mono on the pad depending on what you sampled, i also use the pads to stop the one pad thats playing so they dont overlap and you can come up with some nice combinations like this...i would suggest practice, practice and more practice and also open window on everything.. oh and if you chop, loop first to see the bpm of the loop that way when all the chops are on the pads the pad combinations will flow smoothly..well atleast thats how i do it..to each its own i guess..

Sometimes I won't even chop the sample into regularly sized fragments - I'll just cut it manually into a series of interesting sounds, spread those out on the pads and work with it like that.

Air Adam wrote:Sometimes I won't even chop the sample into regularly sized fragments - I'll just cut it manually into a series of interesting sounds, spread those out on the pads and work with it like that.

yeah, sometimes i hear dudes choppin shit because they think they have to chop it, but part of the art is to chop it at the right spots. maybe cut a note out, or the end of a three note riff. you know, like actually picking out a bass tone, or a stab, or a small phrase youc an combine with another. If you just chop something into 16ths or whatever, there might be a crucial note or sound missing from one of the chops that allow you to combine that chop with another sound.

I find that i hardly use zones anymore because i would not experiment as much. If you know where to chop stuff at, you can combine differant samples to creat a continual flow to the melody, but incorporate differant sounds.

another thing i do is loop a phrase, even though i know i wont use it as a loop, then try to get it to loop at a good spot. Then i can listen to it, and hear where i can cut a sound off, or i can hear differant parts looped at differant points to find tonic parts, or good transition parts. then ill chop it there, and listen to it then complete the rest of the melody in my head, then ill find another sample or part to fit or complete the melody. Plus you can timestretch it first, even if you dont like theloop, then chop it. Or like said ^^^above you can tell the bpm.

Another fun thing to look for are those "da dunt" type stabs, two notes consecutive that hit hard....then you can chop those, so you can play the whole phrase, then right afterword play the first note of the phrase tuned up or down a note. Shit like that. ya know? like adding notes to small phrases to complete them.

think of itlike i found this cool sound, and what do i need to complete it? then look to chop that, sometimes its just a note but usually you can hear it in your head first. Most of the time you can do that even with the most random chops.

forgot: yeah like you said, part of it is also sometimes keeping the "flow" of the shit you are sampling...this isnt always true, but if you got a cool 2 note sample, or even 6 note (whatever lenght) but it necessarily cant be used as a loop, you should still try to use it, not necessarily have to chop it but instead, find something else to complete it.

On the flip, youve got to experiment, because a 1 second chord or chop, can sometimes be detuned and be turned into a 2 bar loop.

Hot tips Cyrus...
That's the stuff I'm workin through, it's hard at first. I never find whole loops I want, I find parts of different things that are very short...
It's hard to make them fit in pitch and tempo with chops from other sources...
Combination of pitch and timestretch can get you there, but I usually have to write down notes and really come up with a strategy...

Aster wrote:Hot tips Cyrus...
That's the stuff I'm workin through, it's hard at first. I never find whole loops I want, I find parts of different things that are very short...
It's hard to make them fit in pitch and tempo with chops from other sources...
Combination of pitch and timestretch can get you there, but I usually have to write down notes and really come up with a strategy...

yeah i know exactly what your sayin....sometimes its just hard to find other samples fit.....what i do is put those samples that i know are good, and put them on the back burners, like save them in a general program for unused sounds; i know ill hit something later than can be usefull. And sometimes ill also remember other records that may have something that i can use. But i always let those hard samples lead me to other places i may have not gone before! ya know....and ill discover something good. i never force it.