Beatmaking

Here’s a simple truth. Within the beatmaking tradition (of the broader hip hop/rap music tradition), the more beatmakers who make beats, the more fluid the notions about what constitutes a dope beat. But hip hop/rap music, perhaps more than…

Madlib shook up the beatmaking community Saturday when he announced that he'd made all of the beats for Bandana, the stellar collaborative album with Freddie Gibbs, on his iPad: As I've said in my book The BeatTips Manual, if you…

Oliver Wang breaks down Main Source’s “Looking At the Front Door” and points out why Large Professor’s production work on this song exemplified sophisticated leaps forward in hip hop song structure. The first album I ever bought on the…

Record gems with open drum sounds. I’m a strong advocate for using custom drum sounds. Although I have no issue with stock drum sounds (I’ve used stock drums in the past, and I have no problem with using them in the future), I believe…

A menacing apparatus, “Keep It Thoro” personifies how light and heavy textures co-mingle and combine, giving a beat a powerful sonic impression When certain names in beatmaking get tossed around with praise, it’s not always easy to…

Crafted Like a Horror Flick Score; “Old English” Is A Groove That Engages With Slow-Tempo Urgency I was confused upon my first listen of “Old English” (Doctor’s Advocate, 2006) by the Game, produced by Hi-Tek. I was dumbfounded. I…

"I'm not just gon make some bullshit." —Large Professor This is one of the best installments of Mass Appeal's Rhythm Roulette series.  It finds Large Professor, one of the pioneers of beatmaking, flip records that at first seem…

The key to making great beats is consistency. Consistency keeps you in a music-making zone and away from the dreaded beat block. Consistency also ensures your growth as a beatmaker. In this tutorial, I outline five things that will help you…