What are Beats?
This is the most important term to understand in Hip Hop construction, cause if you don't know it, you'll never understand what people are talking about. The Beat is basically, the whole song minus the vocals. It usually includes the following:
1. MIDI Drum patterns or audio drum loops, which comprise the complete drum tracks
2. A Bassline (MIDI sequence typically)
3. Supporting Orchestration (could be synth pads, string sections, horns)
4. Dubs and snips (samples that accent and give character)
The Beat can be long or short. In its shortest form it is 8 bars. If short, it is usually looped over and over again, for as long as the vocalist wants. If long, it may be comprised of different parts for the verse and chorus and may add an introduction, a break, and an ending. Often, the HH song follows classic pop form of Intro (8 bars). Verse (8-16 bars) Chorus (8 bars) Verse (8-16 bars) Chorus (8 bars) Break (2-8 bars) Verse or Chorus (8-16 bars) then ends in a fade out. This structure, called the arrangement, of course, is not written in stone. It can be modified to suit the piece at hand.
What do the vocal tracks consist of in a Hip Hop song?
1. Main vocal: The main vocalist performs the rap
2. Second Vocal: Some songs may have a guest vocal or second vocal that takes a verse
3. Background Vocals: Are often created to give a sense that a whole group is participating
4. Overdubbed vocals: During the chorus and at other parts that the artist wishes to emphasize, the main vocal may be doubled, tripled or even quadrupled
We'll get to vocals in a later article.
Elements of a Hip Hop Beat
Lets dissect a basic hip hop beat and talk about the 4 basic elements I described above.
1. MIDI Drum patterns or audio drum loops
This is the "core" of the song so you should take great care with what you are laying down here. There are two basic methods here and you may use either or both in the same song.
a) Audio Loops This is the simplest way to proceed. Most sequencers come with a selection of drum loops and these can be used, edited, re-grooved and effected. Audio can be tweaked to give you the sound you want. Loops can be time stretched and compressed. You can add effects with plugins. Perhaps the more creative tweaks one can do is in an audio editor like Recycle or Sound Forge. Here you can destructively (meaning you are actually altering the sound file) modify parts, even single hits, within the audio loop.
b) MIDI drum patterns While this method is slightly more complicated, if usually gives more exacting and easy-to alter results. Here the keyboard, control pad surface or electronic drum kit triggers samples for each drum. The samples may reside in a software sampler, synth, hardware MPC type sampler or even as an instrument in some applications. In all cases the drums are a pattern of MIDI notes that correspond to sampled hits. In your sequencer this may be on a grid, dedicated drum pattern editor or piano roll editor.
You can use loops or MIDI or both. It's common in Hip Hop, as well as other forms of electronica, to have more than one drum loop playing at once. As long as they work together and enhance the groove, its fine. Hip Hop artists have been very creative with drum tracks and our ears are accustomed to great variance with unusual timing offsets. Drums in hip hop are allowed to go places sonically that other genres will not.
2. A Bassline
You can find basslines in audio form already made out for you, but it is often better to use MIDI, given you have some decent bass samples, a good soft synth for bass or a hardware synth with decent analog emulations. Why use MIDI? Bass audio loops do not transpose easily and may leave warbly audio artifacts when you do. An analog or digital synthesizer, however, can create a fresh low waveform in real time. Good bass sounds for hip hop come from a variety of synthesizers. Old analog Mono synths and their software and hardware emulations are the first place to go. Basslines are rarely complex in typical hip hop, but are thick and low and usually have a sub-bass element, brought out by filtering and overcompression. Many, though not all, classic HH basses rely on a low pass filter with resonance, which is the most standard filter found in analog synthesis. This kind of filter removes the high frequencies and fattens the low end. That gives you a muffy, puffed up bottom yet allows the vocals to pass right over in the mix, keeping them clear and distinct. Some HH basses emphasize the high frequencies rather than the low, leaving the kick drum to carry the low end entirely. And of course a real bass can be used as well. Keep it simple, repeatable.
Alesis Micron 37-Key Analog Modeling Synth
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3. Supporting Orchestration
While the term "orchestration" may sound complex, it is really a simple concept. To orchestrate is to select instruments that "go together". Hip Hop and rap began with orchestration that was sparse and often minimalist. Instruments are chosen often more for their impact on the groove than for their melodic capabilities. How do you know what instruments to select? You do it by trial and error basically. But I find it helpful to use a "metaphor" of other ensembles when coming up with my own orchestrations. For instance, using an RnB metaphor, you might add a smooth electric piano, funked up jazz guitar strums, some nasty horn hits, congas, maybe a vibraphone. You visualize the old RnB band in your mind and use that vision as the metaphor for deciding your orchestration. A "symphonic" metaphor may have you bring in heavy string sections, gongs, timpani, orchestral percussion, glockenspiels. A "downtown session" metaphor might include studio brass, clean guitars, standup bass. A "club" metaphor might have a drunken crowd and musicians that play sloppily. Ask yourself: Who is in this band? What are they thinking? Where are they playing? In a club, on the street, India, or in your homies basement?
4. Dubs and snips
Hip hop and rap arose when sampling took off around 1986. With sampling, there was finally an easy way rip audio material off of vinyl (and CDs), which is exactly what the early artists did. Drum beats, record scratches and surface noise, string, brass and full orchestra hits, sax riffs, guitar chords, electric piano chords were sampled as "one shots", a term popularized by Akai, were laid out on the keyboard and put right in the midi pattern with the kick, snare, hats and other drum hits. Today you can buy royalty free sample sets that give you all the dubs and snips you want, though people are still going to capture snips from the records of the past to get that subliminal recognition. Today's audio editing and multi channel samplers allow separate channels and separate effects for dubs and snips. Since audio was added to our sequencers we can now drag samples straight to an audio track and give each its own custom treatment with plugins. This has made the often hard work of editing samples to a rather easy process. Dubs and snips of audio dramatically add character, time and space to the composition, just like flipping through a collection of old photographs. Its a quick abstract reference to another time and place, that ideally fits with your metaphor.
This is the most important term to understand in Hip Hop construction, cause if you don't know it, you'll never understand what people are talking about. The Beat is basically, the whole song minus the vocals. It usually includes the following:
1. MIDI Drum patterns or audio drum loops, which comprise the complete drum tracks
2. A Bassline (MIDI sequence typically)
3. Supporting Orchestration (could be synth pads, string sections, horns)
4. Dubs and snips (samples that accent and give character)
The Beat can be long or short. In its shortest form it is 8 bars. If short, it is usually looped over and over again, for as long as the vocalist wants. If long, it may be comprised of different parts for the verse and chorus and may add an introduction, a break, and an ending. Often, the HH song follows classic pop form of Intro (8 bars). Verse (8-16 bars) Chorus (8 bars) Verse (8-16 bars) Chorus (8 bars) Break (2-8 bars) Verse or Chorus (8-16 bars) then ends in a fade out. This structure, called the arrangement, of course, is not written in stone. It can be modified to suit the piece at hand.
What do the vocal tracks consist of in a Hip Hop song?
1. Main vocal: The main vocalist performs the rap
2. Second Vocal: Some songs may have a guest vocal or second vocal that takes a verse
3. Background Vocals: Are often created to give a sense that a whole group is participating
4. Overdubbed vocals: During the chorus and at other parts that the artist wishes to emphasize, the main vocal may be doubled, tripled or even quadrupled
We'll get to vocals in a later article.
Elements of a Hip Hop Beat
Lets dissect a basic hip hop beat and talk about the 4 basic elements I described above.
1. MIDI Drum patterns or audio drum loops
This is the "core" of the song so you should take great care with what you are laying down here. There are two basic methods here and you may use either or both in the same song.
a) Audio Loops This is the simplest way to proceed. Most sequencers come with a selection of drum loops and these can be used, edited, re-grooved and effected. Audio can be tweaked to give you the sound you want. Loops can be time stretched and compressed. You can add effects with plugins. Perhaps the more creative tweaks one can do is in an audio editor like Recycle or Sound Forge. Here you can destructively (meaning you are actually altering the sound file) modify parts, even single hits, within the audio loop.
b) MIDI drum patterns While this method is slightly more complicated, if usually gives more exacting and easy-to alter results. Here the keyboard, control pad surface or electronic drum kit triggers samples for each drum. The samples may reside in a software sampler, synth, hardware MPC type sampler or even as an instrument in some applications. In all cases the drums are a pattern of MIDI notes that correspond to sampled hits. In your sequencer this may be on a grid, dedicated drum pattern editor or piano roll editor.
You can use loops or MIDI or both. It's common in Hip Hop, as well as other forms of electronica, to have more than one drum loop playing at once. As long as they work together and enhance the groove, its fine. Hip Hop artists have been very creative with drum tracks and our ears are accustomed to great variance with unusual timing offsets. Drums in hip hop are allowed to go places sonically that other genres will not.
2. A Bassline
You can find basslines in audio form already made out for you, but it is often better to use MIDI, given you have some decent bass samples, a good soft synth for bass or a hardware synth with decent analog emulations. Why use MIDI? Bass audio loops do not transpose easily and may leave warbly audio artifacts when you do. An analog or digital synthesizer, however, can create a fresh low waveform in real time. Good bass sounds for hip hop come from a variety of synthesizers. Old analog Mono synths and their software and hardware emulations are the first place to go. Basslines are rarely complex in typical hip hop, but are thick and low and usually have a sub-bass element, brought out by filtering and overcompression. Many, though not all, classic HH basses rely on a low pass filter with resonance, which is the most standard filter found in analog synthesis. This kind of filter removes the high frequencies and fattens the low end. That gives you a muffy, puffed up bottom yet allows the vocals to pass right over in the mix, keeping them clear and distinct. Some HH basses emphasize the high frequencies rather than the low, leaving the kick drum to carry the low end entirely. And of course a real bass can be used as well. Keep it simple, repeatable.
Alesis Micron 37-Key Analog Modeling Synth
The Micron boasts the same sound engine as the acclaimed Alesis Ion in a compact 3-octave keyboard, offering breakthrough analog realism, high-resolution control, and tremendous value.
Native Instruments PRO53 (Macintosh and Windows)
3. Supporting Orchestration
While the term "orchestration" may sound complex, it is really a simple concept. To orchestrate is to select instruments that "go together". Hip Hop and rap began with orchestration that was sparse and often minimalist. Instruments are chosen often more for their impact on the groove than for their melodic capabilities. How do you know what instruments to select? You do it by trial and error basically. But I find it helpful to use a "metaphor" of other ensembles when coming up with my own orchestrations. For instance, using an RnB metaphor, you might add a smooth electric piano, funked up jazz guitar strums, some nasty horn hits, congas, maybe a vibraphone. You visualize the old RnB band in your mind and use that vision as the metaphor for deciding your orchestration. A "symphonic" metaphor may have you bring in heavy string sections, gongs, timpani, orchestral percussion, glockenspiels. A "downtown session" metaphor might include studio brass, clean guitars, standup bass. A "club" metaphor might have a drunken crowd and musicians that play sloppily. Ask yourself: Who is in this band? What are they thinking? Where are they playing? In a club, on the street, India, or in your homies basement?
4. Dubs and snips
Hip hop and rap arose when sampling took off around 1986. With sampling, there was finally an easy way rip audio material off of vinyl (and CDs), which is exactly what the early artists did. Drum beats, record scratches and surface noise, string, brass and full orchestra hits, sax riffs, guitar chords, electric piano chords were sampled as "one shots", a term popularized by Akai, were laid out on the keyboard and put right in the midi pattern with the kick, snare, hats and other drum hits. Today you can buy royalty free sample sets that give you all the dubs and snips you want, though people are still going to capture snips from the records of the past to get that subliminal recognition. Today's audio editing and multi channel samplers allow separate channels and separate effects for dubs and snips. Since audio was added to our sequencers we can now drag samples straight to an audio track and give each its own custom treatment with plugins. This has made the often hard work of editing samples to a rather easy process. Dubs and snips of audio dramatically add character, time and space to the composition, just like flipping through a collection of old photographs. Its a quick abstract reference to another time and place, that ideally fits with your metaphor.
