I figured that trap would be a little easy to make since the drums and 808s have very little sound diversification compared to boom bap drums and you can just find a trap melody and install into your project easily without any changes. With Boom Bap, going through different one shots, loops, chopping and layering samples tends to be a longer and difficult process IMO.
AHHHHHHH So THAT's the thing.
personally I think finding a melody and installing it into your project is borderline cheating. not as in "HOW DARE YOU SUBMIT THAT TO BEAT THIS", but as in
are you really taking pride in that? cuz melodies and the more "musical" bit is the main deal to me. even tho I can admit that the main essence of hip hop is always the drums (2nd to the rapping, obviously).
something interesting happened tho; I was writing the rest of my response to ur message here and I wrote this:
"so what happens is unlike trap, you can sample pretty much
anything into boom bap and it's usually a simple (yet possibly creative) process, and then I just find a boom bap drum sample and throw it on there, layer it to make it thick and tada, there you have it. it's a beat. there's a bassline to do too but that's just the tiny extra fun bit to wrap shit up.
while with trap, you can't sample just anything, and you can't really sample drums either. you can copy them if you want, but ehhhh. it takes too much time and if I'm spending that much time I'll just make original drums cuz fuck's the point?"
and I read it back a few times like "wait, do you REALLY mean that? and like, if u can sample musical elmenets for boom bap, why is it suddenly wrong to sample the same way for trap?"
so I tried my boom bap process for trap. it took a tiny bit extra amount of digging, but I found this one old sample that I'd normally use for boom bap in a completely diff approach, copied some poor lad's drums from a mainstream song, tweaked it a bit, got a base, did some
creativity and it was a beat. so this conversation might've actually re-opened my eyes on this subgenre. I STILL feel like boom bap is easier for reasons I can't fully grasp yet, it just is, I can easliy make enough good material for a 20 track boom bap album in 3 4 hours if I speedrun it (personal record: 6 beats in 80 minutes). I CAN do that with trap but it'd need a lot more stealing (looperman, hi hat roll loops, shit like that) than "The art of sampling" from bap bap.
anyway I always feel like this trap vs boom bap argument should be wrapped cuz it's burnt out n shit, doesn't go anywhere, but also it really is interesting and we are in the official global bap vs trap month (the back to back battles) so we get a pass.
Can argue that both are pretty straight forward.
Variety of 808 kicks and basses. Tbf.
Simple half time drum pattern,
Hi hat rolls, pitch them for extra gen z
Randomly detuned melody on loop
808 basses or slides
Job done.
Boombippetybap
Simple swung drum pattern
Throw a sample over it, chop for extra backpack
Add a bass
Done
Bap can definitely get hard depending on what sample you want to chop and how much you're trying to do. But can also be easily bastardized.
Mixing the 808 right in trap can be difficult.
but then isn't it that making mediocre bap and trap are as easy as eachother, but making decent sounding bap is easier than decent trap? if u use havoc's formula for instance. shit's ABC's.
