What are some of your biggest pains in the butt at the moment regarding beat making?

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Narrow Q 800hz-ish boost on your kicks, got that tip from Chris Lord-Alge, gives them presence on shitty speakers. Also saturation on the bass can add some presence for shitty speakers. The biggest challenge is translation of the low end on speakers that just dont go low, and then having that same song sound great in a car where low end is plentiful.
Thanks I'll give that a try.
 
I still cant get a good hold of the bus routing, i often want a full signal of a plugin..without quality being sacrificed and volume going up..and somehow cant seem to manage that.
So i choose 1 plugin sometimes i fully wanna route and send it trough the stereo output to a bus,.but you can only do that 1 time..:cautious:
This might help...
 

MyDamSelph

Beatmaker
Leaving room for the artist. I want them to sell well but I don't wanna feel like I'm limiting my creativity, either.
 

3ternal

ILLIEN
Battle Points: 3
reason has ReCycle which is better than edison to me
The problem I have with it is that you can't manually draw in your chops. Or at least I'm not aware of any way. I like that about Edison you can be super precise, even sample stuff just a little long or short so it fits the time stretch better etc. Time for a rant on FL versus Reason:

Lately I've been fitting samples into time stretch a "lazy way" because I hate having to manually adjust the little knob. So I'll start with the sample and then just adjust the BPM til the sample fits 1 bar, 2 bars, whatever, then use that to select how long in the time stretch box. Then once I get that right I go adjust the BPM back to whatever BPM I initially wanted.

Here's a few little examples of how Reason kills FL in this regard:

1. In Reason the knobs are way bigger, easier to see, easier to turn. With FL's stupid little knob unless you hold control if you barely move the mouse you move the knob like 5000 units. That's why I hate using the knob to adjust the time stretch when I'd rather figure out how to fit the sample into those specific time units.

2. In Reason when you're tweaking knobs the value pops up right by your cursor. In FL you have to adjust the stupid tiny knob and then find the tiny little value in the upper left corner and hope to God you didn't move it 54235903 points in the process.
 
The problem I have with it is that you can't manually draw in your chops. Or at least I'm not aware of any way. I like that about Edison you can be super precise, even sample stuff just a little long or short so it fits the time stretch better etc. Time for a rant on FL versus Reason:

Lately I've been fitting samples into time stretch a "lazy way" because I hate having to manually adjust the little knob. So I'll start with the sample and then just adjust the BPM til the sample fits 1 bar, 2 bars, whatever, then use that to select how long in the time stretch box. Then once I get that right I go adjust the BPM back to whatever BPM I initially wanted.

Here's a few little examples of how Reason kills FL in this regard:

1. In Reason the knobs are way bigger, easier to see, easier to turn. With FL's stupid little knob unless you hold control if you barely move the mouse you move the knob like 5000 units. That's why I hate using the knob to adjust the time stretch when I'd rather figure out how to fit the sample into those specific time units.

2. In Reason when you're tweaking knobs the value pops up right by your cursor. In FL you have to adjust the stupid tiny knob and then find the tiny little value in the upper left corner and hope to God you didn't move it 54235903 points in the process.
In recycle you can draw your own chops or make it chop for you (I rarely let it chop for me lol). edison and recycle kinda works the same but I like recycle more because I can view my chops better, create a rex file, wave files and midi without messing up my work flow. I dont use reason that often. i'm more of a Flstudio/Mpc type producer but recycle is my goto for chops for my flstudio
 

Iron Keys

ILLIEN MBAPPÉ
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 544
How about......when you got I got a dope beat going, and I haven't saved yet, and boom.......power goes out.
Get trigger happy with that Ctrl + S my guy.

I learnt that ages ago on a cracked DAW that was liable to crash after ANY action. Slide fader. Crash. Open vst. Crash. Also create a New saved file for each significant step.
 

nikwen

ILLIEN
Leaving room for the artist. I want them to sell well but I don't wanna feel like I'm limiting my creativity, either.
I feel like it's a really underrated thing, though. A few weeks ago, I referred a rapper to a producer friend of mine and the rapper picked the one beat that neither the producer nor me really liked. What was different from the other ones? It had almost no instruments, was super minimalist and left a lot of room for the rapper. All the cool melodies on the other beats … the rapper didn't want them.

Same if I'm freestyling on a beat. I like some inspiration from melodies, etc., but I also don't want to be overwhelmed.

Looking at the beats on your profile, though, I think that you're doing well in this regard. (y)
 

Iron Keys

ILLIEN MBAPPÉ
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 544
What's stopping you? :)
Not completing my beatsis stopping me.

Partly because i dont see the point in fully finishinf a beat if the arrangement will likely change with a song written to it.

Also i jave so many beats now what do i post first. The older ones may be less good, so i dont wanna post them after posting newer good ones. I also dont wanna spam post tjem in a rush to get my new ones out.

So the idea of how when where and why to post em is proving a bit of a dilemma.

I should have figuredthat out and started posting when i started making maybe. I dunno.
 

MyDamSelph

Beatmaker
I feel like it's a really underrated thing, though. A few weeks ago, I referred a rapper to a producer friend of mine and the rapper picked the one beat that neither the producer nor me really liked. What was different from the other ones? It had almost no instruments, was super minimalist and left a lot of room for the rapper. All the cool melodies on the other beats … the rapper didn't want them.

Same if I'm freestyling on a beat. I like some inspiration from melodies, etc., but I also don't want to be overwhelmed.

Looking at the beats on your profile, though, I think that you're doing well in this regard. (y)
Thank you. If there wasn't such a motive to post beats daily to keep up with the algorithm on beatstars, I would probably do a separate producer's cut and a production track version. I might do that anyway before I launch on spotify
 

nikwen

ILLIEN
Not completing my beatsis stopping me.

Partly because i dont see the point in fully finishinf a beat if the arrangement will likely change with a song written to it.

Also i jave so many beats now what do i post first. The older ones may be less good, so i dont wanna post them after posting newer good ones. I also dont wanna spam post tjem in a rush to get my new ones out.

So the idea of how when where and why to post em is proving a bit of a dilemma.

I should have figuredthat out and started posting when i started making maybe. I dunno.
To be honest, I think that it doesn't really matter what you post first. Just start somewhere. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just putting yourself out there will open up new opportunities that you hadn't even thought of.

So I'd say pick a platform you like (YouTube, SoundCloud, BeatStars, Instagram, etc.), pick a beat that you like, and hit post. Don't overthink it, just put something out. The rest will come with time.

Remember: making beats and posting them is supposed to be fun. ;)

As for the arrangement, I'd say just pick something, it doesn't matter too much as long as it's a somewhat standard arrangement (e.g. Intro/Verse/Hook/Verse/Hook/Outro). I, for example, like to freestyle, and I can only do that if the beat has an arrangement. I don't really care which one in particular it is.

If you're still feeling overwhelmed/unsure, feel free to show me one of your unfinished beats and I'll give you some feedback. :)
 

nikwen

ILLIEN
Thank you. If there wasn't such a motive to post beats daily to keep up with the algorithm on beatstars, I would probably do a separate producer's cut and a production track version. I might do that anyway before I launch on spotify
Yes, you could post the two versions on separate channels on YouTube, for example. I really like that idea! :)

Or here's what a friend of mine did:

Beat on YouTube: Link
Producers' cut / standalone track on SoundCloud: Link

P.S. Does BeatStars place so much value on posting daily? Have you tried different intervals? If yes, what were your findings?
 

Iron Keys

ILLIEN MBAPPÉ
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 544
To be honest, I think that it doesn't really matter what you post first. Just start somewhere. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just putting yourself out there will open up new opportunities that you hadn't even thought of.

So I'd say pick a platform you like (YouTube, SoundCloud, BeatStars, Instagram, etc.), pick a beat that you like, and hit post. Don't overthink it, just put something out. The rest will come with time.

Remember: making beats and posting them is supposed to be fun. ;)

As for the arrangement, I'd say just pick something, it doesn't matter too much as long as it's a somewhat standard arrangement (e.g. Intro/Verse/Hook/Verse/Hook/Outro). I, for example, like to freestyle, and I can only do that if the beat has an arrangement. I don't really care which one in particular it is.

If you're still feeling overwhelmed/unsure, feel free to show me one of your unfinished beats and I'll give you some feedback. :)
I just generally dont wanna put full beats online. Verse n hook should be enough for someone to know if they like it or wanna use it.

I hate "needs to be longer". I personally would get bored of song lengthbeats with no song. Only dew rare beats i can bang without vocal.

Especially if a beat aint really an arrangement type beat n just needs a vocal.
 
Battle Points: 153
P.S. Does BeatStars place so much value on posting daily? Have you tried different intervals? If yes, what were your findings?
I dont think it matters besides the fact you gain more followers by posting more, so eventually you gain a bigger following when being more committed to post on a regular base.
I myself do struggle alot with that, as for example these last 2 weeks, i have like 5 beats nearly done, but it takes time arranging them and extracting the stems etc, make folders and put them online. So havent uploaded any, and its pretty stupid because you always feel your new beats are the best, right? This weekend ill have a few days off and get the machine going again. Defenitly need to be sending some tunes out to artists aswell..im saying this to myself for 4 weeks now, and you geussed it...ive send out exactly 0 lol :ROFLMAO:
 
Battle Points: 153
Also don't think Beatstars (or any similar site) is gonna work wonders for you, because its so over-saturated. Chances that artists will hop on beatstars and listen to YOUR beats are very small....there is so much posted.
However, if you have been working with artists and you gained yourself quite the circle,.thats when i think it could be interesting getting random buyes from your stores, as they will check up on you to see if you got some new stuff. And if you had a few placements and made some name for yourself people will look you up and follow you etc etc.
 
Battle Points: 153
I just generally dont wanna put full beats online. Verse n hook should be enough for someone to know if they like it or wanna use it.
You dont have to when sending it out to people man...but your music has got to be ''ready'' the moment you send out a snippet/preview. So you gotta have it ready anyway, and a platform with ready made contracts is good for such things. I think its the biggest struggle we all encounter,...arranging a song w/o working with an artist..its so shitty.
 
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