Hip hop music beats use to be a sort of black arts for me. I spent the better half of the 1990's collecting gear and book after book that allegedly was made to teach me how to lay down some phat beats. I spent upwards of 10K dollars in search of the "secret combination" of gear that would allow my creative juices to flow. I had only assumed that if there's something you don't have the talent to do... just throw some more money at it until it clicks. Obviously there's some faulty logic going in here, as I'd gotten pretty far in debt and still couldn't lay down a decent instrumental.
Here is some of the "industry standard" gear that I had accumulated. Don't get me wrong, these tools are an important part of many studios... but these days most of them are completely redundant or unnecessary.
Sampler: The centerpiece of creating all hip hop music beats
Synthesizer: Much of the melodic lines came from these bad boys
Sequencer: Let's you compose your beats...often redundant as many samplers have one built in
Mixer: I'm not talking about a DJ mixer either..I'm talking about a piece of gear that will let the sampler, synth, and sequencer plug into, and the sound gets mixed into a stereo source.
Multi-Track Recorder: This is what will record the hip hop music beats.
These are the basics of the "old school" hip hop music beats studio.
Funny thing is, these days all this gear is completely unneeded. As long as you have a decent computer, you can lay down some pretty chunky sounding beats. Hip hop music beats shouldn't cost your entire life savings to make...how could you possibly enjoy cranking out some crunk while worrying that your latest purchase won't put food in your baby's mouth?
Believe it or not, I spend a all my time looking for the best tools to create phat beats. Now I make more beats than I know what to do with! For more information on how to craft the ultimate hip hop beats.
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