The Experienced Listener--- "What I've Learned About Beatmaking"

I am in awe of my baby sister.  Keep your ears out for her; she goes by Siiren and she’s no joke.  She recently sent me just a rough cut of a beat she did for a track featuring Atlanta MCs Notiq and B.Ware and vocalist Zewdy (and all of her gorgeous hair).  In short, I couldn’t be more proud; Siiren’s a beast.  We’ve kinda had this ongoing beat battle in the house for years, and she’s definitely winning right now...

So yeah--- in my spare time, I’m a beatmaker myself; I got my first drum machine from my cousin Andre Ellis around 1998, got into Fruity Loops a few years down the road. I don’t have a knack for it the way my sister does (she was already a dope instrumentalist before she ever touched a beat program), but I can put it down in my own experimental, trial-and-error way.

  Truthfully, like rappers, beatmakers come a dime a dozen.  Especially considering the average listener is impressed as long as the drums are loud and the hi-hats are hissing.  But it truly is an art form, and I’ve enjoyed experiencing my ears becoming more and more “intelligent” over the years.

In the realm of beats, I came up around four sets of ears.  First there was the neighborhood subwoofer expert Floyd, who was always jerry-rigging old speakers to make them sound better, talking about woofers and tweeters, and rearranging his room for acoustics.  There was my partner-in-crime Swim, who I started working with as a two-man production group; he was always inclined toward jazz and funk and liked live, murky, experimental sounds.   There was baby sis--- she likes melody and pleasant harmonious sounds, kinda toward the R&B end of the spectrum. And finally there was my homie Davdee, who was all about balance; like Floyd, he was big on bass, but he was always fine-tuning his car audio to old school music so that all the instruments in the backdrop could be brought forward.

Being surrounded by so many listening preferences, I came to a conclusion early on: there are no rules when it comes to beatmaking (which is totally wrong btw, but let me finish).  It’s all about expressing yourself, as it is with any artform.  Your rap is your rap, your poetry is your poetry, your painting is your painting, and your beats are your beats.  And a lot of the people who find success in beatmaking aren’t really “experts”; they’re people who can CONVINCE folks that they’re experts by having supreme confidence in themselves.

However, there is another side to beatmaking as well; most music listeners… are not themselves musicians.  They LIKE music, but they don’t KNOW music.  So even if a beatmaker DOESN’T know what they’re doing, they can still win out by just faking it until they make it; most listeners won’t know the difference, much less care to learn the difference.

So now I feel differently than I did at first, and I’ve come to another conclusion.  It’s not about the final product as much as it is about whether or not that final product serves the purpose it was meant for; it’s not about how “perfect” the beat sounds as much as it’s about whether or not it is what the creator intended for it to be.  Back when I first started, I had no idea how compressors worked.  Didn’t know the difference between volume and velocity, figured, “Why NOT use gain to increase the loudness”.  I could make a good sound, but I wasn’t in control of it.  It was happening randomly instead of deliberately.  But through years of trial and error and study, I’m finally at a point where, when I make a beat, I have a process and a goal in mind.  It’s not perfect, but it’s very much more controlled.

One of my favorite things to do is analyze other music I like--- using earplugs to dampen the excess.  It helps me get past some of the smoke and mirrors producers use to overload our senses and really allows me pinpoint things like panning and phasing and velocity.  I’ve also become more adept at hearing mistakes, even on classic tracks; something as simple as, “Hey, I can hear multiple takes on this track, they had to patch his voice back in several times and it doesn’t quite match up.”

As of now, my process goes like this:  find a groove that I like using drums and bass, and no matter what else I choose to add, don't disturb that groove.  Sounds simple, but it took me years to create that formula; I'm very melodically-minded like my sister, so oftentimes I'd let other instruments take over the beat, then find myself scratching my head wondering, "What happened to the... dopeness?"

You know what else I wonder?  I wonder who the next Quincy Jones or RZA is gonna be. Or the next Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, or the next Organized Noize.  I’m ready for some beatmakers who’ll make me wanna leave the MC off the track altogether, or who’ll challenge the singer to not be embarrassed by the lavish instrumental.  And don’t sleep… I think my younger sib Siiren might have that potential.  I’m excited for her!!

…But I’m still down for a battle any time, Foo!

 >:-D