So what kind of music producer are you?
And how do you determine exactly what style of music you want to make?
As well as how you’re going to make it?
We’re going to talk about that in today’s video coming right up.
Yeah, what is up everybody? I Am Legend is back with another episode of track out Tuesday here in 2020.
The music basics edition.
So last week I did a video episode asking basically what type of singer are you and I kind of brought together all these different kinds of singers that are out there in the world, from powerhouses to soft, you know, minimal type people and a whole bunch of different styles of singing.
And I was talking about how to determine or how to find your style, and how it affects what kind of songs you make, how you record and different things like that.
In today’s video, I want to focus, since it’s a track out Tuesday, more on the music creation side, like the instrumental side, and ask what kind of music producer If you are someone who indeed makes music, this video is not going to be so much of a deep dive as I did last week because again, there are aspects of music creation that are totally dependent upon you, your style and what you want to do as a creative.
But what I’m going to be talking about in today’s video is more so the how-to part of the whole instrumental creation side.
In other words, you’ve already figured out what kind of music you want to make.
But how do you create that kind of music?
How do you go about bringing this idea these ideas getting inspired by these different things?
How do you nail that down and start creating, whether you’re somebody who’s a beginner, somebody who’s a professional, but you just have a writer’s blog, or you’re somewhere in the middle, it doesn’t matter?
This is for everybody.
I’m going to be looking at three different YouTube producers, YouTube musicians. They’re not YouTube musicians, but they’re musicians on YouTube who have posted some videos that give some really great insight on how to produce in different ways, how to start production, how to work with different types of instruments, etc. How to get inspired for production, how to create from scratch your own productions.
And so there are three different ways that I want to focus on here in today’s video that you can get started making your own music and figure out what kind of producer you are in terms of how you bring your productions to fruition. Now I will say I didn’t really ask any of these questions.
But I’m doing this because not only do I want to show you guys some really dope information, not just from myself.
But as I said in a previous video, I also want to show love to the community, kind of put you guys on some new content if you haven’t already been subscribed to these channels, and just, you know, I want I want to grow the community.
So that’s another reason why I’m including their footage here in today’s video.
So three different types.
They’re not the three different types.
But the three main types of ways you can produce and wait for number one is I’m going to start off with samples.
This is actually how I got started in music production.
Just to give a little bit of my background story if you haven’t already heard it before, when I first started making music, Yes, I already roughly knew how to play the piano. I was teaching myself how to play the console. I knew scales, I knew chords and progressions and things.
But when it came to actually produce something, I had zero sounds, zero drums, I had nothing to use, I didn’t have any way to create.
So what I had to do was build my own soundbank.
The way that I did that was I sampled. I started out my production by sampling other artists, whether it be Timberland, Kanye West, Ryan, Leslie, whoever was out at the time, Tony, just different artists that I listened to at the time that I loved the music.
But it’s pretty dope.
So that’s how I got started.
And I want people to understand, because you see where I am now, I wasn’t always as good at music production.
I wasn’t always as great at playing the keys.
And so the ideas that I had in my head, I could not communicate them.
And so I used loops from other artists, and I didn’t have the sounds to communicate them.
So I used loops from other artists.
Sampling is a really big part of the music industry.
It’s a really big part of music production.
And I think it will be forever because you’ve been to the point where no idea is original these days. You may think you came up with it on your own, and you may probably have, but there’s another iteration of what you’re doing by somebody else.
Somewhere across the world or 50 years ago, somebody else had the exact same thing you’re doing.
This is one way that I got started, and I want to let Chucky beets talk about sampling and how it can actually help your workflow, and it doesn’t have to be to where it’s completely unoriginal.
It doesn’t even have to be To where you keep the sample in your song, I’ll let him explain watch.
The first thing I always do when I don’t really have inspiration is work with samples. I think the best site for samples, in my opinion, is looper man.
Or you can use splice as well.
But if you want to make a beat, and you don’t have any inspiration to start off with, just use a sample.
And then most of the time, I start with a sample and then I add things and eventually I just remove the original sample.
So the sample will always be able to give you a certain vibe or a certain mood, which will inspire you to continue to make the beat.
So that’s why I often use samples to just get a little bit of a different kind of move.
So, as you guys heard Chucky say, this is something that I was actually doing on my own. When I started sampling, I would sample the beats. I would sometimes keep the sample in the beat.
And then, for the most part, I would keep the sample in the beat and then create a beat around it and add my own little flavor and stuff here and there.
But then I got to the point where I got better at playing the piano, I got better at, you know, my music theory and chord progressions and things like that to where I would, if I needed an idea, I would sample a track and then I would play something, and then I
And then I would have this completely original creation that was inspired by a sample of somebody else’s music.
And so that’s one way that you can use samples to help make your music and that’s one type of music producer, somebody who uses samples to make the music and another person that I want to talk about in terms of sampling and not just using it as inspiration or a building block by using it
I’ve used her music, a whole bunch of big-name YouTubers has used her music, but she does a lot of sampling as well.
And actually, I want to show you a video that she recently did in her new series, Sunday jam sessions with Sarah.
This is like Episode Three, I believe.
But basically, she’s doing like a rhythm roulette where she goes into a store, buys three different records, blindfolded, takes them home, she samples them and she builds a beat off of those three records. Really dope.
And let’s go ahead and take a look at this.
What’s up everybody should girl Sarah the instrumentalists Sunday jam sessions with Sarah doing rhythm roulette. I’m gonna blindfold myself and pick three random records listed. It’s back in the studio. I got my three records.
And honestly, I felt like each record was going to have something on there or something on them.
So, as you guys can see, there are different ways to use samples to build upon your own tracks, whether it is the sample that is the track itself, and you’re building a beat around that and you’re looping the sample itself like that, or you’re using a sample
It’s your choice.
But there are different ways that you can do that.
And just the possibilities of samples are endless.
I don’t want to hear anybody talk about how sampling is not real music.
And you’re not a real producer if you use samples because the thing is, it is an art form in and of itself to be able to sample the right parts of a song to put them together to cut them and chop them up the right way to layer them out in different waveforms
It’s all the same thing.
It’s like you’re playing an instrument, but you’re playing a sample.
And this is also something that I talked about previously with output arcade, but that’s more on the loop side, which is number two.
This is the second part that I want to talk about. Using loops in your beats is the next type of music producer.
Because whether you’re a music producer who knows how to play instruments, knows how to play keys and complete your own tracks.
Or you’re somebody who doesn’t have any kind of musical knowledge or you have musical knowledge, but you don’t play keys, you don’t know how to play keys.
Obviously, you can’t always find somebody to play keys for you, especially if you’re a home-based producer.
This is where loops come into play.
And this is a little bit different from samples because samples are already established songs that you’re taking the work of, and forming it into your own thing.
But loops are specifically crafted musical compositions that are made to be used in a beat that is made to be used by a producer in different ways.
You can manipulate them the same way you manipulate a sample. It’s crafted in a way that is meant just for music production.
So you’re not taking from somebody else’s song.
So loops are really great.
And also MIDI loops.
Because with MIDI you can import, let’s say, a piano loop into your music production software.
With that software, you can select any instrument that you want: the piano, a saxophone, some strings, some sense, whatever it is, you can put any instrument that you want into that little track where the MIDI is and then it’ll play that MIDI loop
With that issue.
If you don’t like that instrument, you can change it to something else.
This is why MIDI loops are so fun and different from actual samples.
Because of samples, you can’t obviously change a string if it’s already in the song as a string.
But if you have the MIDI files, and this is where it gets interesting.
And I’ll let Chucky beach once again show you a little bit of how that works.
I want to start out on the piano. I can only play the basic major-minor chords.
And it’s sometimes hard to come up with new chord progressions.
So what I like to do is just use these pre-made MIDI chord progressions, so you can just drag in chord progressions in your DAW, and you can just hear different chord progressions with different color presets you select.
And that always gives me a lot of inspiration to make an entire beat around it.
If you are the kind of producer that hears a melody unless they’re like, oh, I’m feeling inspired right now like me, then this is something for you.
And in the first folder, you have every single chord separately. Just if you drag it into your MIDI file, you’ll see one. Let me remove this, you’ll see one chord being played.
Dragging a different chord.
You can see this is just different chords.
So they have all of the names for it, which is very good.
So if you want to learn chords, you can learn, but the most important thing, obviously, is the chord progressions.
And you can see there’s the regular chord progression, and then there are the advanced chord progressions. The regular ones, you’ll probably recognize some of your favorite pop songs like these are simple chord progressions.
These are major. You can also go for minor chord progressions to sound more sad, like this.
What I like to use is obviously the advanced chord progressions because I also like the minor mood. I always love to have melancholic minor moods.
So I like to use some of these minor advanced chord progressions which will sound so like this.
That’s what I mean.
Like, I heard this and I was so inspired.
It’s crazy.
That’s what I mean by you have to use chord progressions for overcoming blocks.
So you guys see how dope MIDI samples can be MIDI loops rather, can be looped in general. You guys have seen my arcade video and how I used the arcade to play out my own loops. It is kind of like using loops as an instrument. You know your
If you haven’t seen that video, please go check it out because you will.
I’m telling you arcade is the truth, which is another way, another avenue to explore if you’re looking for your style of production.
Or if you don’t know how to start producing or don’t know what kind of music producer you are.
You want to be a producer, but you don’t necessarily know where to start.
That’s one way you can start.
Lastly is the most obvious choice, the most obvious option, which is making everything by yourself. Playing every instrument, programming all the drums, recording your own stuff, everything is created entirely by you.
And this is something that I have grown to become because I am a musician and I love to be self-sufficient.
So I program all of my stuff by myself for the most part.
Sometimes I still like to use loops.
Sometimes I still like to use samples because there’s a time and a place for all those things. If you’re trying to drive a specific mood or inspire some kind of a specific memory or something with a sampler or something like it for different reasons, original creation 100% is obviously the safest way to go.
But it’s also the most original way to go.
And so if this is for anybody who is highly experienced in music theory or playing any type of instrument, if you know what you’re doing, or even if you can click in the notes because this is another thing that I used to do before I had a MIDI controller
But when it comes to this, I want to go ahead and look at a recent video by Andrew Wong.
I think it’s his latest video, one where he is making a song entirely out of dolphin sounds. Pure original creation at its finest.
And this is obviously an extreme example of being original.
I’m just saying that this video is a great example of creating from scratch an entirely original production, even down to recording your own sounds.
Let’s take a look at this masterpiece.
Please enjoy it.
This is really exciting.
I had no idea what to expect when we were coming to the aquarium, but they were gonna bring us around to some dolphins and record a bunch of dolphins. It sounded adorable.
I just started playing with this sound.
This is like a dolphin squeak. I think that was hope.
And I slowed it down to 25%.
And I just put it through a little bit of reverb and delay and grand delay.
And now it sounds like this.
And I started playing that a little bit on the keyboard, and it just kind of came out really under watery feeling and hopeful slowing down the clicks that they make turned into all kinds of different drums, like here’s the kick drum, slowed that down, way down.
And I took two of those and layered them up to make this kick.
Like when I first saw this, I was like, how is he gonna make this work, but then it came together, and I was like, Dude, this man is a genius.
Like, as you’re wrong, I have a lot of respect for him.
I have a lot of respect for all the producers of today’s video.
Like it’s just crazy to see how people work and how they are able to craft great music in different ways in their own workflows and with different types of music. Feel free to go and subscribe to every channel that was featured in today’s video. I’ll leave a link to their channels.
Members If you want to be a member of the channel to support the channel, it’s kind of helped me Ford my desires to build this channel into something bigger than what it currently is.
You guys have seen a lot of some a little taste of the things that I’m trying to do.
Feel free to join the membership on the channel the channel memberships that would help immensely. I guess that’s it, as always stay legendary and I’ll see you guys on Thursday.
Peace out
