How To Make West Coast, East Coast & Dirty South Beats

"Blog Article"

Lets talk hip hop music production. We will talk about equipment of yesterday and equipment and software programs of today.  When I first started producing music, the Akai MPC 60 and Akai MPC 60II was all the rage in the music production game. It was probably the greatest sampler ever created at the time. The MPC 60 was an 8 bit sampler created by Roger Linn who was also known for creating the Linn drum machine. The MPC 60 was the predecessor of the new samplers like the Akai MPC 500, MPC 1000, MPC 2000, MPC 2000xl, MPC 3000, and MPC 4000.  Year after year Akai has worked harder to create a better version of the Akai Midi Production Center (MPC).  Because, hip hop producers accept the MPC as the staple for rap music production, Akai became synonymous with rap music and its producers.  Other companies had samplers like Ensoniq’s EPS 16 Plus, and ASR-10 and EMU had the Sp1200. But the MPC had those Pads that producers loved  to pound out beats on and I think that was one of the main advantages. With Ensoniq’s EPS and ASR series, if you’re like me you don’t drum out beats on keys of a keyboard.  Ensoniq apparently realized this and created the sample beat box ASRX(ASR-X).  Years later Roland created a drum machine that is a direct rip off of the MPC called the Roland MV8000. This box, even though it is similar to the MPC it is comparably as good as any AKAI sample that is out there now.  It loads AIFF, WAV files and MPC .SND files.

I had a manager of a few rap groups and producers in my studio one night and he was talking about how good one of his producers was. He said all his beats to this point was done on a little Boss 660 drum machine and that he was going to get him a MPC 2000Xl because he felt he needed some better sounds.  Like a lot of people new to the game the manager thought the MPC came with pre-loaded sounds. The Akai MPC does not come with internal sounds.  You have to have drum kits for the MPC series samplers.  You have to load sounds into samplers like the MPC and MV8000.  Soundcrafting.com sells drum kits for MPC 2000, Drum Kits for the MPC 4000, Drum Kits for the MPC2000xl and Drum kits for EPS.  If you are looking for sounds for samplers there are many website on the internet that sell sounds and the free sounds on the internet also. You just really have to do a lot of searching to find free sounds.  We sell sound disk and sampling CD’s at Soundcrafting.com.  We are the number one source in the world for MPC sounds and Fruity Loop packs.  Our drum kits and sound kits will also load into software samplers like Reason.  We have Aiff drums Sounds and .WAV drum sounds.  We are a great source for Akai Sounds, Akai sample CD’s and Akai sample Downloads.

Every major music producer in the game like Jermaine Dupri who has the most hits of any producer in the 2000s, will tell you that you need to invest in sounds and always keep improving your hip hop sample library. To have a good strong Hip Hop sound library, you need hard hitting kick drums, crisp snares, Hi-Hats, Percussion sounds, EFX and FX, Bass sounds and keyboard sounds.  If you’re new to the game you can buy ill hip hop samples. If you are a veteran to hip hop production you can create you own samples by digging’ crates of records and sampling your own sounds and creating your own sound.