Make an Instrumental on Fruity Loops 8.0 or Reason 4.0

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Many hip-hop lovers give credits to singers and artists, but a few of them give credits to beat makers who are also known as instrumental makers. Beat making is a tough job especially when one has a mediocre knowledge about the processes and the right programs needed to compose a good melody. Eight main steps are required in order to compose a good hip-hop beat.

Steps

  1. You will need to have a computer. (It could be a desktop computer or a lap top). The computer should have at least Windows VISTA or Windows XP and they should not be a Macintosh brand (because the Macintosh platform is not supported). Another tool a beat maker should have, is a midi keyboard. The keyboard allows you to play notes by linking it onto your computer using a USB interface. A necessary tool to have if you want to keep up with the sound quality and to stay away from distortion is a good monitor speaker. I would recommend the “ALESIS m1-Active Mk2 Powered Studio Monitors” because I’m really familiar with it. Once all those equipments are available at your disposal, then you are ready for the next step.
  2. Though there are many companies claiming to be making the best beat making software, there are only two programs that a professional beat maker may use to compose a beat in today’s music industry. The first program is called “Fruity Loops 8.0” and the second one is “Reason 4.0”. Those two programs have many tools in common and therefore they need to be bought together. Having the right programs to start an instrumental is vital for beat makers because as a hip-hop beat maker, one should be able to captivate an audience of hip-hop lovers as well as hip-hop artists. Those two programs both have the exact sounds, groove and quality that people in today’s music industry are using to make millions.
  3. Now that we have the two best programs to compose good melodies, it could be really annoying not to have both programs rewired into one program. That is where the third step known as “Rewiring Reason 4.0 into Fruity Loops 8.0” comes in handy. This technique allows the beat maker to drag Reason’s sounds into the Fruity Loops 8.0 software. To start rewiring, first open Fruity loops 8.0 and click on “channel” then “add one”. Now you’ll see a lot of options presented by the software but since we are rewiring something we need to click on “rewired”. There should be a red rectangle displaying “rewired” with a green light next to it appearing on the sequencer. Click on the “rewired” sign on the sequencer and you should see a big rectangle device named “channel settings-Rewired” displaying a rewire image in red. Look for “Client” and select “Reason” because we are rewiring it to Fruity Loops 8.0. Then after that, click on “show panel” to open Reason 4.0. Now Reason is opened, click on “create” and select “mixer 14:2”. After that step, click on “create” again and select one synthesizer or a sampler between “subtractor synthesizers, thor synthesizers, malstrom synthesizers, nn19 digital sampler and nn-xt advanced sampler”. In this case let’s say I choose subtractor synthesizers for example. Next step is to go back into Fruity Loops 8.0 and select “midi options”. Now you should have 3 channels that are “hardware interface II, mixer 1 and subtractor 1”.Now remember that the order of those channels matters a lot (notice how the synthesizer name subtractor is third). Click on the “hardware interface II” and then click “add/change” then close the box by clicking “ok”. Now you need to go to “channels” in Fruity Loops, click on “add one” again and this time select “midi out”. Click on “midi out” and change the channel to “3” so you could use the subtractor. Now if you use your keyboard and play some notes you should be able to hear some sounds from Reason 4.0.
  4. After the rewiring step, set up a tempo of the type of hip-hop beat you’re looking forward to create by using Fruity Loops 8.0. On your screen you should have a default tempo that is 140bmp; however, 140bmp is used for Techno beats, so you should reduce it by right clicking on it then choose 110bmp or less. Your tempo matters because it helps your timing to be more accurate.
  5. Use your ears when you’re composing a melody because if it doesn’t sound right to you what makes you think it’s going to sound to your audience? If you don’t like the sound you’re hearing, make sure you go to Reason and switch manually the sounds. For example the default sound of our “subtractor” is bass guitar but you can switch it into an acoustic guitar or a trumpet and vice versa. Every change you make on an instrument is going to affect your Fruity Loops pattern. It takes a couple of times for anybody to really know what instruments you want in your melody and therefore, it’s okay to play with it and get familiar with new sounds. The more time you spend on your instruments the more inspiration you’re acquiring. My main concern for beginners is that all sounds do not get along. Let’s say I picked an electric guitar and I add some harmonica into the melody. That type of mistake is usually made because beginners love a specific sound of a song or a beat that they heard and they try to add all of those sounds into their melody. Again Use your ear a lot because you cannot force sounds to get along. If they don’t get along by nature, there’s no way they will get along at all.
  6. After you’re satisfied with your melody, look for the right percussions. A good way to make this step easy is to listen to your favorite hip-hop song with the exact tempo that your beat has for example and try to pay attention to the percussions only. You’ll notice that most hip-hop songs drums are repetitive but catchy. Once you know how you want your drums to sound like, go to Fruity Loops 8.0 and browse into percussions section on the left of the screen under hip-hop and drag drums, snares, and hi-hats into your pattern that contains the rewiring. Then for each one of those percussions use your metronome to help you set up a tempo that your percussions must follow. Again this requires a lot of tries, and familiarity and like I said earlier the more you try the more you understand the process.
  7. One error most beginners tend to make is using one single pattern that contains everything. Fruity Loops 8.0 gives you enough space and an infinite number of patterns one could work on. Knowing how to generate the space Fruity Loops gives you is necessary because a professional beat maker would use up to 10 or more patterns for different instruments or percussions. For example you could set up a pattern for your guitar melody, a pattern for your drums, a pattern for your trumpet melody and a pattern for your snares. You’ll notice the more you advance into beat making, setting things apart is important and it allows you to set up different volumes for different instruments just by using the mixer provided by Fruity Loops. Let’s say I have my drums in pattern 5 but for some reason it’s not loud enough. All I need to do is just look for the mixer then click on channel 5 then add some the volume until I feel like it’s adequate for my beat.
  8. Finally when you’re done with your instrumental, make sure you mix everything and lay your patterns down into your playlist. Listen to your beat over and over again or ask the closest listeners in your household to listen to it so they can give you their opinions. If you feel confident with your beat, click on “file” and export your beat as an mp3 file. Make sure you give it a name.

Tips

  • The art of practice is what makes everybody better at anything. Just because you cannot achieve a goal today, doesn't mean you should give up! Give it a lot of tries and I promise you, you'll make it!

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