Lol my go to move is switching between UKG and trap every few weeks
Should try make smth a lot different
You could look at some tracks that you like a lot and see why their bits “work”
Is there any reason you think your melodies are too wiggly? They could just need a bit more structure or some work.
If you’re adding cool sounds and they’re just making the mix dense then maybe you need to save the sound for a later song or just work on your composition to make it fit better
Yeah tbh I do that all the time it’s just spending that time actually going all the way and replicating drum patterns etc feels wrong lol
I did it once and it did get me somewhere tho maybe that’s the clue here
I don’t have any real musical instrument background but a few years ago started tryna make more banging/catchy shit instead of burial sample experiments. So maybe I kinda need that musicianship drilling by just learning to recreate patterns a bit more rigorously to have the basic logic of em be second hand when I’m doing smth new. Thing is my ego feels like I should just be able to casually vibe to music and absorb everything about it lol.
Anyway despite all this moaning my stuff does keep getting better - it’s just mostly in sound design rather than composition. But even there I’ve gotten rid of some bad habits
like now I know I’m fucking up when I start to make some 8 bar sequence where the kicks are in different places each bar lol
1 BigUp
Oh yeah I don’t have the patience to recreate stuff lol. There are tons of videos that break songs down though and I find those insanely useful, even if I only understand like 1% of what their talking about.
I started learning harmonica this year and a bit of music theory to go along with it and I gotta say it’s helped me immensely. Having something I can actually sit down and play has put together some concepts I didn’t really understand before, plus I’ll jam along to the song I’m working on sometimes for ideas or I can work on the song off my computer if there’s like a melody or something. Plus the simplicity of the instrument really just changed how I think about rhythm and stuff.
Music theory has helped me understand some stuff that was just a mystery to me before like chords and chord progressions as well as scales and such. It’s weird though because it’s not super useful for actually composing something in general. It just kind of explains why some stuff works and helps give you some guidelines and can help with “why does this not sound right” or “what should come next” kind of things.
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Very sampleable drum solo videos in his reels.
instead of making different genres or whatever, maybe try writing in a different way, break up the workflow and try to get a different perspective.
1 BigUp
you definitely should
rant/obvious thoughts:
rap/trap is really difficult/disheartening in the sense you often judge your own beat against a beat with an mc on top of it who obscures the underlying beat - and even adds to the perception of the rythm/groove/vibe
good beats are way emptier than a song which is hard to comprehend/learn (as in figuring out when to stop)
and worst of all, most have engineering
or maybe the beat is compressed because you listen to it streamed so the loudness is different in the beat making stage than in a song
so there’s so many holes or angles you can miss - or unconsciously try to compensate for in a song that isnt even part of the beat making
the whole simplicity of this type of music/ minimalism is fucked up
the habit where you have to bang out the whole thing quickly / flesh out a whole beat in one move is annoying af
when you make dance music you can just pick up a track later and build and build and vibe on it
on a rap beat you cant even move a hihat around without collapsing the whole vibe
its definitely more frustrating than other genres, but its also more direct and has a bigger immediate pay off, being like in the zone with a trap whatever beat
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do you watch the cave sometimes?
timbaland is streaming too
1 BigUp
If I get stuck I do shit like put the snare on the 1, or only use toms instead of kicks, or double the tempo but half the beat, or work in 5/4.
Just throw a complete curveball into the mix and then build your tune. Sometimes fucking with the basic structure or rules yields interesting results
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why do you think I delete my tracks all the time?
Inferiority complex. I spend 5 hours making a track then listen to say DMZ and think fuck it my track is waste
I know I shouldn’t be so insecure but I am
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Exactly dude all of this is well said
The worst is when I’ve spent hours making some trippy loop with a wavetable synth 4 source 100 modulations patch and then have to force a trap pattern on it but it’s impossible to make a satisfying 808 pattern cus the root notes/chord shit going on isn’t actually solid - just sounded big and rich cus all the little modulation and shit. That’s when i used to send Sam damn son the sample lol
Got so many of those loops saved
1 BigUp
its definitely a difference wether u start out with drums in jungle and in beats
i love to sit and fuck around with a pad for hours and then put drums on
but rythm becomes more central in the tune and more the main thing if i start with drums
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For UKG I always start with drums, for trap I feel like cus the 808 is the kick AND the bass it’s gotta be based on where the chords are etc
Maybe I should just try write chords and do modulation fuckery on top of the 808 + drums tho
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theres that whole ‘always use G# G F F#’ in bass scales’ in D&B because of the frequency distribution - idea that probably is useful to think of in relation to 808 notes
i dont know if it is the same notes that pop out
but it would make sense to just pick a few 808 that pop and have that rythmic/percussive dimension and then build the chord scales around that
i dunno ive never really trusted any sampler pitching algorythm
it might be a good creative restriction to only use 808 that sound good as they are
maybe mask/mimic inbetween notes with another soft synth - if the bassline has more notes than the three or four 808s ?
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Appreciate it dude, don’t regret moaning about this now 
I want the bounce so sounds fun to start with drums
1 BigUp
You mean the ones that do “actual” pitch shifts with transient analysis etc as opposed to just slower/faster sample playback?
Yeah it’s always artefacted and garbly to some extent but the nice wavetable sampler ones utilize that well and make it a feature.
It’s funny how the rly ”flawed” and dated technique of one shot samples sped up and down on the keyboard, which was talked down by my sound tech lecturers, is so relevant today with trap lol. Like there’s absolutely no real trap producers using some bass synth thing or wavetable time stretch sampler for their 808 sounds, from what I’ve seen. The slower transients of lower notes in the 808 is a core part of the sound and actually gives it that buoyant sense of bounce so much better. 808ish bass presets on synths sound really plastic and shitty in comparison from what I’ve heard
I’ve posted this too many times but after many years this is still the holy grail of vibe/bounce in this kinda trapish music for me and gr8 example of why the old skool pitching sampler is still so sick
Dat kinda bounce. U can maybe see why tryna emulate the little kinda rhythmic variations in this bassline can lead to making really fiddly bullshit lol. Just tryna make every bar the sweet little break that catches you slightly off, but then the whole tune is just this rickety mess cus u haven’t rly used your ears I guess lol
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i guess any pitching in digital/ software
but not as artistic choice then everything goes, of course
its funny that bad pitching is the origin of both the reese, techno low pitched triangle bass, pads, 5th/7th harmonics in dance music etc
i guess just how important the sampler is really
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1 BigUp
I only use samples. Even for synths.
I just like how the midi keyboard distorts the sample as it forces it into a note, and you get that lovely stretching.
Feel you on this bro. Same reason that I barely post tunes in the first place.
That inferiority complex is a soul-crusher.