Absolutely. It’s like chastising someone’s use of the internet for not using the Stardew Valley wiki.
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Dude I love your channel, been a subsrciber since day 1. And yeah its just a show to me, I watch YOU couldn’t careless about “gear”.
I will stand by my statement the the musical part of hip hop is not complicated. Its supposed to highlight the lyrics. Everyones favorite producer Jay Dilla’s best work was with Slum Village, and thats a masterclass in staying out of the way. its what made his career, not “Donuts”. The voices of hip hop are what made it into what it is. Nas could literally rap over my leaky faucet dripping and its would be dope.
ouch, umm lurk more?
I’m very appreciative of your viewership and thank you for continuing to watch. I’m even more suprised you could chalk it all up to aesthetics then.
I hope you didn’t take that comment as a personal dig because l I’ve never heard your music (I assume you make it if you’re here) but I think such a reductive viewpoint on a genre definitely doesn’t help.
I’m actually wondering at this point if there’s a language barrier here, because Dilla is a terrible example of the point you’re trying to make. What he does on the SV stuff has nothing to do with being simple but restrained. It’s the same way why D’Angelo can make the least amount of sound or presence but can convey so much information inside of it. To be able to minimize space but maximize impact is not a simple thing and to go back to your initial message, calling it “simple music” is pretty reductive. That so called simplicity requires a lot of granularity and control that may not be as obvious as something more show-off ish
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From what I’ve heard/seen it seems like good hip hop is really about subtlety, getting the elements to sit just right so they create that flow.
I was watching one of your videos earlier where you talked about how you adjust the microtiming of all the sounds so that transients never really sit on top of each other. And a bit where you played in hi-hats via the synth keyboard and how loose and syncopated it was, seemed like it was too sloppy in isolation but in the context of the beat it just worked.
That kind of stuff, all those subtle movements and layers seems to be what makes for really good music. I certainly wouldn’t describe it as simple, far from it.
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Right, you are absolutely correct in that what goes into a track is infinitely complex. I’m talking about the end result. So yeah we are talking about different things i guess?
Like it or not, you are a fun watch!
Also your channel is the number one recommendation I give to people showing how fun and approachable the OT is, I hate this myth that it’s so hard to use.
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I don’t think those things are unique to hip hop but they’re continuing the lineage of live music. It’s weird because if you look at hip hop as electronic music (which it is), its history is so ingrained in sampling that the ultimate feel for a lot of it is to mimic the pockets of music that came before it. It’s like re-engineering human timing to work on a computer which is kind of hilarious when you think about it but also leaning into the loop based feeling of sample loops. Trend of the last decade has been how to keep all that while still inserting more organic song structure. It’s all awesome.
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Wait there’s a Stardew Valley wiki?!?!
Hi Jon,
Really appreciate you jumping in and answering the question. And, for the record, I didn’t say producing hip hop is “simple”, nor was I trying to gatekeep. My idea of the Octatrack (which I don’t own, so I might be missing quite a bit) is of a sample mangling device where you stretch samples and apply effects to them. Your videos show comparatively little of that, just a lot of, admittedly very precise, chopping and sequencing. Hence the question.
Your point about layering is interesting. It looks like you have a loop / beat running on the OT, you turn around to some keyboard, play for a bit and when you then return to the OT it’s all there, in sync, ready to go (this is not something you can do with an MPC or an SP404). Is that the way it actually works or is that good video editing?
Anyway, once again thanks for jumping in, thanks, also, for the cool videos and you’re absolutely right that it doesn’t matter whatsoever what kind of gear your use as long as it works for you.
Hey mtts, no worries about coming off as any of that. I thought your questions were pretty innocuous.
Yeah I can totally understand how my sessions (originally 2 hours long and cut down to 10 minutes) can leave out some of the nitty gritty. I’ve got a Patreon that has a ton of full multi hour sessions that show the whole process.
Sample stretching is cool sometimes but I actually have found it better sounding to chop by note or transient and use the ping pong looping feature, which is something I can’t for the life of me find in any other sampler that doesn’t sound like absolute dogshit (404mk2 has it but then you have to make a beat with the sequencer lol). one of the OT’s strengths.
Effects are always applied, LFOs are always used. I typically stick with the filter, delay and reverb. Sometimes the lofi. Again, everything is being accessed but it’s all subtle. I even use Parts when things get too big. Only thing I don’t really use is the freeze delay because I don’t like stutter effects too much.
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Absolutely, it’s why the OT is on a different level: real-time quantized loops
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A lot of genres get called simple.
Simple ain’t easy.
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Isn’t this guy on Stones Throw and been making beats for like 20 years? He’s got a channel, sure. But it’s very unlikely he’s using the Octatrack ‘cause it looks good on camera
15 on record:
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