MsTrisMusic.Com

Good Morn to all! We are finally having clear weather today on the east coast. I have a little to business to handle later, it will be good to get out.

I am back on dirty south beats today before heading out. I have so many artist lined up, and I’m in the mood to compose some advanced chord progressions. I am understanding scales and key signatures, but I am still having problems making chords from scales.

For my first track this morning, I am looking in my books. So far I’ve come up with more progressions from studying a few different piano books. Here is one of my favorites “How To Write Songs On Keyboards”:

It’s become my go to book for chord help lately. I’d also like be able to make “advanced” progressions without the book. I found a great youtube channel with lessons on music theory.. Woo Hoo!

For me the lessons are easy to follow. She uses some traditional methods, as well as non traditional methods. The following video got me going in the right direction fast:

How to Make Chords From A Scale

richardjpugh on youtube
click “see all” and scroll through for music theory lessons…
Check out the whole series when you have time, and I’ll add more over the year..

Happy Beat Making To All
Pz Til Later!~

Popularity: 10% [?]

Is it Wednesday already? “Not” funny how time flies when you are working hard.. lol.. but we must press on. Hope your week is going good and the beats are flamin’!

I was setting up my old pc, new pc, all hardware, and software yesterday. Yes finally linking everything together, which will all be sequenced on NI Maschine. When I start doing things like this, I always wind up changing the lab.

Right now I have everything where I can easily reach it. I plan on moving to a bigger place, and eventually getting a new workstation/desk. When I first started, all I had was an Asr10 and a “gulp” 4 track Tascam recorder. For the past 10 years I’ve added things slowly. I’ve gone to pawn shops, ebay, and any where I could find a deal for hardware. I saved money for software and additions. From my booth to my desk, I used what I could find and afford. Here is a pic of my setup before I began to re-arrange:

I get a lot of questions about what equipment should be purchased to start a home studio. My answer today would be, a very decent pc built for music 1st. Once you invest in the core Pc or Mac for mixing and recording, then venture into other equipment. If you don’t have money to buy a brand new pc, at least invest in a quality soundcard or audio inerface, memory,and external hard drive to hold your files. Unless you plan to use all hardware from start to finish, your Pc or Mac will be the nucleus of your home studio set up.

From here, the choices are many. How much of a budget are you working with? If you have a starting budget of $500.00, you wouldn’t want to run out and buy a $399.00 midi controller. You may want to get:

………..a $37.17 controller,

………… $96.87 monitors,

99.00 mic,

………….and for composing, mixing, recording …

The Fl Studio Producers Edition for $199.00 * + 10% MsTrisMusic discount

The following videos may help you get an idea of what producers are using. Think about what you want to achieve with your set up. Start with items you can build onto, grow with, and get the equipment that’s best for your budget..

Basic Tips & Setup for a Home Music Studio
I wish youtube was around when I started… this is great! He explains monitor placements, why he needed a mixer, and a lot more…by sdjacobus on youtube. I actually found this after I started the post, but he covers it all..

How To Build a Home Recording Studio CHEAP!
Using resources here.Scurvy Studios had a budget of about 500 bucks

It’s not a hard task to build a home studio once you have a few ideas on how to start…

Happy Beat Making To All!
Pz Til later!`

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What’s Up All! Not as early as I would have liked to get started, but I’m feeling great. I’ll be online tomorrow morning for live help. I really didn’t know you all enjoyed the feature this much. yaay! Thanks to all who have been participating, and being patient for answers. I will try to log on more for live help.

Also those who followed me on twitter and facebook, hit me up sometimes let’s network…

Unwrapping MASCHINE

I was talking with a “#teammaschine” user who frequents MsTrisMusic.Com. He sparked the fire for me to do my 1st Maschine Tutorial post. Shouts out to @MrIIXI for this one, and the term ” teammaschine”

If you haven’t had the chance to meet Native Instruments Maschine, the following video will give you the basic idea of what the fuss is about:
NI Maschine: Introduction

I got my Maschine in March. I have been really inspired to work on beats with it. I think I told you I heard about Maschine, then watched a few videos before making a decision to dip into my Roland Fantom money, and purchase one. You can read my introduction to Maschine here: MsTrisMusic NI Maschine.

Out of the box it was easy to get started. If you have used Fl Studio, Reason, Mpc, or other Daws to make beats, Maschine has all the basic features: There is a piano roll, pattern mode, pad mode, step sequencer, and more. The thing that’s a little different is Maschine uses “Scenes” to set up your song. For me, that was the only “uh-oh” moment.

The suggested work flow is to make several patterns, then place them in scenes arranging them how you wish. Sounds easy enough, but when I sat down to make a complete song it took a little thought.

I finally figured out the best and fasted way for me to get started. This tutorial will deal with Maschine Stand Alone installation.( I will do another post later this month with full Reaper routing). I will be using all Maschine included sounds for tutorial purposes. This is not a beat making tutorial, but one showing my way of beat creating, and arranging on Maschine using patterns and scenes

I load up Maschine, and load a drumkit into “Group A (808 Southern Kit)”, and a few sounds into “Group B”;

Next I’ll start with a 8 bar melody or drums in pattern “A1″. The cool thing about Maschine is each kit has some preset patterns to get you working quickly. I like this particular pattern for the 808 Southern kit so I’ll use it to keep rolling with the tutorial. This pattern will go in “Scene 1″ :

808 drum pattern
This is 1/2 or 8 bars of verse 1.

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Good morning all! What a rainy week we’re having on the east coast ..can’t complain because it makes it easy to work inside..

I’ve been using Native Instruments Maschine all week. I have it as a plug in inside Reaper. It’s a cool set up, and I am almost ready to do Maschine tutorials.

I have my template set. When I open Reaper, I load a template that has two Maschine Vsts, Kore Player, and Fl Studio. I really love the work flow now. The thing is I’d also love a few of Reason’s sound modules. The Malstrom, Subtracktor, Nnxt, and Dr.Rex would really complete my set up.

I have never gotten Reason to Rewire to any Daw without doing a search. I guess it’s time to really understand how to do this. I’ll need to look at a few videos so I can remember the steps needed to add Reason.

Here are a few videos that may help others out. I have added some of this info before, but I thought it’d be cool to have most of the info in one post:

Reason w/Protools, Reaper, Ableton, Fl Studio,

Reason Rewired To Protools

Reason Rewired To Reaper

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Popularity: 10% [?]

Well Well the week is almost over .. I had a productive one I must say. Let’s get right back to it. This is a continuation from yesterdays:

Fl Studio 9.1:Club Banger Tutorial Part 1

I’ve started my beat with:
basic drum pattern, added a “lead” melody, added some effects, some percussion/ sound fx additions, and breaks to the drums.

Today I’m going to continue building the track starting with an additional melody which really flows in an opposite direction than the first. I am using the same notes F,G,G# and C * * from yesterday.

This melody will be a “counter melody”. It will play at the same time as the main melody, but be more as an addition which I can vary through the verses:
Added a counter melody

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Hey Hey Hey! It’s a beautiful day with all the sun. It’s Wednesday already, the week is flying by for me. I am looking forward to the weekend because my family is big on holidays of any kind lol.

There is something about Spring, Summer, sun, and fun that makes me want to make happy beats. I am sure you’ve heard the term Club Banger lately. I usually ask the artist what type of beat do you need? 90% answer ” I need a Big Club Banger!”.

There are many options when creating a track that will go over well in any club. You can start any where you want when creating them as well. Some may say it’s all about the tempo and rhythm, some may say the chorus/hook is the key. Other folks may say it’s all about the melody.

I think it’s a combination of the above. If I’m sitting down to make a club banger, I follow a little mental template:
The tempo has to be fast enough to make people want to hit the dance floor. Above 90 bpm is a must..
The hook must be catchy and easy to remember.
The melody must be simple and one that will make people say ” I can’t get that song out of my head ”

Next you’ll have to think of the type of club banger you are making. I find in today’s hip hop, most club bangers are a mix of dirty south, r&b and pop.

Let’s listen to a snippet from Ciara’s “G Is For A Girl (A-Z)” produced by The Y’s and Justin Timberlake:

Really catchy, danceable, nice tempo.. Ciaras club songs are always fit for dancing. This tracks uses a consistent melody through out, with added synths, percussion, fx, piano,and bassline when the hook comes in. It’s a real simple concept, once you get an idea of how to start, you’ll be able to make these in no time.

So how do I go about creating something similar?….

I’ll start by finding the tempo. I select a small loop using my sound editor program, save it,and insert it into a Fl Studio sampler channel..

I’ve chosen part of the hook. It’s has almost all the sounds used, including added percussion etc.

I use the “detect tempo” function to find approximate BPM/tempo:

G is For Girl is 93-94. From here I could start with a melody, the drums, a bassline, or a nice orchestra hit. If you’ve been following my tutorials, you know I like to start with drums. For my beats, the drums are important and I like them to have a certain feel before I start the rest of the track. When I do club bangers, the drums don’t have to be as elaborate, so I’ll let the melody to drive the song.

I add a simple hi hat, nice clap,and Kick to pattern #1. ( for tutorial purposes only, I’m using the same basic pattern that’s used commercially for club type hip hop tracks did, I will change this for final beat) and begin working on my main or “lead” melody.

Basic Drum pattern for club banger:

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What’s good with you all today? Hope your week is going nicely. I’ve been out and about handling beat business this morning. Almost ready to get the work going for the day. I’ll be online for help until around 4pm… Hit me up..say hi and all that good stuff

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I haven’t gotten into the FPC much since it was added to Fl Studio. Now that I have my hardware in sync, I wanted to use it for a few samples using the Mpc as a controller.

This is something that was right in front of my face lol. I had no idea I could send the pads to single mixer channels. Thanks to HipKnokerZ On Youtube, I finally have it set up. Now I can export the sounds from the FPC one by one. Hope this helps you as well..
FPCMixing

Happy Beat Making To All
Pz Til Later!~

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