By Jinxin Yu, staff writer
If you are a rap fan, I am pretty sure you are familiar with the producer tags like “Jetson made another one” or “Metro Boomin want some more”. As a long-time rap fan, I have listened to many artists like Kanye West, Nas, Eazy E, and new school rappers like Polo G, Lil Baby, and more. I am a huge fan of Kanye West’s productions and songs, and I’ve always wondered how he created such a masterpiece, so I decided to give myself 4 days and to try it myself.
On the first day, I decided to do research instead of going straight into producing. I started with watching youtube videos from famous producers explaining their process to smaller youtubers giving out a tutorial on making beats, watching producers like Internet money or metro boomin, and other YouTubers who are making beats. With all the videos I watched on the first day, I managed to download a couple of reliable studio software and get a feel of the basics to beat producing.
The second day came, and I realized I needed more research than one day. So I decided to listen to more songs. I started sampling through some songs by Kanye West, one of my favorite musicians. I paid close attention to the drum patterns and how he took use of the samples he had.
On the 3rd day, I decided to finally give it a try. I started putting together some basic patterns using 808s, Hi-Hats, and drum patterns. It came out very sloppy, as it was my first time, it didn’t sound too good. The patterns sounded very sloppy and I was indecisive with the patterns I wanted to keep. I wasn’t satisfied with any of the beats I was producing so I kept deleting and restarting, which led to me being frustrating. As I desperately researched for more and more tutorials, I still couldn’t come up with anything of my own. I eventually gave up for the day and left behind a sloppy rough draft.
Final day. I went into a rough draft with some new ideas, as I had been researching before I went to bed the day before. Instead of just beats, I put in some piano chords to make a melody, I still wasn’t too familiar with the piano so I put in some random chords. After about an hour of mixing and sampling, I still wasn’t able to come up with anything that I would be proud of, I didn’t like the way that the beat sounded. However, time was up, 4 days passed and I can say that I have failed this challenge for myself.
Overall, this makes me realize that it takes a lot of skill and work to be able to produce a beat from scratch and has made me respect music producers a lot more, as I struggle to make that sounds even decent. Beat producing requires a lot of knowledge in music, and the beat producers are very talented.
