Cristobal Dion

Nomad Beats: Pocket Operatin’ it!

I recently ditched my job to start my own company. My new life consists of travelling to many different countries, both in Europe and in Asia very often. Being from Canada, that’s pretty cool.

Travelling can be very rewarding and a beautiful experience, but being away of both my family and studio have been challenging.

While I couldn’t carry my family with me on my trips, I was indeed looking for a portable studio solution.

I ended up using the PO-133, the street fighter version of the PO-33KO, a 8-bit / 23 kHz sampler. In case you’re not technical; that’s Lo-Fi as f*ck…

Simultaneously very capable and limiting, it took me a while to figure out a way to make this little machine sing in a way I could express my artistic voice.

Every single day, I made a beat. Be it on a train, on a plane, in a hotel lobby, in a small coffee shop, name it. Making beats was never so transportable.

Today, I’ll be reviewing what YOU should know in case you intend to do the same.

Preparation is the key

I am a very spontaneous type of guy, but once in a while I like to build tools and system for myself. This was no exception.

Contacting Teenage Engineering

The first step for me was to truly understand what was happening under the hood, so I could get the max out of that little machine. I ask questions about why their 8-bit device sounded much better than a 8-bit crush in a DAW, what was the sampling rate, if there was a difference between the sound engine bitrate and the sample bitrate, since you need extra bits for “mixing”. Here are the answers I got from them:

Q1:
The samples are stored as 8-bit. However, unlike a normal bitcrusher they are stored in u-law format which means that the resolution isn’t linear; the resolution is higher for the quiet parts of the recording. This will make a noise gate less efficient than it is for linear, PCM 8-bit recordings. For dithering to be useful, it would probably have to be a u-law-specific dithering. Though you can of course try it out—both noise gate and dithering might prove to be useful in some ways! There is no dithering or noise gate applied to the sampling in the po-33 (though the factory samples are actually processed with a u-law-weighted dithering).

Q2:
The playback and recording sample rate in the po-33 is 46875 Hz due to some hardware limitations. This gets downsampled to half that rate when stored to memory. So you could try to filter out stuff above about 12kHz to avoid alias distortion.

There is an anti-alias filter applied to the recordings before downsampling, but due to limited memory and CPU of the PO, it’s rather crude. The factory content was converted with an offline tool with proper anti-aliased resampling.

Q3:
Some of this was answered above. All internal processing (track volume/filters/FX/mixing/output) is done in 16-bit ~47kHz.

Summary of their answer:

The sound engine runs at 16-bit 47 kHz, when recording (it also first record at that rate), then apply a top end filter, prior to downsample and truncate to store it at 8-bit 23 kHz.

Since resolution is not linear in the bitrate, it gives more precision towards the lower levels, which is why the 8-bit of the unit sounds much better than a 8-bit from a bitcrusher in a DAW. From my test, you get a dynamic range closer to a 11-bit linear PCM. That said, 8-bit gives only only 256 values possible(!), that’s really not a lot to represent complex signal.

This reinforce the idea that you truly need to record the signal hot to maximize the chance that the information reaches the mu-law, if we assume the dynamic range of a 11-bit recording, you get approx. 68 db to work with. Consider anything below to be lost.

If you are in a studio, I suggest you apply a drastic high-cut (low-pass) filter at around 11-12 kHz.

Preparing a great sample pack

You have 40 secs of sampling only. In my case, I’ve decided that I wanted to carry me at all time the following:

Rhythmic section:

• 8 kicks

• 8 snares

• 8 hihats

• 8 percussion

These are spread on pads 9 and 10. To get a nice top in hihats and cymbals, for example, I slowed it down prior to record, since you can always pitch it up after, and it will sound nice since the PO can playback up 22 kHz (half of the 47 kHz sampling rate). For kicks, I usually did the opposite, accelerate it to sample it fast, so I can use less sampling time.

Then I record single bass notes in the melodic section on pads 5, 6 and 7.

This entire config takes about 17 sec, so it leaves us 23 secs left for sampling various material on the go. I did the entire album using that setup.

As you might know, you can save and load “sessions” onto the PO. So I made my own template, and loaded it onto the 3 POs I own (2x PO-133SF, and 1x PO-33KO!).

Feel free to contact me, I can share the saved file with you.

Below is the entire album made with that template:

Mastery

My last point is about learning how that machine works. It is indeed a very capable sampler. It has pretty cool effects that you either play live, or record onto a pattern. You can copy pattern and make variants, to build an entire song. you can even change the pitch on the fly, etc.

That said, you need to study it. Plenty of cool videos on YouTube exists on the topic. Here is a list of what tools I believe you will need in your arsenal:

• How to Chop samples. In summary you record into melodic first, and then you copy into the rhythmic pads, it will chop the sample into 16 equal-length samples. From there, you can fine tune.

• Record your signal hot just before clipping.

• To save some voices, You can put the hihat on beat 2 and 4 instead of 1 and 2, use Swing to bring it back on beat.

• Learn how to use the FX and Record them, they can be used as variants for your song. Some of them are very powerful.

Just make beats, over and over, and once you get good with the PO, compile your favorites, record them into a DAW, master to taste, and release it to the world!

Share it with the world

Finally, once you finish your album, feel free to pitch your project to me, and I’ll include whatever I like into the following playlist:

Cristóbal Dión shares with us how the “Vixens & Villains” mixtape was created. Vixens & Villains will be released in early june 2023.

The productions AKA the BEAT selection

Most of the beats were previously released in the context of a beat-tape. Some beats however were never released such as Faf Larage’s “Free”, as well as Jay NiCE & RU$H’s “High Road”, at least at the time this article is originally written.

All artists were provided with the same folder of selected beats from my catalog.

• AJ Suede picked “Papalou” from LoFi Exotica Beat-Tape

• Psalm One picked “Erotica” from LoFi Space Age Beat-Tape

• Mega Ran picked “Space Love” from LoFi Space Age Beat-Tape

• Gavlyn picked “From a poor village” from LoFi Ninja Beat-Tape

• Teller Bank$ picked “Betrayer” from LoFi Ninja Beat-Tape

• Jayy Starr picked “Lovey’s secret job” from LoFi 60s Spycraft Beat-Tape

• Quelle Chris picked “Send the Goddamn Telegram” from LoFi 60s Spycraft Beat-Tape

• Josiah the Gift picked “Space Propulsion” from the LoFi Space Age Beat-Tape

• Gifted Gab picked “Dark & Mysterious” from the Erotismo EP.

• The intro is based on “Nakamich Dragon” from SciFi Cyberpunk Beat-Tape and incorporates vocal chops from all the other songs.

It was important for me that every artist could pick and choose whatever they feel most connected with.

At first I was really afraid that everyone would pick the same beat, which is usually common when you have one beat clearly better than all the others. I like to believe that with experience and talent, you are able to create a wide variety of beats that are all as good, simply different.

Not once, not a single time, 2 people picked the same beat (except Jay NiCE & RU$H obviously, since they work together). Everyone was able to find something for their very personal taste. More than once I was surprised by their choice, and that’s the beauty of collaboration.

The final result is a very interesting mix of LoFi and gritty beat, that ranges accross all the different tempos.

Getting the MCs on-board

That part was already cover in a previous post: https://www.beat-tapes.com/blog/alternating-with-mixtapes

The entire mixtape was done via Internet, with a mix of conversation through instagram DMs and emails, pretty much.

Mix, Mastering, Assembling the album

I asked all the MC to provide me with their vocals dry (without effects), all in separate stems (Main, hook, back vocals, adlibs, etc.), since I really insisted on mixing the songs myself. Most songs were mixed at 96 kHz, with some exceptions mixed at 192 kHz. The mastering was done at 192 kHz. I mastered the album twice, since I felt I could push it a bit further in terms of volume. To assemble the album, I took the time to figure out a progression that I liked and felt natural to me.

Music Videos

By now, you should know that I really like to have short clips, if not full lenght music videos. Although there was no in-person meetings, I had to be creative and put something together.

I’ve previously discussed that I was interested in trying different time signature for hip hop. Beats have been stuck on the 4/4 format since pretty much right the beginning. What happens if we get things interesting again?

Well, it gives you a different type of groove, that for sure, where the first kick really makes it tick, doesn’t it?

Many people asked me for examples, and until now I had nothing to show for real. The wait is over, here it is! Do not hesitate to follow me on different platform (bandcamp being my main) for more!

In album on the left, Sci-Fi Cyberpunk Beat-Tape tracks 2, 3, 4 and 7 are following a 3/4 time signature.

On the right, HiFi Dystopian Beat-Tape, song #3 also follows the 3/4 signature.

Creating my latest release, “LoFi 60s Spycraft Beat-Tape,” was a unique and challenging experience. As human, we often correlate our value with what we do, but what happens when you lose your personality and your capacity to think?

I discovered it the hard way, when a teammate from my basketball team tried to throw a steph-curry 30 footer with a beautify hyperbole trajectory, and the ball transferred all its kinetic energy to my poor skull. For 3 months, I was reduced to downgraded version of myself: A very fragile, cautious, quiet one.

For the first month, the only thing that would bring some life in me without burning me out was listening to vinyl records. My favourite era is the 60s. I love that Space Age/Exotica period. Luckily, it also happens that these records are pretty cheap: people have forgotten how cool they were.

Step 1: Gathering ideas: A passive-enough activity to get the ball rolling

So, with the few remaining synapses in my brain, I started to sample massively, loading my two 128 gb memory flash card on my MPC, so I could produce some great beats once I’m recovered. That’s the first phase of a creative cycle anyway: Gathering ideas.

Since I couldn’t do much anyway, I started to watch old James Bond movies. The movies from the 60s were much slower-paced than they are now and it was perfect for my brain capacity. I was able to enjoy time without overloading my poor brain with a flooding stream of information. Unconsciously, this set the tone for the project.

Step 2: Prototyping: Generating ideas

After 2 months, I started to see real progress. I could tolerate light better and move a bit more my head without the feeling of squashing my brain into the inner walls of my skull. I was still far from my usual fast-paced and intuitive workflow, but I could hit some pads without feeling too much vibration to my head, so I started to chop samples and intuitively play with it. All I had to do was to play some stuff on the MPC and record the audio into my computer.

Step 3: Embrace limitations

While I intended to modernize my sound with synths and modern techniques, the current situation forced me to rethink it. Since I’m born in the mid-80s, I grew listening to old school hip hop. In some sense, it was much easier and intuitive to go 100 % sample-based, forget about music theory and keyboard. Getting a crunchy 90’s sound sampling some 60s stuff with a fresh spin is what I felt best positioned to do.

Also, one of the biggest side effect of a concussion, is that you get really tired really quick. Your brain just can’t process as many bits per second as before, and if it can, it’s for a short-burst of time. So I alternate between naps, and short beatmaking sessions.

Step 4: Use music as rehab

As I got better, I was able to push my brain a little bit further. At that point, I could go back to all the project sessions I had created with basic ideas, and polish them. Beatmaking gave me something pleasurable to focus on, where there was no pressure. I could just go with the flow, and by monitoring closely my energy, I am convinced that it allowed me to optimize my recovery.

Step 5: Finishing up

By the third month, I was getting closer to my natural “me”. Still getting tired pretty quick, I was nevertheless able to do what is second nature to me: Mix and Mastering. For those who know me on a personal level, I used to own a mastering studio, so operating the knobs was something natural and easy to me, so mastering was easy to me. It was now time to get back to work, part time, and by squeezing 20 mins sessions here and there in my week schedule I got it done in 2 or 3 days. Now I’m in the process of publishing it and “marketing it” by simply letting my followers know.

It did also help to follow a template. This is the 7th release of the LoFi Beat-Tape Series, so I pretty much have my format: About 10 beats, some movie dialogues, total running time: 18 mins, so it sits perfectly one side of a vinyl disc. Now wasn’t the time to challenge that, I just applied the recipe and saved brain juice.

In summary

As the seventh installment in my LoFi Beat-Tape Series, creating this album was not without its challenges. I was still recovering from a severe concussion I had in October 2022, and I often had my kids home with me due to closed daycares, schools, or sickness. Being forced to take a step back and slow down was difficult at times, but in retrospect, it also allowed me to approach the project with a fresh perspective.

I focused mainly on sample-based techniques using vinyl records from the space age period (60s). I relied heavily on using chops and left the keyboard aside for now. Some days were a dead end, and sometimes my brain would allow me to create something magical.

Since this is my 7th beat-tape, I’m getting the grasp of it. My workflow is getting more effective and efficient with each release; it becomes second nature. The final product is a 18-minute beat-tape that I’m extremely proud of, especially considering how it was made. I can’t wait for people to hear it and see how it resonates with them.

Listen here

Past, Present and Future

My musical roots are definitely in the 90’s Boom Bap gold era. No doubt. I’ve always loved the lofi sound of samplers, and the vinyl noise in the background, etc. Even though we have the cleanest technology now, we look for bitcrushers, vinyl simulators, and 8, 12, 16-bit samplers.

However, I also went through a couple of phases where I felt I had to modernize my sound. At some point I’ve explored TRAP a bit, but I got bored really fast, since everything sounds the same and fake. Trap feels trapped in a trap… So where do we go from there?

I was looking at some of the top pop artists of all time such Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna and I couldn’t help but notice that they were always ahead of their time, not stuck in the past.

Making the move

Talking about the possibility of change and actually changing our habits are two different things. Talk is cheap. Actions requires some deep motivation.

For me, I had two different motivations: Inspiration and Pain. One is positive, one is negative. One builds pressure behind, and the other sucks you forward. Together they offer this powerful push-pull approach.

On the positive side, Flying Lotus’ and Bonobo stuff really inspired me. Together they seem to have shown me the way towards an electronic music that remains in the realm of easy listening. Lush sounds, hard hitting kicks, soothing downtempo and combining sample-based and electronic music into a beautiful and complex universe. These artists latest work gave me vision into what music of the future could sound like. It’s risqué, avant-garde, futuristic. I loved it.

On the painful-side, I’m a member of Timbaland’s beatclub. Beatclub is a platform where people are supposedly getting very high level A&R opportunities to have their music sync licensed to major TV shows, movies, or your beat submitted to major artists. My personal experience has been much more disappointing: no place for true exploration; every A&R opportunity is very specific to a certain commercial trap vibe (which I find distasteful). So, let’s say that for now, the current A&R opportunities are simply not for me. But, among the numerous rejection messages from my submission, one comment stood out to me: according to him, I sounded “dated”. Calling myself a “beat experimentalist”, if my music feels dated, I’m clearly not experimenting risky enough.

Pushed by pain, and pulled in by inspiration, it gave me the fire-power to start experimenting a new sound.

Music of the Future

On interesting thought experiment is, imagine you are in 2077 or 2049, what is the world like? Polluted, Populated and probably incredibly stressful, fast and efficient. What music do you connect to in that context?

It’s possible to predict the future with some accuracy by looking at history, and draw a trend. If you look at the music history, the dominating genre has been going through different phases, which kind of look like this:

Tribal -> Ethnic/folk -> Classical Music -> Big Band -> Jazz -> Rock -> Hip Hop -> … Electronic

In parallel to this, there this interesting phenomenon where old ideas are mixed with new, in an interesting cycling scheme. For example the recent LoFi album from Rah Zen sounds a lot like some early RZA stuff. Flying Lotus has lot of Vangelis’ blade runner original sound track in its DNA.

In other words, looking at the past can give us a fair indication of where the future is going.

In terms of culture, the same thing happens with the super powers and the First World order. If you look at the super powers over the course of history it kinds of look like this:

Dutch -> British -> USA -> … China

With the ascension of K-Pop and Samsung from South Korea, the technologically advanced Japan, the powerful innovative Singapore, and the well-educated india, I believe we can safely assume that THE FUTURE IS ASIAN. North America will become a classical relic such as Europe kind of feels like today (with the exception of Sweden and Germany, let’s say).

Regarding languages, The reason why english was so important in the last 100 years was because the two last super power were english-speaking countries. The fact that China wants to unify the language across its regions, from Mainland China, to Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau, down to Mandarin Chinese, it’s clear to me that Mandarin is the new English.

While it feels like a cultural genocide, I have to admit that it’s a good advantage from a language learner standpoint. While politics is not my place, it’s clearly something to pay attention to. That’s the reason why I’m currently learning Mandarin Chinese, by the way. I totally digress, but hey, it’s my blog so…

So expect the future love songs to be sung in Mandarin Chinese or Korean, not in english. While my music is instrumental, I might chop some mandarin dialogues here and there…

Getting Inspired

Personally, I never try to force inspiration, so it’s important to not force yourself to make music you don’t feel like making. However, as mentioned earlier, there was a light pulling me: Flying Lotus and Bonobo. So, I’ve decided to focus on that. I also love learning language and drawing, so I’m focusing on that.

Experimenting with the 3/4 time signature (waltz-like beatmaking?!)

Now, I needed something else to kick me out of my current patterns and habit, otherwise I always fall back into my known grooves.

In my recent vinyl digging, I’ve discovered a lot of Easy Listening from the late-50s and early 60s. It’s no secret that I love the Space Age Pop and Exotica era. Once in a while, a waltz would appear in there, changing things up a bit, and making it interesting again.

Beatmaking in 3/4 rather than 4/4 time signature is basically inexistent. If you type that in Youtube, you either find some unfinished experiments, or some beats that do not follow the 3/4 time signature at all (why is that? I don’t know. Were they forcing a 4/4 pattern into a 3/4 grid?). I’ve personally never heard a major hip hop or electronic hit that is 3/4, but feel free to send me some if you happen to know some.

Because it was used in the context of the Waltz (or valse), we know it can work out musically. We know it’s smooth and danceable with some adjustment.

While my first experiments were not exactly convincing, I’ve recently experienced a breakthrough. I’ve produced 2 beats in that time signature, that I find is some of my best or least most creative work. The fact that you need to adapt to a completely different rhythm forces you to get out of your comfort zone and to create new stuff.

While I obviously need to fine tune the detail of that new genre, I don’t believe anyone will tell me that my new sound sounds dated…

So stay tune for my 3/4 experiment Beat-Tape…

Growing up, I was consuming CDs at home, and cassettes on my way to school. Now 20 years later, I’m collecting vinyl. Am I the only one? Hell no. A vinyl record simply has a deeper feel than a mp3…

Why go physical in the digital era?

They are very good reasons why you should sell physical formats. Here are some:

Long-lasting impact

I’m speechless at how fragile digital is. I lost so many pictures of my kids (my oldest is only 7!). I can’t retrieve half of the beats I made in the 2000s. The ones I have are on CDs; The original files are either lost, on some hard-drive that has some glitches or simply no longer compatible anymore.

On the other hand, I can easily discover obscure bands from the 60s in vinyl on discogs. Vinyl record have an estimated longevity of 100 years, CDs and cassettes are closer to 20-30 years. We still have the original bank statement of Michaelango on papyrus, but somehow the wordpress website you made in 2015 is long gone.

Bitcoin is volatile, gold has been around for centuries. You get the point.

A deeper emotional connection with the user

The songs I bought on iTunes 10 years ago, are not only lost, but they also never scratched the itch that my records are providing me: a material object in a material world. Touch plays a great role in how we experience the world. Physically handling a record with care is a ritual for me. I love cleaning them, changing sleeves for higher quality brand new ones, sorting them on the shelves. They are also very hard to ignore. They occupy physical space in my room.

The Sound

Believe it or not, but a well press vinyl sounds much closer to a 24-bit 96 kHz than the m4a from iTunes, or streaming it from any platform (except maybe Tidal with MQA). You have that depth, smoothness to it. A brand new vinyl record, pressed in our days can sound really really good.

A quality burned CD or a good cassette, will have it’s own sound as well. It’s not the sound of streaming off youtube, that’s for sure. Tape has an interesting sound to it. Always loved how snappy the snares were and saturated kicks sounded in my walkman.

Profit

As discussed, to allow you to keep going, you’ll need to reach profitability at some point. I personally love this idea: Give the digital for free, sell the physical object.

Why I love this idea? It allows everyone to taste your product, get to know the songs. Once it becomes a classic to them, they can buy it physical. Physical also allows you to control Offer and demand. You control how much records are pressed, and therefore the pricing strategy. Limited editions are a great way to encourage people to buy quick. It’s also easier to work project by project rather than carrying inventory forever.

How to do it the right way?

I would like to tell you that it’s an easy process, but the truth is, it isn’t.

I was fortunate (or unfortunate enough) to have been a mastering engineer in a previous life. That means I understand how masters should sound like for different medium. What sounds good on CD might not sound good on vinyl, so you need to either make a master that will sound good on everything, or make different masters. If you have money, outsource it. If you have the skills, learn to do it yourself. If you have neither, get help someone else’s help (feel free to contact me).

Sounding good on vinyl:

Although it can sound the closest to a 24 bit 96 kHz file, you need to follow certain guidelines. It doesn’t handle loudness the same way as digital does. Overall, you want to have a mono bass, not too much of extreme low end, so compensate by a bump in the low mid, a very dynamic master, except in the high frequencies. You want to cap a limiter on high frequency material, or it will sound distorted. A good master for vinyl should sound open, dynamic, smooth, warm and effortless. You want to limit at 18 mins per side (that’s why I make 18 mins beat-tapes).

Sounding good on CD:

CD can sound very good and very bad. If you do it skillfully, your CD master will sound almost undistinguishable from the full definition master. Otherwise , it will sound quite different.

Low bitrate (16 bit) and low sampling rate (44.1 kHz). In the streaming era, this is considered to be HiFi, but honestly, it’s a format from the 80s… You want to get as close as you can to a stereo standard 24 bit 96 kHz.

I feel it is necessary to cover some basic digital signal processing knowledge:

Bitrate:

Bitrate is the amount of level information that is contained in the file. So to capture the nuances of the signal (low and high volumes) you need a certain bitrate. The standard is 24 bit wav which covers 144 db, which is more than you need. However, when you need to chop down to 16 bit, truncating hurt your sound quite a lot. Dithering is a way to capture the nuances lost by truncating through some noise shaping. Figure below explains it well in my opinion.

16-bit means you will be losing information in the quiet zones. You want to hit close to the 0 db as much as possible in order to take full advantage of the 96 db dynamic range it provides you. That’s why a decent level of loudness helps, since it will protect more information before truncation. However, hitting to close to the 0 db is also not good, as the listener will experience intersample clipping as their converters might or might not be of high quality.

So, by using a truepeak limiter (or using oversampling), leaving some headroom like -0.5 db, and using a high quality dither, you should be able to get a 120 db equivalent dynamic range with 16 bit without harsh distortion on the listener’s end. My recommendations are: around -14 to -10 db RMS, -0.5 dB peak using a true peak limiter, and oversampling. Use 16-bit dithering. I personally like POW-R #3 for Jazz and orchestra, versus POW-R #1 for loud dance music, but there are others that are commercially available.

Sampling rate:

As opposed to what people think, the biggest problem with the 44.1 kHz sampling rate isn’t the frequency response. I agree with all of you that most of us don’t ear much above 20 kHz, so anything above 40 kHz should do the trick, in theory.

The problem isn’t in the frequency response per se. There are two problems. The first is in the TIME-domain. The resolution of the ear in the time domain corresponds to a bit more than 96 kHz sampling rate. The smallest time difference you can hear between two hits is about 10 ms. 192 kHz is overkill in that regard. Unfortunately, there isn’t much you can do about it: you will lose information when you will downsample from 96 kHz to 44.1 kHz (unless we are talking about MQA, which “repairs” the time response using extra information hidden in the available bits). However, for those who normally work at 44.1 kHz, there will be a gain to work at 96 kHz so the different drum and percussion fall together in high resolution, and sum it at that resolution. Although it’s called lofi, rhythm is a very important aspect of that music.

The second problem is that operations such as saturation, compression, limiting and clipping generate harmonics, which will create content above the maximum frequency that the sampling rate can handle. That information gets misinterpreted and create a harsh sound through aliasing.

To get an example from the visual domain, when you look at a wheel spinning on a 24 fps movie, you see the wheel slowly switching rotation direction. This is because the rotation is now higher than 24 rotation per second. That’s aliasing.

Some will argue that LoFi is cool because of the crunchy texture that lofi digital gives. It’s a valid opinion. I personally prefer to be the one in control, adding noise when I want to, as opposed to being stuck with a harsh sound that irritates me and not being able to do anything about it.

To sound good in 44.1 kHz, the trick is to work at higher resolution for processing. You make your project in 96 khz, or you worst case use oversampling when you compress, limit, saturate and maximize. You step down to 44.1 kHz at the last minute.

Cassette

For cassette, it’s a lower-fi type of sound, so you have a bit more freedom. However, I have found that the quality of the recorder is the most important factor. After trying a bunch, I arrive to the conclusion that a very good Nakamichi tape deck in real time recording from the original 24 bit 96 khz master gives the best result.

Let’s be honest, the market for people constantly looking for Beat-Tapes is rather slim. This means there is a clear limitation on how big of a fan base you can get by your reach only. Sooner or later, you might want to consider collaborating with MCs to accelerate your growth.

Doing it for the right reasons

First, don’t do it for profit only. Don’t get popular MCs just because they will get you streams. Although streams are important, make sure you are doing this project out of love and passion, otherwise, it sounds like it.

Get MCs you genuinely love, and look forward to collaborate with!

Handpicking your artists

Unless you’re already rich, you are probably going to be on a shoestring budget, at least for the first one. That means, you won’t get the people the top people of your dream right away. That said, I see two caveats:

First, if you’re on a budget, don’t pick artist at the top of their career. So you either pick a rising star or a slowly declining artist. For boom bap, this is totally realistic, since the golden age was in the mid-90s, a lot of them are now affordable. While you don’t want a completely forgotten artist, you can reach out to some of your idols that are still very active. Regarding young people, they are so available online, it’s easy to get in touch with them.

For US artists, I’ve decided to pick rising stars. That’s how the project Vixens & Villains was born:

The roster includes the following:

VIXENS:

• Gavlyn

• Gifted Gab

• Psalm One

• Jayy Starr

VILLAINS:

• AJ Suede

• Mega Ran

• Josiah the Gift

• Teller Bank$

• Quelle chris

• Jay NiCE & Ru$h

The second caveat is to take advantage of our global economy. While a US MC are expensive, you can reach out to super-rapper within smaller countries with similar impact. These artist will have a more local reach, but they will bring in the numbers for often less money.

A perfect example of this of mine is getting FAF LARAGE on-board. He checks all the boxes:

• One of my favorite MCs of all time.

• His career peak was in the late 90s, early 2000s.

• He is from France, but has a some level of global reach, like in my home country (Québec, Canada).

• Bonus: He is closely connected to my favorite hip hop group of all time: IAM.

It wasn’t quick and easy to get him on-board, but he’s one the featurings I’m the most excited about.

Tapping into existing audiences

What is nice with beats is that it can complement very well with either singers or rappers. I’ve always told myself I would release raw stuff, no choruses. Well, I shouldn’t close the door entirely, and leave it open to have some rappers now and then to drop a killing 16 bars. I’m now forced to admit that the beats seems to come alive when a MC comes into play and adds his/her flavour to it.

On a more down-to-earth topic, rappers are investing a lot into building their brand, building a fan base and getting street creds. By associating yourself with them can jet fuel your brand.

Keep it short or make supersongs?

When you’re on a shoestring budget, you will see that the cost adds up quite significantly. You ask yourself: Is it better to have less songs that have a bigger impact, or a lot of smaller ones?

As always, the answer is “it depends”.

I’ve personally chosen to keep all songs short, one MC per beat. Although it’s probably not the best business move (sometimes ONE big HIT leaves bigger traces), it’s the one I felt most interested in. Why? Because I wanted to showcase a wider range of my beatmaking abilities, and secondly, I wanted to make sure each MC was able to connect with a beat of their chosing. So far, it hasn’t happened than more than one ended up selecting the same beat.

So, I’ve produced what I called espresso shots: short, dense, intense.

Release beat-tapes to hone your craft, make mixtapes to extend your reach

Beat-Tapes are a great tool for growing as a producer. It’s hard work, little pay, little attention, but it definitely forces you to hone your craft. It also has the merit of doing something that is incredible valuable long term: A Catalog.

Releasing Beat-Tapes consistently will force you to improve, and it leaves traces. It showcases what you can do. It’s a sampler (pun intended) or portfolio of what you did in the past.

Personally, I have no problem re-using pre-released beats to suddenly have a rapper remixing it. Using that strategy is highly effective: You make beat-tapes that will serve as raw materials for rappers to choose from.

Getting MCs to pick a beat of your own is incredibly satisfying, but you will need a proven catalog to be taken seriously, even if you’re paying.

Getting in contact with rappers

At my stage, I can’t approach (nor afford) big stars yet; they simply don’t read my (if any) messages. That said, there is a LOT of talent out there. I personally target up-and-coming rappers I feel have a great future. I need to personally like them as an artist obviously.

Here is the practical nugget for you my friend: email doesn’t seem to work at all, but I’ve got a near 50 % success rate using instagram DM. A good up-and-coming artist can charge anywhere between 250 and a 1000 USD for a 16-bar verse. Typical payment terms are 50-50 % before-after, but many ask for 100 % upfront.

While the US culture is commercially very easy to deal with, other countries artists tend to play “hard to get”. Considering two MCs with equivalent reach and following, it was much easier for me to sign a deal with the US rappers than some local “micro-star”. Being a big fish in a tiny pond, these tend to have inflated egos, so they tried to be play the diva.

I simply loved dealing with US MCs, as I didn’t feel any judgement. I might be white, from a french-speaking country, if they liked the beat and I was able to pay, I would get a deal.

Quantity leads to quality.

If you want to become one of the best beatmaker out there, you gotta practice, practice and practice… What if practicing could also mean increasing your output?

Step 1: Setting up for success

First things first, optimize your studio for workflow. It’s fine if the configuration evolves overtime, but make sure you always have a well organized, efficient and effective setup. Your equipment is readily accessible, everything is well plugged, and you can get to make music within seconds. I personally even leave my MPC X on all the time, so I can just sit down and punch pads.

Second, get the right tool. Don’t waste your time on half-working equipment. Spend a little bit and get what you really need. Your spouse might not like it at first, but the truth is, you’ll be better off with a few high quality instrument than a bunch of junk. Really think about what would be your ideal work flow and invest in yourself.

Step 2: Building a habit

Some prolific writers have a daily habit a sitting down and writing 2 garbage pages. They know that as long as they sit down and generate a few ideas everyday, eventually something interesting is going to happen: a magical moment is going to happen and a creative is going to spark.

This goes in hands with the previous step. The reason why you want to have an accessible functional studio at all time, is that you want to not waste anytime daily. After your day job, or early morning before the kids wake up, you sit down and produce a couple of loops.

Step 3: Understand the creativity process and work with it

Your brain works a certain way, and you’re better off working with it than against it. First, your brain can’t easily switch back and forth between creation and editing. Second, your brain needs time to clearly see (or hear) what is truly a good idea and what is just an okay one.

Knowing this, here is my proven methods:

1. Generate and capture lots of ideas daily

2. Once you’ve got an abundance of good stuff, you revist the different sessions and your try to pick the best of the best. Assemble what works well together, keep the best, reject the worse.

3. With your selection, you actually create the song/beat using all the bits and pieces from before. Intro, bridges, main drum loops, some B section, outro, etc.

4. Editing: you tune pitches, arrange timing issues.

5. Start mixing to reduce clashes between instruments.

6. Add arrangements, transitions sounds, etc.

7. Boom, you have one holy grail beat. Go back to the idea lots, and build another one.

This is basically a batch process, which is good for one beat-tape, with let’s say one theme. The key part is in 1, where you generate and capture diamonds in the rough. You will need to generate a lot of ideas to get a few that are excellent. This method allows you to not commit to a single idea too fast.

In a more practical way, here is how I do it:

1. I first start on the MPC no computer. I select 4 kicks, 4 snares, 4 hihats and some percussions or other sound. I fill the 16 pads of my MPC with it. I pick a tempo I’d like to experiment with.

2. I record the hihat first using quantization, so I have a steady tempo and I can get rid of the metronome.

3. I turn off quantization, and I start playing drum patterns until I find something that I really vibe on.

4. I record one top notch drum pattern using the sounds that work best together.

5. I copy the pattern onto a large amount of sequence, like 12 or 20.

6. I assemble records that I feel will fit well together. I sample the parts I find the most interesting for each, 3 mins at a time.

7. Using the chop thing, I hit the pad to make the chops I want,

8. That will be the basics on which I’m going to generate a lot of ideas.

9. Now at this point, I have a blank canva, a lot of resources and possibilities to go on and on and on. A lot of ideas can be created here.

That’s the idea generating steps. Once I’ve created 10 sessions filled with 15-20 sequences like that, I know for sure I’ll have enough material for a beat-tape. I can at any time go back to any one of those session, and I know I’ll find in each of them at least 1 to 3 loops that are real good.

Step 4: Package it and publish it

For some of you, that’s the hardest part: Putting yourself out there.

Yep, I know. You’ll feel naked at first, but it gets easier every time. Now I personally can’t wait to publish something new and see the reaction of the people. I used to be so scared of releasing something, I would just work on it indefinitely until it would overgrow it.

Another reason why I suggest releasing is this: Technology is unreliable. At some point, your hard drive is going to crash, some software will stop working, your MPC will die, or your kid is going to snap the SD card. Publishing is the best way to “save your work forever”. Once it’s public, there will be copies somewhere.

Also, feedback is part of the game. The more you release, the more feedback you get, the more confident you become, and you can take more risks. This can be highly rewarding.

At first, nobody is going to give a damn though. You need to be prepared for that. Look at it the right way: you’ll eventually be ashame of what you release first, so it’s a good thing nobody pays attention to it just yet.

Most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a day, but underestimate what they can achieve over the course of a decade. At the same time, the universe needs time to catch up to your awesomeness. The universe’s response time isn’t as quick as we would like.

Getting comfy with being uncomfortable

They are a couple of reasons why we can’t wait to “succeed”:

• Nobody likes to feel like a failure

• Self-doubt: waiting for results makes us agitated

• We don’t know yet if our methods is the right way

• The uncertainty drives us crazy

• We don’t have “faith” in the process

• We simply can’t focus our attention to long-term amid all the inmediate “emergencies”.

So in other words, TRUST THE PROCESS, learn through experience, and keep testing stuff until you find something that works for you. Think long-term: What do you really want, and then put down a plan, with daily discipline to achieve it over the course of let’s say 5 years.

At the end of the day, you either commit to something or you don’t.

Right now, I’m committed to learn mandarin chinese. It apparently takes 2200 hours. Although, I’m convinced it’s overestimated, the best way to reach that 2200 hours is doing whatever is possible systematically every day. Right now, I’m looking at putting in 30 mins per day for 1000 days in row without a single miss (~3 years). Which will get me to 500 hours, after which, I’ll be able re-assess.

Beat-Tapes as a high-risk R&D project

In my “real” day job, I’m a director of R&D for the aerospace industry. This is probably one of the most uncertain job you can think of. We’re talking high-risk, huge capital costs and long-term investments. In other words, I could be spending 5 years of my life and company’s millions of dollars to develop something that will not even work or that the industry will consider too risky to adopt.

How do you deal with that, here is my two cent:

• Produce a lot of ideas, test a bunch of them at small scale (low-risk, low cost), take the ones that are most likely to work, test further at bigger scale, THEN invest all-in on the best idea.

• Look at “failure” in a different way. To develop a new technology, you will need at least 250-500 experiments for which the majority could be considered as failure. So expect a great of them to have every possible kind of feedback: Setbacks, little-wins, explosions (R&D = Research and DESTROYS), etc.

• A failed experiment is just that, it’s not a definitive failure. Understand why something works or doesn’t and prepare your next experiment. You only fail once you have exhausted all possible ideas and you face the conclusion that this project goes against the laws of physics and you need to fold.

Now if I come back to the real subject of interest: Making beats

• Make tons of beats, some of them can be ideas only. Feel free to explore different genres, style, aesthetics.

• Take the best ones from that batch, and invest a little bit more time on it, see where it goes.

• By now, some shall be clear winners. Finish those.

• Among the ones that are finished, released the ones that fit together and make the best possible product.

• Release it to a small group of people to test the product, and collect feedbacks.

• If people are reacting positively, THEN invest your money. Make tapes, make vinyl, make CDs or whatever.

• At this point you shall go all-in. You promote the shit out of that product.

• Rince and repeat. Not all tapes need to sound the same. Go by phases.

What is the long term vision?

That is different for everyone. It’s therefore important to have some introspection into what we truly are looking for in life.

Personally, I hope to make a decent side revenues from my art. I need to make art as I need to breathe. At the same time, I hope to one day be able to live off my income generating assets (namely, intellectual properties, such as royalties, catalog sales, etc.)

Imagine that Tesla or Apple were to launch an hotel chain, I’m sure you can already visualize how it would look like, and as well not look like. That’s because their brand identity is clear and well defined. You know what it stands for and against.

I don’t know about you, but I would be very surprised if the clerk at the reception would be anything else than an AI humanoid on a large screen. The fact that I expect something like that from them while it is absolutely not the case in any actual existing hotel chain tells a lot about the meaning of these brands.

Much like the Hotel business and the electric car industry, the Beat-Tape community also has its own set of expectations, influences and trends in terms of branding.

Strong Brands lead to RECURRING SALES

Just in case it wasn’t clear by now, the quality of your brand directly impacts your long term revenues. Why? Because the most stable and reliable revenue is RECURRING REVENUES.

Why is branding related to recurring revenues? Imagine you release 10 albums over the course of your career and let’s say the 5th one is a big hit. The person that got to know you from that big hit now has your brand on his/her radar. From now on, that person’s brain is going to screen and filter any other records. If it recognizes another record from you, thanks to a similar theme, logo, color scheme, etc., this will trigger a response: a potential sale.

Beat-Tape Recurring Themes

Samplers, Cassette Tapes, Donuts, Space, Coffee, Cats, Ninjas and Kung Fu Masters are obvious recurring themes for sure. Now do you absolutely have to follow the trends and clichés? Of course, not. But just keep in mind that people must have an idea of what music genre it belongs to when they see an artwork.

Have Your Own Branding

A brand is not just a logo. Your fans/customers should also have certain expectations when they visit your bandcamp page, instagram, or else. A good brand comes with a vibe, an ambience, a feel, a personality, a set of values, that are CONSISTENT all across the platforms.

Consistency is key. The more random the different album and artwork feel, the more DILUTED your brand is. The more diluted, the less effective.

I encourage you to set your own “standards”. Meaning, figure out a way of doing things that work for you, and stick to it. It can evolve over time of course, and you can change your mind later on, but you have to streamline your releases into a coherent path.

Good examples of consistent branding:

Each of these have very specific branding approches:

• Brockbeat: Soft colors, mellow beats. It’s a soothing brand.

• City Girl: Very girly, Quiet Nights meets Cyberpunk

• Cristobal Dion: You should know this one by now ! 3D generated characters, dark and exotic, strong feminine presence, even in the Muse logo.

  • * Some will notice that one album cover doesn’t fit at all. It’s Fundraising single in support for Ukraine, and therefore it wears Ukraine’s colors. You can see clearly how dissonant it is with the rest of the page. That’s brand dilution.

• Dead Channel: Clearly lofi, Space, VHS type of vibe. Reminds of the oldies Space Age.

• Kabuki Ninja Lofi: Ninja, Kung Fu Masters, 202 and 303 samplers, definitely Lo-Fidelity on purpose. The artwork feel like they did patch work on the first version of Paint on windows 95.

• Sweeps: I love this branding concept. Everything is clean and smooth, but also has some oldies Space Age feel to it.

How do you build a strong brand?

• Consistency

  • Themes

  • Colors

  • Artwork style or method to produce them

  • Design rules

  • Sound

• Clarity

  • What you stand for

    • Values

    • Vision

    • Mission

• Quality

  • Quality of your products

  • Your reputation

  • Quality of your shipment, packaging, etc.

  • How elegantly you resolve an issue with a customer

Last word?

As stated above, Strong branding leads to recurring sales.

but more deeply: Clarity leads to action.

When a potential fan screens your page he/she looks for cues to decide whether to like you or not. Ideally, you want to trigger a “love it or hate it”-type of reaction. Either it’s clearly FOR THEM or clearly it is NOT.

If it’s clearly FOR them and the value/price ratio is right, it usually triggers an action. An action can be just starting to follow you, which eventually will lead to a sale if you do it right.