5 Techniques Madlib Uses In His Beats

today we're going to cover five different techniques that madly abuses and his beats [Music] basically if this played with me [Music] now mad lib has a very idiosyncratic style when it comes to his production his beats just sound very unique so i want to cover some ideas that he uses in order to get his beats to sound the way that they do by the way guys if you enjoy my videos think about subscribing it's really easy to unsubscribe if you get tired of my videos but it really does help my channel out so let's start off by listening to this beat that i made here that implements some of these ideas [Music] [Applause] now first off something that really stands out to me with his beats is his use of effects he will use particular effects on sounds that typically you wouldn't think to do so one very common technique that he does in many of his beats has to do with his base so if i were to isolate just the sample and the base you can hear this for yourself [Music] oftentimes with his base he'll create this wobbling effect which is something i don't think i've ever seen any other producer do as a regularly as he does a very popular song of his that implements this idea is thuggin by freddy gibbs so if i were to take this effect off of this base you can hear how this bass tone would have sounded regularly [Music] but here what i did was i used this tremolo effect right here what this basically does is it modulates the volume of your sound and that's how we get that wobble effect with the bass line here [Music] just a very unique idea here in other beats of his he'll use things like chorus or flanging effects on drums which is something you don't really hear too often beats either he'll basically just take those sounds that we all take for granted like drums and bass those straightforward sounds that we all use and figure out ways to make them sound unusual [Music] speaking of bass though something else that seems very common in mad libs beats is that he doesn't use very clean dense bases now this is me taking an educated guess but i would say that most of his beats consist of sampled bases so how i built this particular bass tone was that i used a different sound from the exact same sample [Music] you can hear if i were to take all the effects off of the sound [Music] you can hear with this sample we have that bass tone in the low end that's pretty clean there are no drums over top or other instruments that are close by to those lower base frequencies in this part of the sample so this allowed me to take this section of the sample and isolate the low end using an eq as you can see here after that i fatten this up using decapitator just to get it a little bit more loud and robust [Music] and just like that i have this clean base tone which again i use a wobble effect right after this and at this point what i did was i played the sample just like any other instrument [Music] you can hear again if i were to take all of the effects off of the sample now if you want a full video on how you can take this approach to build your own bass lines and figure out how you can use sampled basses for your own beats take a look at the video that's right above my head where i give you a full walkthrough of this exact concept so one of the advantages of using a base tone that comes from the exact same sample is that you quickly have a texture that fits with the sample itself a lot of the times when you try to add your own sounds into a sample based beat you'll run into the issue where they will start to sound a little bit more detached from the sample or the loop but using a bass tone from the sample itself will help you more easily integrate your texture with what you've already built since they came from the exact same source having said that if we sample sounds from an old 70s song for example they're not going to sound as clean and full as something that comes from a vst this base here isn't something that's going to make your house shake but again that's somewhat the aesthetic that we're going for not all bases need to be insanely powerful [Music] speaking of textures and aesthetics though another really important concept for these types of beats is getting the drums to fit so let's take a listen to what i've built here with my drums and this is something that's a staple of a lot of mad libs beats the way he integrates the drum sounds to sit inside of the beat and actually feel like it's a part of the sample itself now to do this this is gonna differ beat to beat sample the sample but generally what i did here was i tried my best to get my drums to match how the sample sounds meaning if the sample is from an old 60s or 70s record and it doesn't sound clean and polished getting my drums to sound the same way would be a good idea you can hear how to take all of these effects off of my drums the drums start to sound more clean and bright and not as integrated with a sample because of that now you may like the way this sounds by all means but in order to get this to match the aesthetic of this old worn out sample i had to weaken the drums you can see if i were to go into the eqs of many of these drum sounds i really reduced some of the more stronger more prominent frequencies in these sounds and i had a big focus on cutting the high end out in order to get rid of that brightness to help this fit the sample a bit better so you can see this is especially true with my hi-hat here and at times cutting the lower mids where a lot of that body is in your drums can be helpful as well especially with your snares as you can see here you can hear it start to sound really weak now so yeah playing with the different frequency ranges in your sounds and cutting them out can be a great way to get them to fit your aesthetic they'll start to sound like they actually sit inside of the sample in a more integrated way although they will definitely sound weaker just like our bass did but again that's part of the aesthetic we're going for [Music] moving on another really common idea that i see in a lot of mad libs beats has to do with how he uses variation to keep the listening experience engaging and interesting and this beat here i tried to emulate this in a couple of different ways for one the use of instances with abrupt samples suddenly coming in you can hear if i were to play this section of the beat right here or later on right here we have that sun switch up here where i brought in a different section of the exact same sample and i basically created this quick little area inside of the beat where something different happens this is a technique that i outlined way back in a video that i put out about the different ways to keep your beat interesting so i recommend watching that video if you want a more complete look at this idea but this is something that madlib will commonly do just grab a different part of the exact same sample and create these quick switch ups to keep the beat from sounding repetitive and as you know repetition can easily happen if you use samples since much more of the sample is now static a technique like this can be a great way of keeping the beat interesting and engaging [Music] another thing that he does is he'll use panning and effects in unique ways again so here with a sample if i were to just play this without the panning effect that i added on top for the most part this loop is centered around this prolonged horn sound and it's just playing one long note and it isn't really moving or doing anything and this might quickly sound irritating and stale if i just had this one sample sit in this one spot playing this one note over and over again so again to help keep things interesting i added this panning effect here on top and panning effects like this are more common on smaller less significant sounds but mad lib will routinely use these ideas on more substantial sounds in his beats like the entire sample like it did here say just another way that he uses effects in really unique out their ways just like i referred to in the first point of this video something else that he does is that he will routinely run the entire beat under an effect for a brief moment in time again just to keep the beat interesting so here what i have is this filter effect so what you could do is just right click create an automation clip and then in your playlist you can quickly create a little short section of the beat where this effect turns on and off so yeah yet another really cool way to keep your beats engaging and keep things from becoming more repetitive again this is something that i outlined in that video that i mentioned before i really recommend checking it out it should be showing up on your screen right now so i hope you've enjoyed this video please like and subscribe if you did head over to betterbeatmaker.com if you want to join my full online beat making course my free drum kit's available in the description box below as well as a link to the discord if you want to join my producer community and i'll see you guys next time

Channel: Navie D

Views: 43,788

Rating: 4.9539347 out of 5

Keywords: Madlib beat tutorial, how to make a madlib beat, how to make a beat like madlib, How to madlib beat, How to make madlib type beat, How madlib makes beats, madlib tutorial fl studio, how to make madlib type beat fl studio, madlib beat flips, madlib beat breakdown, madlib beat making, Fl studio tutorial, Beatmaking tutorial, Beat making tutorial, Beats, Beat tutorial

Id: wW7N8iBS4KA

Length: 10min 10sec (610 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 08 2021