Swing drums when Making beats - Akai Mpc 2000XL

let's let's have a look at how i make a beat here on the excel and you can follow the same method if you're using another mpc the akai force or another sample i'm just going to show you how i create a drum loop when i make some beats and it usually it's uh around this workflow that i'm going to show you everything's based on shifting notes instead of recording unquantized i do record some stuff on quantized but i mainly like to record everything on the grid and then shift notes around i'll give you a brief example right here on the excel and you can but you'll you can do that on any type of sample etc it's basically the same thing so yeah let's get into it okay i got my kick snare hi-hat first thing i like to do is to record the snare and if you notice i got my full level on i like to keep the same level on the snare so i'm going to put the snare first on the first track [Music] so everything's quantized if you see the timing right there it's set to 16s now i'm gonna go into another track track number two and i'm gonna drop the kicks inside okay same thing [Music] great now we're going to jump onto another track let's get the hi-hats in and usually i like to separate my hi-hats i like to keep a section of the hi-hats on one track and another section on another track now i do it like that in here on the excel but if i was to do it on another machine like the force or the mpc uh touch or any of the other new npcs i would put everything into just one track because it's easy to work that way but here i like to separate everything okay but still the same process of recording so i've got my hi-hats i'm going to drop it on to track three track number four i'm gonna record another hi-hat i'm gonna stop the full level right there and i'm gonna choose uh velocity for my hi-hats because i want to record a lower section of the hi-hats i could easily change that just by going into the track and lowering the volume of the track but i'm just going to record it like this maybe this that's fine so let's go so that's how i record everything but i already know that i'm going to some notes so that's pretty square you know there's no swing in that whatsoever what i'll do here just uh for comparison purposes i'm going to copy this sequence onto another one so we're going to be working with sequence number two and we're going to shift notes right here so our first our first track is uh the track with snares so let's go inside the timing so let's go into the timing i'm going to open it up so i'm going to shift uh my uh i'm gonna shift the stairs earlier by six and this really depends on what you like to do i use six sometimes i use four sometimes i use ten it really depends on how much you want to swing okay but i prefer to do it manually like this but i want my my snares and hi-hats to hit at different positions so it creates a a a more interesting swing so i'm going to select uh the snare okay i'm gonna shift this early by the amount of six that's it just press do it and now we're gonna start hearing the snare hitting sooner okay let's compare this and if you feel like you need to shift it a bit more then you can do so just by going into the uh i'm gonna put nine do it and just by doing that alone you get swing on your drum loop okay now let's go into uh let's go into track number four where we have the other section of the hi-hats okay so we're going to be working with those hi-hats i'm going to just play with the hi-hat on track number four and i'm going to shift it later okay so later by the amount of maybe three let's let's try it out and this will be my hi-hat now it will only shift the notes of the hi-hats on track number four that's why i separated the hi-hats to another track so we're gonna shift this later by the amount of three for my hi-hats do it so it's super easy everything's getting shifted and if you want to compare this now you'll hear a major difference now i like to shift my kicks as well so let's get into the timing again and choose the kick and usually i might shift it a different from the hi-hats but just a little bit so let's go into maybe amount of uh let's try five let's see how it sounds it's it's not an accurate science i i try different numbers all the time so but yeah later same as the hi-hat uh got a kick let's do it so i like that swing if i was to do the same process on another mpc or the akai force it would be a similar workflow but i would have much more control over each hit of the snare each hit you have that control as well in here but it's easy it's not as easy to work as on the new npcs obviously but still the same concept recording quantized and then just you know and then shifting everything so we have a swing going at this point i'm going to drop some samples over this and just hear the samples and see how they're working with the the swing that i created if everything's okay i start adding extra kicks to this and now i don't record these kicks i don't record quantized i just turn the time into off and i record it unquantized okay so i've got my kick right there and this it's just a matter of playing with this and whenever i hear a pattern that i like i record that in i'm just go i'm going to go 16 level so i get different type of velocities this is going to go for my kick turn it on [Music] uh really important in here when you're creating swing i understand that swing is just a function within the mpc but swing means that you're going to be working with timing and you're going to be working with levels at the same time so you want to be able to have different levels with your hi-hats different levels with your kicks at this point i'm using velocity for the kicks because sometimes i want to have just a very low kick and then sometimes i want to have a high kick so you know that's it so i'm going to record like a section i'm just going to improvise a little bit and record a section of the kicks now with the timing sets off so let's go [Music] so and that's that's basically how i work it's a it's a simple technique but it will give you some swing and this is the method that i use all the time so i'm just i'm just going to drop some samples over this and see how it sounds okay [Music] and now it's just a matter of uh making sure that the levels are correct and everything and that's another reason why i separate everything into tracks here on the xl let's say this track right here that's my second hi-hat track i'm gonna just lower the level [Music] and uh sometimes what i do is i add some extra hi-hats as well so take this full level off i'm going to go into a new track and i'm going to record some extra hi-hats i'm going to put this to quantization again uh 16s so that's it turn it on i'm gonna just and now we can even shift those hi-hats a little bit more so let me see one thing they're actually being recorded with a later amount let's try and give it a bit more okay so make sure we have those high hats in i'm just going to give it the amount of six so shift it shifting the hi-hats uh later a bit more let's hear how this sounds [Music] and that's that's basically it i'm going to keep going more you get the gist of it everything is being recorded quantize and then shift and everything i hope you guys enjoyed the the method that i used uh try it out uh very simple but yeah it helps a lot again this workflow it's much simpler on another npc the new npcs or the akai force uh but yeah it's basically the same thing record and shift nodes until you find something i've recorded the hi-hat quantized in here but i prefer to record it unquantized so the first hi-hat that hits on the first in the two with the snare and the kick i like to record that quantize but the ones in the middle i record unquantized the same as the kick so i hope you guys enjoyed the video and i'll see you on the next one you got any questions please put them in the comments section go ahead and just press that like button so the videos can get more views uh in also share the video if you can i'll see you on the next one peace

Channel: Marlow Digs - mpc head

Views: 50,477

Rating: 4.9482565 out of 5

Keywords: mpc 2000xl, akai mpc 2000 xl, making a beat, crate digging, digging in the crates, music, making music, lofi beats, lofi hip hop, boombap beats, making a boom bap beat, hip hop beat, j dilla, mad lib type beat, rap, instrumental beats, akai mpc 1000, mpc 2500, pete rock, mpc one, mpc live, mpc head, marlow digs, sampled beat, hip hop tuga, swing drums, drunk beats, lofi drums, boombap drums

Id: Rz8LDxMN36I

Length: 13min 9sec (789 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 03 2020