As soon as maybe a week before “Bandit” dropped, I saw on Twitter that Cole was doing
the video for it and I knew it was going to be out of here.
So as soon as it came out I tweeted Genius.
I was like, “Hey, my guys at Genius, hit me up again.”
You know, it's like routine for us.
We got to go in the studio, shoot the ‘Deconstructed,’ put it out on YouTube and wait for the next
song to come out and do it again.
I mean I made this beat May 10th, 2018.
I think the focus then was just making stuff for Juice’s album that was coming out then.
I think it was ‘Death Race for Love.’
This was one of the beats and I think he did a song to it and it didn't come out in the album.
I was like confused.
And then a couple of weeks before it came out I found out that it leaked,
because I didn't even know, the leak did like hype fans up a little bit.
I think the Youngboy feature too added on more hype to it cause he didn't know what song he was getting on at first.
I mean pretty much when I made the beat it was another one of those days where I just
cook up a bunch of stuff on, I have a Twitch stream account and I just go on there and
live stream for hours on hours, making beats.
It was just another one of those beats that I made and then I just put it in a folder
and shot it over and then came the song.
There's been music recently that I've made that when I first made it on Twitch, everybody's
like, what is this?
You should structure the beat like this, this is trash, this is trash.
And then when I get an artist on the song and it comes out, they're like, oh this is
so fun, it's the best thing I heard in my life.
I like being experimental and doing stuff that you wouldn't do.
It's like the point is to break the rules.
I think it was at the end of the stream I was kind of getting tired and making loops
or something.
The first melody I did is this guitar melody that I actually pulled in from Omnisphere,
it's just like a classic nylon guitar.
Usually I like to do live guitar loops with actual recording it, but I just wanted it
to sound artificial.
When I was making the melody it reminded me of like, I don't know Zelda or something.
It gave me strong video game vibes.
When I made that loop, I thought it, the original sound, it was very dry and it just sounded
robotic.
So I just threw a bunch of effects on it, vinyl crackling in the background, a little
bit of detune here and there and just tape sounds.
So it has that retro feeling to it.
So after I got that melody, I went in Keyscape and I just got a simple piano.
It just sounded really dark and it feels like a Halloween movie.
It could be in, it complimented the jungle type of vibes I got from the main guitar.
It just felt medieval to me.
Like it was fire.
After I did that piano, I brought it up an octave and did this cool strum effect in FL,
you can just do alt S, and it strums the keys.
So it plays left to right or right to left, however you want it to play.
I mean when I put that sign in, I thought it was cool, but I just like experimenting
with the stuff.
So I just like, I hit the keys and I thought, oh this sounds cool.
But I was like, let me exaggerate and just make it sound overly strumming.
Like nobody would play it on the piano, but it kind of has a harp sort of feel, but it's
playing a piano.
So it just sounded cool to me.
After I had that part, I went in and I added this sound that you could really just tell,
it's what gave it the video game vibe.
It's just an arp I got from EletraX I think.
The keys that I played on it are the exact same as the keyscape.
I just copied it and then pasted it over.
So after I did that, I copied the root notes from the melody and pasted it on my 808.
The number one key on how to tune your 808s.
Right here I have the 808 for you guys to listen to.
It's in the same key as the melody, so it is not going to be out of tune.
The bounce on this also goes along with the arp of the Elektra video game arp that I played.
Probably my favorite beat ever has to be “Mr. Me Too” by Pharrell.
The 808 slapped so hard in it.
It hits and it slowly drops and then it hits again and like keeps coming back.
So it has this pulsing feel to it and it's just the right keys and the beat slap, shout
out Pharrell.
He's probably my favorite producer and we're both from Virginia so...
So after I had the 808 I just went in and added a good old two-step hi-hat pattern on
top of it.
It's just fundamental to the track.
So I didn't want it to be crazy because the melody already had the bounce to it.
You don't need four counter melodies and you don't need eight melodies and 2000 drums on
the track.
Like the biggest songs have the fewest tracks because there's a lot of room for artists
to sing melodies on.
I didn't get that until I started getting in sessions and hearing what they really picked
and hearing what they didn't.
And I started to realize, oh they like melodies where it's a lot of room for them to breathe
on.
After the high hats just added a simple clap like always with these beats.
So after I had the clap, I just laid down a background snare for more groove and I'm
going to play it with the clap in the background so you can hear the context of it.
So after I had the clap and the snare and the hi-hat, I just added this simple open
hat, like at the end.
I had the beat done but I thought the hook, there could be more energy.
Like the beat can pick up a little bit.
So I threw in a kick at the last minute, just pasted the 808 pattern on there and like a
good trick for you guys, if you want to learn how to put all your kicks on the same note,
like if you drag in the 808 pattern and it's just all over the place, if you just do alt
K, in FL studio and just select a note like this, it just puts it all on one note so then
you don't have the kicks like all over the place.
So this is what the kick pattern sounds like.
It's really busy but since there's not a lot of perks in the background, it's suitable
and it sounds good.
This little thing I have at the end on this piano.
Let me solo real quick.
That little tiny little clip at the end it gives it the extra energy before it drops
so it's like don't and then it just drops and then it adds so much energy but it's just
like tiny, a small detail you'd never really think of but it adds so much groove to it.
I like to think of my beat structuring is like each part is a different scene.
It has like its build ups and it's up here and then it falls down.
In the intro, obviously I just had the guitar by itself.
So you're like, where's this going to go?
You don't know the direction of the beat at all.
After those four bars, everything else comes in and it feels like a real anthem.
I keep questioning when is the last song that I made while I was in high school that's going
to be big and at first when I did “Ransom” I was like, all right, this is my last high
school hit.
And then “Bandit” came out, I was like, oh so maybe this then.
They tried to put everybody who makes trap music in this box of you're just a trap producer.
You just put a loop in at the studio and put drums on it.
But it's so limiting and it really needs to stop.
We're all here making music and music is a collaborative thing.
And also I may say this PSA, it doesn't matter if you use loops or not because using loops
is music and music is a collaborative process.
So there, it's out.
And the name of the beat is, this beat is going on
genius.flp.