you ever wonder if your beats are good like you think they're good but you
don't know if they really are good what makes a good beat a good beat why are
some beats wack you want people to take you more serious as a music producer you
want artists to throw their money at you to buy your beats because they're so
good but you want to know how to make them better how to make it beats better
you may need some tips about five five tips
Cracka Lack busyworksbeats we're here to help how to make better rap beats in FL
Studio coming up what's up everyone my name is cockily welcome back to Cracka
Lack TV in today's video we're gonna talk about how to make better rap beats
in FL Studio so I've been making beats for over 16 years I've made hundreds of
wack beats over the years and what made those beats whack beats what happens is
at the time those beats were the best beats that I could possibly make in my
ear wasn't good enough to realize that those beats weren't good there are
several factors that go into making a beat a good beat so I put together a
list of five tips to make your beats better watch this video to the end and
use these five tips as like a checklist make sure you are doing these things
it's not way your beats can continue to get better and better over time to help
me out with this video I have the YouTube music producer GOAT BusyworksBeats
he's helped over 600,000 music producers and today we're here to help
you may be new to the channel make sure you subscribe and hit the bell to be
notified for future uploads for more good content just like this right here
are you guys tip number one is to use better sounds when I started with FL
Studio 15 16 years ago the sound selection was trash so the beats that
came out of it we're trash FL Studio got a really bad
reputation because when you would tell people that you use FL Studio to make
beats they would assume that you use the stock sounds that come with that verse
to do so they would assume that your beats suck just like the sounds that
come with it nowadays there's so many different dope drum kits vsts that you
can use they have way better sounds I'm gonna show you guys an example okay so
right here I put together a Loup using just some of the stock sounds
that come with FL Studio and you'll hear really quick that this isn't
good what was that now if you use better sounds these sounds I'm using right here
are all from different drum kits that are purchased I would say that this drum
loop sounds a whole lot better than the last one now don't get me wrong there
are certain gems inside the stock songs that if you dig through you can find
some good sounds in there but here's a melody that I just added and this would
be the not so good sound now doing the same exact melody but this time with a
better sound it sounds like this another tip is when you're making a beat and
you're going through doing your sound selection once you put your melody down
try to swap out the sound I do that a lot it would be going just like this
where I have the melody but basically try out what other sounds doing the same
melody until you find a song that you like also you can combine multiple
sounds together to create a new sound another mistake you guys make is
thinking that the headphones alone are gonna solve the problem you can
literally have the same exact model of headphones and get a 3 DB difference in
response that means if you buy the same exact pair of Sennheiser HD 600 and if
you buy the same exact pair of sennheiser HD 598 you could have a
different sound than what I'm hearing 3 DB is a massive massive difference and
sonar works has done a lot of research about this so it doesn't matter the
exact headphones you buy you're still getting a distorted reality of what your
mix is doing that's why you have to listen in multiple environments this
room is an environment it has barely any acoustic treatment we have some bass
traps in the corners but they don't really do
you know these speakers are built for a certain size and rooms so you guys have
to realize the easiest way to understand how to mix is listen in your studio
listen in your car listen on your phone and listen to the commonalities between
the each environment another trick when you're mixing here the sweet spots have
done a lot of research behind this just boost at 70 Hertz for vibrating your
anyway so that people feel it almost like when your phone vibrates you can
feel it 60 and 70 Hertz are responsible for that 100 Hertz and 200 Hertz are
responsible for a nice crispy base down but it doesn't really vibrate you can't
really feel it 2k is good for vocals 5 K is good for vocals to make them stand
out and 8 K is good for vocals to make them stand out and last week if you have
a female vocal or a deep male book like myself try boosting at 12 K it's gonna
open up the vocal and make you sound a lot nicer and a lot more crisp so those
are your EQ hotspots and mistakes that you guys make while you're mixing so
let's hop into FL and let's get hands-on and get straight to these mixing
techniques so the first step right now is I'm gonna turn up my headphones and
turn everything else down this is going to increase what's called Headroom
now another trick for mixing is using the fruity soft clipper so put this on
your kicks your snare just turn the threshold all the way up so you want to
crank your kick with a channel volume and your channel rep run into a soft
liquid go to your wrench tool go to level adjustment volume so you can feel
the kick so it's not that you have the wrong kick it's this you're not pushing
your kick hard enough our tip 3 is when your beats are too simple they don't
have enough going on or if they're too complex and there's too much going on
remember that when you're making a beat for rappers remember that their voice is
also an instrument that has to fit in there somewhere so you got to leave room
to give them their freedom to do what they do alright so right here I'm gonna
play you guys an example of a beat that is too simple now the opposite scenario
is let's say you lay down a melody then you pull up some more sounds and you're
thinking oh let me play another melody with that so you do that then you think
of let me think of countermelody I can add so you add that then you think of
let me think of a lead I can put in the hood so you do that and then you keep
thinking of another sound another sound another song you keep cramming it full
of all these different melodies and sounds going on
you don't leave no room for the artist to do what they do so keep that in mind
when you're making beats specifically for an artist to get on leave room for
artists don't have too much and don't have too little you got to have that
sweet spot another thing is music theory so what I bring you guys over here to
understand this with music theory when you're making tracks just like a good
time so if I pick up this guitar and I don't tune it I could potentially be out
of key this is like going into any store and is starting to play guitar now
luckily I've tuned this guitar so tuning is the first step you're always going to
sound out of key if you're out of tune so tuning is first then you find the
scale in the key well let's hop over into FL studio and I'll show you the
hands an application of all these tricks
combined shout out the crackle AK for having me on this channel is gonna be a
major major gem drop so I need you to smash that like button for the both of
us alright so let's look in through some music theory tips again this is the
track we made in how to make your beats two times faster they'll be on my
channel we're all familiar with keys and scales great but just like when you pick
up a guitar you can't just start playing you have to tune the guitar here's the
track step let's find like one core melody okay so this one right here now
what you can do is open up a plugin like scaler if you're not familiar with
scales and how to understand scale codes and you just type in the notes that
sound good with the notes that you're here okay and then you have D minor so
great that you know the scale D minor but the problem is what happens if the
sample you have is not it's pitched slightly sharp or slightly flat and that
happens a lot especially with older music so let's kind of pitch this up
kind of in between notes Drake does this a lot in a lot of his records so this is
using a modern music now if I play those same notes sounds out of key it's the
same exact notes so every note is 100 cents away so let's
say it's about half it's in between the notes literally 50 cents away you don't
that memorize all this stuff but just I'm playing the same exact notes in the
scale it sounds like I'm in the wrong key we're in D minor the samples in D
minor why is it that it's because of the tuning okay so let's get into how you
can find the tuning of a sample you can pull up a plugin like Guitar Rig
anything that has a tuner or like a tune fork tone which is a sine wave which
only has one frequency whereas sawteeth and square waves have multiple
frequencies in them so the first thing you need to do is find a note that
sounds similar to the notes that are playing in this case it was d and then
what you do is you change your reference pitch and it tells you okay middle a is
for 52 Hertz and that means you need to pitch your instruments up now that you
understand that your song is at for 52 Hertz tuning in auto-tune what you would
do is go to the scale D tune and pull this up to 452 and this will pull the
proper note so a lot of people don't do that with their vocals so their vocals
sound super out of key next thing you want to learn with music theory is how
to create chords literally with your eyes closed and you simply count up your
keyboard note by note to finish out the chord to coast where at zero wherever
you land is considered zero one two three four five six seven and now you
have a minor chord as long as you can count and you can teach anybody the
chord codes I've taught young people have taught old people
okay so let's all we got to do to play melody now is this ad G down in the low
rise so let's open up Hermes which is my plugin shout out to everybody who
supported this plug and it just came out and lets a lot of bail patch so you have
to go to the front go to detune and pull the top until it gets closer to that
note and now let's say you wanted to build a chord on top of that dum dum dum
dum you could use what are called chord codes so every chord has a code wherever
you land is zero then you count up your keyboard until you finish the chord code
so it's zero one two three or five six seven then you have D minor now it
doesn't mean that every single melody note needs a chord scales give you moods
so if you're going with a minor scale you're going with the more sadder Bob so
if you're going with major usually it's more happy vibe and there's other skills
that deal with other motions as well so each scale has its own emotion that you
could pull from all right the last and final tip is tip five and that's gonna
be sequencing a common mistake with amateur beats is not having your beats
in four bar increments like let's say you've got a four bar intro a bar hook
12-hour verse a bar hook what I like to do is every four bars change the beat up
so whether you bring a sound in or you take a sound out or you add some drums
at the hi-hats make the high hats come out drop the bass you can do lead ups
and add different effects in your transitions like at the end of the verse
drop the beat out at the end of the hook do something different to the beat to
change it up I'm gonna show you guys something right here that I like to do
to give my beats more bounce so right here I have a four bar intro and then it
jumps right into the hook the first four bars of the hook there's no kick and
then you'll hear right here I drop out the hi-hats and in the percussion to let
the bass ride and then the kick comes in and from sequencing it like this it
makes the drop sound that much harder I'll play what I'm talking about
alright guys I hope you found this video helpful again if you're not subscribed
already make sure you subscribe the bell to be notified for future uploads being
busy works beats also collabed on another video that's on his channel I'm
gonna put a link on the screen right here make sure you go check that out I'm
also gonna put a link in the comments and put a link in the description in
that video we clapped on a beat where I made the melody I sent that over to him
he added the drums the became I really dope so go watch that video right now
I'll see you guys in the next video Cracka Lack TV we out!