hey guys welcome back to another tutorial
I'm your host midlifecrisis beats the hold on sorry it's upside down okay so
today I'll be making a funk song with Ableton Live you guys might say hey
you've made three of these already why are you still doing this well I think I
figured out some ways to do it better since I did the first few which has been
like a year or two from now sorry which was like a year or two ago I think I've
like changed my approach totally and I think I could show you guys how to make
a better funk song easier now so let's do that okay here are some things you
will need for this video I'm gonna need you guys to know what funk music already
sounds like it sounds kind of like this my first video I'm funky music and how
to make it I feel it'll show you sub point pretty well you can check that out
up here you also need a funk ready acapella basically a Memphis rap song
acapella you can even use non acapella just EQ it pretty decently and sometimes
get away with it and create your own acapella using phonic mine or iZotope
rx-7 or ISSC i have the toriel's on muscles up in
this playlist up here if you wanna check those out first you may also want to use
a melody sample of some sort some of you are against sampling which I totally get
if you want to do a no sample beat and you're like hey I want to create my own
sounds so you can do that if you want I've heard plenty of artists get away
with it such as Saudi air or Saudi air or such
as Saudi air and obviously you're gonna need drum samples and something to
create bass with so massive serum contact wherever you got anything will
do
okay so first things first I'm gonna start off with a acapella I have like a
folder of acapellas which I am going to drag out to my desktop then I'm gonna
put one of those inside the song if you guys want this huge folder of acapellas
that I made I'll be giving it out to my $10 patreon so anyone who's patreon $10
or more I'll give out this to you I must figure out the BPM there's lots of ways
to do this you can do it manually or you can use a program like Virtual DJ at the
same time I'm gonna use a program like Virtual DJ something to use Virtual DJ
alright so the BPM is roughly 133 it's like use that as a starting point
I'm sorry 133 for now and make sure I have the vocals lined up to start on the
one I think I actually I actually I hate the fucking hook for this one so I'm
just gonna not use the hook so I'm just gonna ex neon the hook for now because I
hate that and I'm gonna make sure this is all warped we're gonna work it I'm
gonna look at the timing just to make sure it's all kind of like on beat it's
pretty close there go to make sure they're all in line I think when you're
warping an acapella like this you usually don't want to like put warp
markers you just want to drag the the marks that are already there then we
just get the BPM correct cuz that's the main things that usually usually songs
like this will have a BPM that's dynamic it'll just be one BPM for the whole song
not always though obviously so always be weary okay now that I have my acapella
ready to go I'm gonna look for a sample that can match with it and in this
moment if you say you like to not use samples and you have to play synthesizer
this is when you're gonna play your synthesizers so play your synthesizers
you get your samples ready get it out I'm just gonna pick something random
from this folder hopefully I get something that works good with it the
plan is here if it doesn't work good with that I'm just gonna try another one
I will check the BPM so I'm gonna try to look for something kind of relatively in
the same range you know see that's too big
we can't go 90 BPM to 130 like maybe we can but it's gonna be risky so let's
just not even fuck with that another ninety one option we can do is we could
speed this up to 140 I may slow down this sample to 70 so I might I might try
that let's see how that sounds so I'm gonna work the BPM of this at 87 like it
says here that's pretty fire but that's not that's not the Java before that's
like some sort of drum and bass shit alright so I'm gonna change I'm gonna
change the tempo to 140 and then I'm gonna double time this sample right here
there we go I'm gonna change the mode of complex that way it'll it'll handle the
working better from such a big BPM
alright so I got an idea how I'm gonna flip this sample I'm gonna use the first
first 4 bars here this is 8 but it's double time so it's 4 bars I'm gonna
have these first 4 bars I'm gonna duplicate them and then I'm gonna pitch
it down 2 semitones that would create a little bit more dynamic within the
sample just gonna duplicate the sample we have here all the way to the end of
the song you know just does see if we got anything else any other cool happy
accidents going on you know oh that was fucking fire I might want to sample some
later parts in this song I feel like and then uh yeah I really like that string I
just heard speaking of happy accidents
alright next I'm gonna try to put some bass on it I feel like that's gonna kind
of its kind of shape hi do my drums a little bit too so next I'm gonna do the
bass you don't have to do things in this order but these this is just order that
I found that works for me the best like it's uh vocals sample bass drums then
rest of the production and arrangement well the reason why I go about this
method and not the one I used to go about which is start with the sample
first and then the vocals is because funk music is really tied into the
vocals and like how how on on the rhythm the vocals is with the the rest of the
beat so if you don't have the vocals set up straight properly with the with the
the beat and the rest of its just gonna fall apart or it's not gonna be the
right genre you know so I said I feel like start with the vocals gives you the
most optimum approach for a funk song again this is my opinion so don't don't
fucking kill me if you like to start with your base first or whatever okay
alright moving on I'm gonna use contact for this let me try to figure out the
key to song real fast I have a technique for that - basically I will I'll pitch
the whole bass sense up like a few octaves to help myself find the right
keys for the song alright cool so I found some notes at work I'm gonna go
down a few octaves - that's too many and then I'm gonna try playing my bass line
alright so in reality I'm actually gonna turn that into a glide right there and
I'm gonna keep the rest of this as is oh whoa hold on sorry cut too much there
should be like that now I'm just timing of it a little bit a
lot bit okay I'm pretending like that that a little smash thing I did it's
gonna be a glide and then we'll fix that after I have a video on how to do this
awesome which I'll also link up here yeah I'm just gonna cut past this part
so if you don't know how to glide learn how to glide and come back you'll need a
glide for your song then don't worry about it just skip ahead like I don't
know just skip ahead a little bit you'll be good I hear some retarded shit for
you perfect here we go perfect perfect alright now
we got a full bass line that was a little bit of work
but we got some glides in it already before we even got our drums these high
hats don't suck I know they might
perfect let me do the kick and snare first hi I'm the chop that up a little
bit and we should have a good pattern
okay now we got our hi-hat alright now we need something to contrast that
closed hi-hat we're gonna need like open hi-hat a crash cymbals and sort of
percussion something just make it funky er so let's find that it's uh we're
gonna get a drum rack then we're gonna put some sounds in it we'll just start
with open hats for now see you see how we feel about it
alright here's some ones I like there I'm gonna drag all the ones on legs down
at the bottom then get rid of the others that's terrible no record our open
hi-hat I'm about to have a fucking heat stroke alright so what I did is I made
two duplicates of the same open hat they're one where the release fully
rings out and then one where it's really short and then I use them to play off
each other and create a more of a rhythmic effect than just playing the
open one constantly okay first thing I want to do is I want to get rid of this
vocal section with the hook that is fucking terrible I heard it earlier and
they made me want to die in a fire I gotta figure out how I want the
arrangement of this song to go basically so I can either have it go into a hook
that's different than this and keep the beat the same work had to be change with
the hook Rock I just had the beat change and then make that the focus of the song
I think I might consider doing that I'm gonna explore all my options first see
what we got going on no mute that one section and I'm gonna bring in parts of
the sample and see how it sounds
well it's kind of fire so I could just like use the hook from this other song
so I can cut in the hook from the sample the singing the singing hook from the
sample if it can crazy right and which I do the same trick I did with it earlier
with the pitching we'll pitch it down two semitones repeating the same part
Duke it and pitch down follow the same thing all right so I'm going to cut some
EQ on these samples here luckily I'm not super into the Scarecrow verse so I
think what I might end up doing is just like I could end up just cutting out
this whole extra in part here and that might just take on an instrumental
direction after that because fuck those vocals that sucked
that was terrible it was not helping the song these other ones are great though
this verse over here fantastic
this this beat pussy Canon Rossini pen and it's fired up dog alright guys
that's it for this video I'm your host from your beats and this
has been me showing you how to make an excellent funk song Ableton Live
hopefully was informative and funny if you guys haven't yet make sure to check
out my twitch I do gaming streams every few nights on there you have lots of fun
there chillin with the boys crack some cold
ones you know what it is all my social media if you haven't I post pretty
shitty memes on Twitter and Instagram I post skateboarding clips you can go
check that out there they're all in the description I should be back with
another video or two next week I'm definitely shooting a vlog for the
grouchy light show which me and paradigm will be opening for so stay tuned for
that should be interesting lots of good music and I got some good
ideas for tutorials so if you guys also got some other ideas please shoot him at
me I could use some more always till then see you guys next time focusing on
my face is so freakin blurry dude okay here we go there we go means my eyes are
blurry who knows fuck yeah I don't need to pee on a pee afterwards a pee after
the video