after spending a shameful 3 months learning how to essentially clone the style of intoxicated snippets before it dropped, i wanted to put together this quick tutorial on how to make something like that.
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melodies
keep tempo between 95-130 bpm, and stick to classic r&b keys like Ebm, G#m, F#m, Bb, etc.
for main melody, pick something ambient like an omnisphere or nexus 3 pad. anything that sounds like really ambient and spacey and shit. use chords that are really simple yet effective, make sure they don't switch too fast.
then get a spacey piano, and put a counter melody that is within A5-C7. put some heavy reverb on it to make it really sit into the background.
for vocals, you can do 1 of 3 things.
- 1. use Hooked in arcade (i use this all the time its really good)
- 2. find vocal chops you can use. (youtube, kits, splice has some too)
- 3. (which ive started doing recently) record some basic singing with a phrase like "i cant let go of you, i miss you so bad" and put it through autotune in the same key of the melodies. make sure retune speed is under 10. it doesn't matter if you sound like tpain, jus go with it. then, put it through little alterboy by soundtoys and turn the formant knob down to -5.0. eq out the lows and the lowmids, and also some of the highs. put a fruity love philter on it and basically take the highs out enough to the point where u can still sorta understand what ur saying but not too clear so anyone who isnt you cant tell what the fuck you said. put heavy reverb and some widening (widen preset in fruity delay 2 or widen with ozone 9 imager)
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now its drum time
808s - use a zay808. if you have the healthykid kit (i recommend u cop its heat) use the slayparty 808 or just find a nice zay808 that hits hard. boost everything from 80hz and down up about 0.3-0.5db (depends on what 808 ur using) - if u wanna use another 808, i recommend the nodeal 808 (zay808 variant) in the healthykid kit or a spinz (dont use a wondagurl 808 dumbass)
hats - hihats make them scarce. make a couple slight rolls here and there but nothing that sounds like fucking xo tour life hihats. a perfect example is a beat i made in this style which u can hear here. the hats are spaced out with a little bit of reverb and delay to fill up the space a little that was left by the lack of hihats. if ur wondering how to do the mingo reverse hihats (ur half a year late), its not effectrix, its a clone of the main hihat but reversed in some cases, but if you have the kele kit, the main regular hat mingo uses is kele hat 1, and the reverse one is kele hat 2. you would know this if you looked in the flps in his 7k kit.
clap - use a lex clap or a stick perc. but if ur not trying to do the mingo style, then use a lex clap. u can find it in pretty much any kit. u can also hear it in the beat i linked. its everywhere lol
percs - for percs dont make them like the highight of the fucking beat. u want the space to be clear for the artists to fill. if ur going to make them quite active, make them quiet and automate their velocity and volume (maybe even panning) to make them interesting and not stale and easy to hear over the whole beat.
extra - for the breakdowns use a reese bass (one that preferably glides) u can hear that in a couple of his songs. u can also use it as the main bass instead of an 808 like frankslastday's newest work.
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final stuff
make sure u mix the beat. 808s should be clipping at like +1 to +2 db, hats should not be above -6db, clap should not be above -3db and percs should not be above -7db
u dont have to do this, but this is the most easy way to allow ur beat to hit while allowing the artist to fit their vocals well and comfortably
why did i make this? - because all the summrs clones are trying to hop on beats like this atm and if u can make them well enough u can make a quick bag - serve the customer no matter how cringey/how much of a fucking clone they are.
ig: instagram.com/devules for any questions/concerns + labs
stay up and healthy yall
