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S2E25 – Should You Sound Design While Beatmaking

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When making beats, should you sound design while making the beat, or should you just use a ROMpler to select high-quality presets?

This is a question I get ALL the time!

In addition, I also get asked is using a ROMpler cheating? And the answer is NO!

Remember, sound design is a totally separate industry from making beats. We as beatmakers need high-quality sounds to make our beats fast and with quality. It still takes A LOT of skill to make a beat.. but drum samples and synth presets allow us to make professional beats fast, and it makes mixing A LOT easier, too!

If you try to sound design while making a beat in FL Studio, you will discover it slows you down way too much.

My advice is to do sound design separately, then use those high-quality sounds to make your beats.

The beatmaking process goes:

Make the Beat -> Arrangement -> Mixing -> Audio Painting -> Mastering

Sound design is a TOTALLY SEPARATE INDUSTRY.. and one you may never have to learn to make high-quality beats..

If you want to learn sound design, that’s totally up to you.. and be prepared because it’s overwhelming.. just like learning to make beats was!

Here’s some courses if you want to learn sound design or beatmaking:

Sound Design Basics 101 will teach you how to sound design in FL Studio with three different synths (Serum, Sylenth1, and Pigments!)

Click here to watch it!

Sound Design Basics 101 Course
10 Steps to Become an FL Studio Course

10 Steps to Become an FL Studio Pro will teach you the FULL Beatmaking process, all the way to the Mastering!

Click here to watch it!

Beatmaking FL Studio FL Studio Help Guide Pigments ROMpler Serum Sound Design Sylenth1 Workflow

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S2E25 – Should You Sound Design While Beatmaking

  1. Season two, episode 25. Should you sound design while beat making?
  2. Now, I know a lot of you when you get to baking your beats, you guys get stuck a
  3. lot. And in this episode, I'll talk about some tips for you guys to see results in
  4. your beats, make things super easy.
  5. because it is tricky, but it's tricky because you really don't know the tricks of
  6. the trade, which allow you to really accelerate really fast.
  7. Alright, so before we get into this podcast episode, check out my free book I've
  8. written for you guys. It's called Five Keys to a Successful Beat.
  9. There's my five keys. I've also included included my seven core principles.
  10. There's tons of valuable tips for FL Studio producers.
  11. You can download it by going to it's gratuitous.com forward slash five keys.
  12. Alright, so before we get into the episode, I've released a lot of new blog posts on
  13. the website. If you visit it's gratuitous.com forward slash blog.
  14. At the time of this episode, I've released a lot of mastering tutorials.
  15. So, you know, mastering for beginners, what is a mastering chain.
  16. We talk a little bit about you know the loudness wars, what is loudness?
  17. One article I wanted to always get out there was just the different tools that we
  18. can use in mastering, things like a limiter, a compressor, a clipper, multi-band
  19. compressor, and nowadays we use a loudness meters.
  20. Now, let's talk about sound design and beat making at the same time.
  21. So, when I first started, I used what's called a rompler.
  22. All right, and I'll leave a free resource in this episode's resources.
  23. So I created a free tutorial, it's about a half hour long, and it's all about what
  24. is a rompler. Okay, R O M P L E R.
  25. And so essentially, a rompler is you just pick a preset and you can start making
  26. your beats. Okay., now N whenow you you are trying to do sound design as your beat
  27. beat making, have to remember that sound design is a totally different industry.
  28. And if you're trying to do sound design while learning beat making, it's going to be
  29. way too overwhelming for you. And honestly, I'd probably say like 99% of beat
  30. makers do not sound design as they make beats.
  31. If you do, then you're on like a different level than most people.
  32. But to be truthful, you need to have a decent melody, or you
  33. yeah, you need a decent sound to start your melody.
  34. If that makes sense, okay. So when you are making beats, it's all about laying the
  35. groundwork. So, for example, let's say you have a drum loop going on, it's all about
  36. getting that first melody, and it's got to be half decent catchy.
  37. Okay. Now, the type of sound doesn't really matter so much.
  38. Like it does because the sound selection is important, but the number one most
  39. important thing is the sound placement.
  40. So how you are placing the sounds, how you're getting the catchy melody.
  41. Once you have the catchy melody, then you can easily select a different sound with
  42. your, you know, with a rompler or you know, different synthesizer.
  43. But I do encourage you guys to use a rompler as you are learning beat making.
  44. You can hop into other synthesizers, things like Silent One, Serum, Pigments, and I
  45. do have free banks for all of those.
  46. If you would like them, you can go to it's gratuitous.com forward slash resources.
  47. You can see like my free books, my free sounds, and some of the free stuff I have
  48. for you there. But as a beatmaker, it's all about being able to select high quality
  49. sounds to make your melodies really really fast.
  50. And if you are doing sound design as you're trying to make the beat, it's gonna make
  51. things really tricky, it's gonna make things way longer.
  52. And you, as the beat maker, the most important thing that you can learn to do is to
  53. create catchy melodies and also learn how the catchy melodies go together.
  54. Let's say you create a piano melody, now you're gonna add a guitar in there.
  55. You have to learn how can you create a catchy melody over top of this piano
  56. now, right? So you'd have a piano, that's your first loop.
  57. How does this guitar go over top and sound unique?
  58. And you know, again, I always talk to you about finding your own sound, being your
  59. own person within this music production world because there is a lot of copying,
  60. always. It doesn't matter if you're at the most professional level or if you are
  61. just trying to follow someone off YouTube.
  62. Everybody copies, right? And I always tell you guys pull away from the copying, and
  63. you truly will find your own sound because I highly encourage you actually to go
  64. back to a previous episode. I talked to you about we all have 12 notes, right?
  65. So when you watch a tutorial and somebody you know is playing their melodies or
  66. whatever, it's like we all only have 12 notes.
  67. Yes, they go up and down in octave, but it's not like anybody has more notes than
  68. somebody else, right? So we're we all have the same amount of notes, it's all about
  69. learning how to create catchy melodies with these notes.
  70. And the only way you're gonna do that is by practicing and practicing.
  71. And if you want to learn more about using your 12 notes, I highly encourage you to
  72. check out my piano lessons for producers course..
  73. You can come to it'sgratuitous.com and you will be able to find it
  74. Again, I highly encourage you guys to check out the search bar.
  75. Anything that you want to look up, like piano, drum loops, mastering now, just type
  76. that into the search bar, and articles and courses and you know everything
  77. pertaining to that on my website will show up for you.
  78. And there's tons and tons of valuable resources on my website.
  79. I have over 300 written articles.
  80. and like I always say, if you guys ever have questions, you feel to reach out.
  81. So, to summarize this episode, I personally would say use a romper when
  82. you're first getting started. And I even still like using a rompler.
  83. A rompler doesn't really allow you to do sound design, like you can do some to sound
  84. design, but you can't really select like waveforms and then make your own patch out
  85. of it, like from scratch. Many times you might be able to like remove layers in the
  86. rompler, or you can use filters, or you know, sometimes you can apply your own
  87. effects like distortion or chorus, but honestly, that gives you so much
  88. control as the beat maker as well, and so it's all about knowing how to create that
  89. catchy melody. That's what you have to learn if you want to become a good beat
  90. maker, right? I always tell you guys no MIDI packs, no one-shot drum samples because
  91. it is not making beats from scratch, it is not being an original producer.
  92. And if you want to truly learn to make your own beats and be so confident and proud
  93. behind them, you want to learn to create your own melodies, and that means
  94. understanding those 12 notes, understanding keys and scales, because then you can
  95. start making your beats. making your beats. And if you are sound designing as you
  96. are, it's going to be quite tricky for you
  97. Now, where I would do sound design is if I was going to be creating like a riser,
  98. and so a riser is something that we use as a transition.
  99. I talked to you guys about audio painting, right?
  100. I have a book on this, it's on Amazon as well as my website.
  101. And so audio painting is all about preparing the listener before a change happens.
  102. So if you're coming from the verse to the chorus, you need to prepare the listener.
  103. And we do that with a transition, right?
  104. So for example, a riser could be one of those exciting rising kind of sounds.
  105. And this is where I would typically do sound design.
  106. But you have to remember that audio painting comes much later in the stage of making
  107. a beat. We have making the beat, we have arranging the beat, we have mixing the
  108. beat, we have then audio painting, which is taking a second look at that
  109. track, making sure that when you go from the verse to the chorus, that
  110. everything makes sense because the arrangement stage of your song is probably the
  111. hardest part of making a good beat.
  112. Yes, you have a good melody, yes, you know, all the instruments, everything goes
  113. together. The mixing can help enhance that too.
  114. But the arrangement is essentially like when I talk to you guys in the audio
  115. painting book, I give you that explanation of your listener essentially goes on a
  116. roller coaster ride. You know, they sit down, they strap in, and when they hit play
  117. to your song, you're taking them on like an emotional roller coaster ride, right?
  118. They go up and down, depending on if you're in the verse or in the chorus, as that
  119. is like the emotions, right? And your arrangement is what gives the full emotion..
  120. It's the break, it's you know, it's the build-ups, it's the breakdowns
  121. And so at the audio painting stage, this is where I maybe I would focus a lot more
  122. on like different sound design stuff, again, such as like those risers, or if some
  123. of these instruments aren't maybe going together.
  124. I'm just really looking at it from a top-down level from a listener's point of view,
  125. and that's essentially what you have to do before you you know release it into the
  126. world, and then after the audio painting is like the mastering, right?
  127. But at the end of the day, they all kind of go together because once you hop into
  128. each stage, you can kind of bounce around, and that is the benefit of being a music
  129. producer who can do it all because you can go back and forth, and if you're doing it
  130. all in one project, it makes it really really easy.
  131. And so when you listen to a lot of you know advice or a lot of tips from a lot of
  132. people, you have to remember that many of these people they do only work in one
  133. industry, and we, as the beatmaker, or you know, essentially like the the music
  134. producer who's doing it all, you have full flexibility, so more than even what
  135. these people are trying to teach you.
  136. For example, if someone's just teaching you mastering, well, they're they're being
  137. sent a file from somebody else, but you as the music producer, you can
  138. change the sound still if you want, you can change the individual levels, you can
  139. change EQ on on the individual level, or you can change EQ on the mastered level,
  140. right? On the two bus. So it's all about understanding the
  141. workflow. And if you want to get a good workflow, I highly suggest not to do
  142. sound design as you're making the beat.
  143. Even like I said, I can I can use serum, I can use silent one, I can do some sound
  144. design. I'm not the best sound designer, but again, you guys can check out my
  145. presets. Again, I have the free ones, and my biggest thing when I am doing sound
  146. design is I'm focused that those presets can be really good with chords and that
  147. they're focused for a beat maker.
  148. You can buy presets that aren't for beat makers.
  149. So, in other words, maybe they're good for film or for scoring a movie and stuff
  150. like that. But we as beat makers, we need to have nice high quality sounds that are
  151. good with chords that are good for catchy melodies.
  152. and when you have high quality sounds, it allows you just to select a high quality
  153. sound, get into your beat making, and then keep progressing into these different
  154. stages, such as the arrangement, the mixing, the audio painting, all that stuff.
  155. Okay. So again, you can sound design if you want, but I suggest not to.
  156. It's gonna slow you down, and your goal as the beat maker is to learn to create
  157. catchy melodies that go together.
  158. And when you are flowing, right?
  159. Because that's how it works. Like that's you know, when you go to make that beat,
  160. that's how it works. You need to have that fast flow because you go from one
  161. instrument to the next instrument to the next, and you know, so I've talked to you
  162. before that there's different ways, there's two different ways you can build like up
  163. to the chorus. All your instruments can complement each other, which means that
  164. they're all following the same chord progression.
  165. And when you're creating each instrument to add on to this chorus to add that catchy
  166. catchy chorus, you have to be really, really fast and you got to keep flowing
  167. because you're just kind of in the groove, and that's where you can just right click
  168. on an instrument, go clone, select another sound, play up in the higher octaves,
  169. play up in the lower octaves. You know, try creative things like portamento where
  170. you can kind of slide the notes, be creative, and try to find different sounds that
  171. fit into that beat that make mixing easy, but it still allows your beat to be
  172. catchy. All right, a lot more tips coming your way.
  173. definitely check out the website it's gratuitous.com.
  174. I will be releasing a course here eventually about how to make a beat from scratch.
  175. Again, I have tons and tons of other courses, but these courses are more about
  176. teaching you you know how to how to become a music producer, best practices, tips
  177. and tricks. But a lot of you have asked me over the years that you want to see a
  178. beat made from scratch, and so that is a course that I am planning.
  179. So be on the lookout for that.
  180. Again, visit it'sgratuitous.com forward slash blog, check out all the new articles.
  181. I've written tons about mastering now, if you're interested in that, and I will also
  182. leave that free resource about a rompler.
  183. Okay, it's gonna teach you how to select high quality sounds, you know, how to get
  184. started making beats. there's Nexus, so by reFX, or there's Flex
  185. as well. Wait, you know, it comes with FL Studio, and so essentially, you know.
  186. I explained in that tutorial like Flex isn't technically a rompler, but essentially
  187. it kind of is because what you're doing is you're just quickly selecting a preset
  188. that is high quality and you're on your way.
  189. If you want to get into the sound design, you can do that.
  190. But in my opinion, I would say do the sound design, create your presets, but then
  191. now you can go make beats with those presets.
  192. If you're doing it at the same time, I'm telling you, it's gonna slow you down, it's
  193. gonna make things a little bit more tricky, and it's all about that speed and
  194. workflow when you're making the beat.
  195. You need to be fast. If you're not fast, it's gonna take you forever, and you're not
  196. gonna see the results. One last thing I'll say there is I know some of you when
  197. you're starting up, sometimes you guys spend so long on one beat.
  198. My advice is be quicker, right?
  199. Like when I was starting, sometimes I would try two or three different beats a day.
  200. So think about that, right? It's about speeds when you're first learning.
  201. You know, try a track. If it's not working, save it, go to another track and try
  202. that one, and then you can go back to the first track and maybe try working on it a
  203. little bit again because the music production process is very very tiring.
  204. And that's a cool little trick that I do to help me work longer without getting so
  205. burnt out. Is I will switch between songs just to give myself a little mix up
  206. because if you work so long in one project, you're trying to you're you know you're
  207. trying to perfect it so hard that it gets tricky.
  208. All right, so closing out, definitely check out my free book.
  209. It's called Five Keys to a Successful Beat.
  210. So simple, it becomes creative.
  211. The reason I titled it like that is because again, if you listen to a lot of catchy
  212. beats, you really really listen to the melodies or you listen to like the drum loop
  213. and the percussion, and it's so simple, it's become creative, which means that it's
  214. so catchy. But if you go to try to make it yourself, it's actually pretty
  215. hard. So being simple in the music industry is actually really hard, and that again
  216. it becomes to the point of being creative.
  217. So, five keys to a successful beat.
  218. So simple, it becomes creative.
  219. Just go to it's gratuitous.com forward slash five keys, enter in your name and
  220. email, and you can download the book.
  221. I will email it to you, and then I will send you some follow-up emails..
  222. Thanks for checking out this episode
  223. And don't forget to visit it'sgratuitous.com and feel free to reach out to me
  224. anytime you guys are looking for FL Studio Training.
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