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S3E10 – Original Compositions vs. Sampling

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Home/Podcast/S3E10 – Original Compositions vs. Sampling

The two ways to make a beat are Original Compositions and Sampling. Both of these take immense skill and talent.

There’s a Sample Your Own Music Course in the platform!

Make sure you’re practicing to become a better producer so you can truly be proud of your musical works. This is how you find your own sound, and become confident in your beats.

Original Composition Beat Benefits:

An original composition is when we understand music theory to create melodies with MIDI Notes, and Virtual Instruments.

It’s understanding the notes we’re allowed to play in a Key and Scale, and how to play chords in music production.

The main benefit original compositions have is 100% ownership of musical copyright.

Did you know just because someone can play an instrument well, doesn’t mean they can make catchy beats?

Sometimes people can only play other people’s music well.. or it may take them a long time to create a catchy melody..

But beatmakers making original compositions are constantly creating catchy melodies that are COHESIVE with all the other melodies in our beat!

How many melodies should a beat have? Well, it all depends on the beat, and training your ear for what sounds full!

On my BEAT TAPES By GratuiTous series, you will hear some beats have 12+ instruments.. some beats may only have 3-4..

You as the producer must train your ear for what the beat needs, what’s catchy, and what compliments the production.

Original Compositions are the most common form of beatmaking.

Sampled Beat Benefits:

Sampling gives a unique sound to a beat that is achieved no other way.

LEARN: How to Sample with Slicex in FL Studio

It takes already catchy music, and recreates a new beat out of that audio.

It’s done by chopping the audio (slicing the audio), and played back however the producer decides.. they can re-arrange parts of the song, or play quick hits here and there.

Sampled Beats are most known when taking popular music, and recreating a beat out of old songs.. often making the voice chipmunk sound, because it’s sped up (pitched up).

Sampling is not to be confused with remixing.

Original Compositions vs. Sampled Beats

I always tell producers you want to learn BOTH original compositions and sampling to become a good producer.

It stretches your skillset, and allows you to truly learn all aspects of the audio production world for your beats.

Please be very careful out there watching FL Studio tutorials where they are using pre-made drum loops and pre-made melody loops.. you will not learn to make your own beats.

Reach out if you’re looking to make custom beats, that are 100% original and authentic.. but just can’t understand what’s going on.

Beatmaking Drum Loops Music Producer Tips Original Compositions Sampling

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Transcript

S3E10 – Original Compositions vs. Sampling

  1. Season three, episode 10, original compositions versus sampling.
  2. I haven't made a direct episode on this topic, and it's really important that you
  3. understand that there's really only two ways to make a beat that is original
  4. compositions and sampling. Nowadays we are seeing many people using pre-made drum
  5. loops where they're simply just dragging them in, maybe just dragging in another
  6. pre-made melody, and they're calling themselves a producer.
  7. I have a very strong opinion in this on this topic because I have worked very hard
  8. myself to learn the piano, to learn melodies, to learn custom drum loops.
  9. And when I see someone just drag in a pre-made loop and they are calling themselves
  10. a producer, it almost kind of offends me for how hard I have worked, and meanwhile,
  11. they're thinking that oh, this is producing.
  12. And I'm also talking to people who are doing tutorials teaching this way too,
  13. thinking that this is what music production is.
  14. Music production is a very hard industry, and once you start thinking that, oh well,
  15. I know the melodies, there's so much more to learn even after that, because I always
  16. talk to you about mixing, mastering, arrangement, right?
  17. You guys can check out my book called Audio Painting, where we're always preparing
  18. the listener for what's next in the song, right?
  19. Always about custom drum loops, custom melodies, how to use your software.
  20. There is so much to learn. The music production industry is a never ending learning
  21. journey. And when you're just dragging in simple loops, you're cheating yourself,
  22. you're not really truly producing, okay?
  23. So in this episode, I want to talk to you about the two different ways that you can
  24. produce music, and both of them require tons and tons of skill.
  25. Original compositions, where we are programming our own melodies and sampling, which
  26. is an art form. Now, someone may think using a pre a pre-made drum loop and-made
  27. melody is sampling, but it is not.
  28. Okay. There is two ways to make a beat original compositions and sampling.
  29. Both of them take extreme skill.
  30. And when you're just using these pre-made loops or pre-made MIDI packs, you are not
  31. producing music. All right, before we get into this episode, if you guys would like
  32. to learn how to make beats with FL Studio, check out my website, it's gratuitous.com
  33. forward slash resources. You guys can check out tons of free training I have for
  34. you, whether you are looking for free drum samples, free FL Studio training, or
  35. check out my free book. It's called Five Keys to a Successful Beat.
  36. Very, very helpful information on that page.
  37. Again, it's gratuitous.com forward slash resources.
  38. When you sign up, you will get additional emails with video training.
  39. All right, so let's first talk about original compositions and sampling.
  40. For myself, I typically like to do original compositions more because I like to play
  41. the keys and it gives the most flexibility in regards to copyright.
  42. When you are sampling other people's music, you got to be a little bit careful
  43. because you are infringing on another person's copyright.
  44. And in this music production industry, it's all about copyright and ownership.
  45. When you own your own product, because your music is just a product.
  46. It's no different than selling an ebook or selling a course or selling a drum kit.
  47. Your beat is a product, okay? And when your product is your own, which means that
  48. you own the copyright, you have full control on what you want to do with it.
  49. If you want to license it somewhere or if someone wants to use it, whatever that
  50. business transaction is, you don't have to worry about anyone else getting their
  51. hands in there because you have created that product..
  52. So that's probably the biggest benefit of an original composition
  53. Now, in order to create an original composition, there's a couple things that you
  54. have to learn, and it probably is a harder learning curve than sampling, but
  55. sampling takes a lot of skill in its own way.
  56. So for original compositions, obviously, you're gonna have to know music theory, but
  57. that doesn't mean that you have to know how to play the piano.
  58. So there is a difference. To know music theory is essentially just knowing what
  59. notes you're allowed to play, and we know that when we pick a key in a scale, which
  60. tells us that we're only allowed to have seven notes in that key and scale.
  61. If you want to learn more about that, my website has a course on music theory for
  62. beatmakers. If you want to learn the piano, I also have my piano lessons for
  63. producers course. Again, if you join the membership, you get access to all of the
  64. trainings, right? So for an original composition, you need to know music theory, but
  65. you don't necessarily need to know how to play the piano.
  66. Knowing the piano is going to allow you to program your melodies quicker and
  67. typically have more human emotion into your melodies.
  68. But if you just like to click in your sounds with your mouse, you still have to know
  69. music theory, and once you learn that, then you're on your way.
  70. But it is a little overwhelming when you're getting started.
  71. But again, those trainings on the website there, it'll break down everything I wish
  72. I knew, and I've been doing this for many many years now.
  73. I've released tons of music, and again, be on the lookout for beat tapes by
  74. gratuitous volume 10. It is releasing very soon.
  75. Also, I forgot to mention the serum course is still in the works.
  76. what I've been doing at the moment is I have been reading through the manual, so I
  77. have been using serum for quite a few years now.
  78. I've released a lot of free and premium serum banks.
  79. There's so much information about serum.
  80. And it depends on the type of producer and what you like to do with audio.
  81. Serum can be such a different use for different people.
  82. But again, when I'm going to be creating this course, the serum course for beat
  83. makers, it's going to be specifically focused towards us as beatmakers because
  84. reading through that manual, there's a lot of basic stuff, but all of a sudden it
  85. goes very, very advanced. For example, if you want to create your own like wave
  86. tables and but it's cool that it's all built in there, okay.
  87. All right, back to the episode.
  88. So, again, original compositions, you're gonna need to know music theory.
  89. You don't necessarily have to know the piano, but I'm telling you, if you can learn
  90. the piano, you become very, very good at original compositions, and then it's all
  91. about training your ear for what's catchy, taking advantage of your frequency
  92. spectrum. Now, let's talk about sampling.
  93. So, I don't sample too much, but I have practiced sampling, which I always advise
  94. you guys as well to try both industries.
  95. You try your original compositions as well as try sampling because when you work
  96. with sampling, most often you are working with audio.
  97. Okay, when you're working with original compositions, most of the time we are
  98. working with MIDI, we're working with virtual instruments, and a lot of people don't
  99. realize that MIDI is actually one of the most powerful tools for even mixing your
  100. music. For example, if we have a note that is too loud, we can simply go to the
  101. piano roll, lower down that single note if it's too loud, rather than grabbing a
  102. compressor or a limiter or even doing volume automation, you can simply just use
  103. velocity with MIDI.ity. When it comes to an audio file, we don't get that
  104. flexibil We actually have to start using audio tools like EQ compression or
  105. volume automation. And when you jump into the sampling world, you are now working
  106. with static audio files. This allows you as the music producer to kind of
  107. learn both industries.
  108. I'll quickly realize wow, this takes such a different set of skills than using
  109. MIDI using virtual instruments.
  110. For example, if you have a sample and you want to layer a bass line
  111. over top of that sample, right?
  112. Like how do you know what key it is in to make sure that your bass line is in pitch?
  113. There's just a little bit of a different learning curve when it comes to sampling.
  114. So what is sampling? So we most know sampling for older kind of hip hop songs
  115. when these producers took very old songs, chopped them up, and made a sampled
  116. beat out of them. A lot of times they will bring the vocal in the chorus, or they'll
  117. even just make kind of like the voice go chipmunk.
  118. But typically they will take old audio, which is very well known, they will chop it
  119. up, they will put their drum loop over top of it, they might add a bass line under
  120. it, and that's pretty much a completed beat.
  121. Now they might have different sections, in other words, they've used the audio loop
  122. and they've chopped it up and rearranged it however they want.
  123. But you will notice that when someone is really, really good at sampling music, that
  124. type of beat is very unique, and original compositions will almost never sound like
  125. a sampled beat. And that's why I'm saying that as a music producer, it's really good
  126. to practice both original compositions and sampling.
  127. Now, as a pro little tip before closing out here, you can actually sample your own
  128. music. Because again, when we are sampling music, if you're using popular music,
  129. chopping it up and creating a drum loop, you have to be careful of copyright because
  130. that's someone else's ownership.
  131. You can actually create your own original composition or even just like your own
  132. loop. If you've created your own original composition that has like snares and kick
  133. drums and like a bass line and stuff, it's gonna be a little bit harder to sample.
  134. A lot of times when people are really good at sampling, they're listening for
  135. certain areas within that audio that they can sample to use the loop where there
  136. isn't a lot of different instruments going on.
  137. Typically, it's just like that main part of the song, and that's what they want to
  138. try to sample so they can reuse it because it makes it really easy if they want to
  139. layer other sounds on. And if you're going to sample your own music, many times it's
  140. wisest to create like one loop or maybe two loops that kind of go together, and then
  141. you can bring that into something like SliSix, and you'll be able to chop it up and
  142. you'll be able to get a very unique sound, okay?
  143. All right, so that is the two different ways of making beats.
  144. If you're watching tutorials out there or learning from people who are showing you
  145. just a dragon loops, whether that be a pre-made drum loop or a pre-made melody loop
  146. or pre-made MIDI pack, I highly advise you to be very, very careful because you will
  147. never learn to truly make your own music.
  148. And if you guys want to learn to make your own music, check out the platform.
  149. Alrig,ht I have so much training in there.
  150. Everything I've learned over the years, music theory.
  151. If you want to learn the piano, if you want to learn custom drum loops, if you want
  152. to learn arrangement, the new serum course will be coming here soon.
  153. Once you learn the core basics of music production, I want to get you to a point
  154. where you're on your way. Okay.
  155. So original compositions is programming your own melodies.
  156. The benefit of it is you have created your whole beat.
  157. You've created all the different piano parts or guitar parts, pads, leads, bass
  158. lines. You have programmed your own beat.
  159. You own copyright, you have full ownership and control over what you want to do with
  160. it. Sampling other people's music, you're gonna have to look into what's called
  161. clearance if you want to sell that music.
  162. And a workaround for sampling is if you want to sample your own music.
  163. You just record your own loops, then you can sample them.
  164. but the only downfall of that is because when it comes to sampling, a lot of people
  165. look for audio loops that they already know, you know, especially back in the day,
  166. like if older music from like the 60s and 70s, where people would take that music,
  167. they would chop it up. A lot of people knew those old songs, so when it was created
  168. with sampled beats in nowadays, it was kind of like a refreshed version of
  169. that old track with today's modern music that people would like with a drum loop,
  170. has a little bit more bass rather than being maybe a little bit slower.
  171. Alright, so that is it for this episode.
  172. Original compositions and sampled beats.
  173. There's only two ways to make a beat.
  174. If you are watching tutorials where they are doing anything else other than that, I
  175. would be a little bit careful.
  176. Make sure that you are learning right.
  177. Make sure that you are becoming a better producer because you will only be so proud
  178. of what you've created. If someone asks you the question, did you make that beat?.
  179. You know in your heart that no, you did not
  180. You simply just dragged in a drum loop.
  181. You may have dragged in a melody loop and just what reversed it, and now you're a
  182. producer. No, real producers have worked very, very hard to learn the piano.
  183. They've worked very, very hard to learn to program their own custom drum loops and
  184. arrange their beat and become very good and have their own signature sound.
  185. All right, again, if that's where you want to get you guys can start with my free
  186. book. It's called Five Keys to a Successful Beat.
  187. Just go to it's gratuitous.com forward slash five keys.
  188. When you sign up, you will get the free book, and you will get a bunch of free
  189. training videos helping you along the way.
  190. All right, that's it for this podcast episode of Music Production Made Simple.
  191. Be on the lookout for the new serum for beatmakers course.
  192. Again, I have just read through that manual.
  193. There is so much that you can do with serum.
  194. It's actually pretty crazy, it's very, very advanced.
  195. And be on the lookout for my new beat tape, Spy Gratuitous Volume 10.
  196. You just need to work on one more beat, and that's very very exciting because I've
  197. worked very hard on it. And if you guys want to check out the other releases, just
  198. go to it's gratuitous.com forward slash music.
  199. All of my beat tapes and albums are there for free.
  200. Download.com to learn to make
  201. professional beats while using FL Studio.
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