Sujet Faire du Hip Hop pour les Nuls :8O:

Citation : Review: BeatTips - Some Insight on Producing Hip Hop-Rap Beats and Music

By Manuel Clement
(January 05, 2004)

Author: Sa'id
Publisher: Superchamp, Brooklyn New York (www.superchamponline.com)
Price: $15.95

Sa'id, producer and rapper from Brooklyn New York shares everything he knows with the world in his book: BeatTips Manual, insights on producing hip hop-rap beats and music. He currently publishes and distributes it through his company Superchamp. You need to have some guts to invest so much into a project like this on your own, so PROPS to him for doing his thing and doing it well.

His writing style is open, friendly and very comfortable. People who are beginners won't feel overwhelmed by what they will read. The best way I can describe the style is by saying that I felt like BeatTips was a phone call from a caring friend - I'm not kidding.

Although sampling is Sa'id's weapon of choice when producing his own music using an old-school AKAI S950 and MPC60 II setup, he explains techniques such as "Chopping Samples" and "Bass" in general terms, so producers with any setup can learn and practice right away without feeling left out because they bought a Triton, an MPC2000, or some other piece of equipment. This book is not just about sampling; its contents covers a wide range of topics from Getting Your Gear to Sequencing, from Mixing and Shopping your Music to labels. In fact, I felt that this was where the strength and individuality of BeatTips was. Basically, Sa'id is holding the hip hop-rap producer's hand all the way through the process of becoming a producer. This book is not just a list of drum patterns and does not lock you into a specific style of music. Instead it is giving you useful methods to practice and improve your skills. In this sense, BeatTips is not just about hip hop-rap beats and won't become outdated when styles in fashion evolve and change drastically. The various "tips" will still apply.

The word BeatTip is used each time there is a tip the reader should pay attention to. Before reading the book in depth I quickly went though it, and was indeed able to read a couple of them without searching. Tips should be short, easy to understand; Sa'id had this in mind when he wrote his book. Instead of spreading a tiny bit of blabla over hundreds of pages as many do, he packed an explosive array of bottom-line practical tips into an easy to digest 70 pages manual.

Sa'id often recalls memories from his early production days; questions he was asking himself, all the things he didn't know about. From the days he was told "I can't explain all this production stuff just like that... It's complicated you know?", from when he sold all he had to raise enough money to put together a record, to the time he walked into Sam Ash (music store), got an AKAI S01 instead of an S950 as he originally felt he wanted, and exactly how this limited him musically. In fact the whole book is driven by his experiences, mistakes he made, lessons he learnt. Through his own life events and learnings, he teaches great lessons and makes an important connection with the reader.

Sa'id explains that it is important for a hip hop producer to know a good deal about the way music production evolved over the last 30 years, and dedicates a whole section describing a method for the reader to "study" music records. He gives a list of things to look for: the structure of the beat, the various elements that make the mood of the music, etc. He lists several artists and recommends which of their albums to start with. I was prepared to read about the usual stuff, what frequencies to roll off with high-pass equalization filters (etc) but what I found was different and refreshing.

I feel that he tried as hard as he could to deliver what he always wanted to read himself when learning about music production. You can't go wrong with that kind of philosophy and goals. The bottom line is that BeatTips is a very easy to understand, 100% practical, full insight on Hip Hop-Rap production.

-mano