Hip Hop Beats Maker

If you’re looking for a way to make hip hop and rap beats on your computer, I think I have just the thing for you. If you need to make your own instrumental beats, this is it. After reading many reviews of Sonic Producer, it looks like a lot of people are saying that it’s the best rap beat maker out there for the price. Here are some things I’ve learned from reading other people’s reviews of it. 

The Pros

DubTurbo is a membership website that you pay $30 to become a member of. That means there is no complicated beat making software download to get through. You don’t have to worry about any virus infecting your computer or even having any downloads to deal with. You become a member and begin making your own beats. How simple is that?!

Many of the sounds can be triggered from your computer keyboard – meaning when you press the “Q” button you will hear a bass drum sound. I don’t actually know which keys trigger which sounds, but I’m explaining this just so y’all understand – you can play drum beats on the keyboard keys and record them with the software. All that time punching out beats with your knuckles wasn’t wasted. Snap to it, son.

The drum machine sounds are professional and are even on par with most expensive drum machine and synthesizer sounds. You won’t even be able to tell that you’re not using a professional music studio to make your hip hop and rap beats. Sonic Producer has thousands of samples and sounds for you to choose from too. 

Everyone wants to have a large number of sounds to work with, and they are all available here. From many different types of drum sounds, to pianos, keyboards, basses, guitars, and sound effects, you’ll have plenty to work with and will never run out of ways to get your ideas in to your songs. 

The interface is simple to use. You put the sounds where you want them in the timeline of the beat measure. If you make a mistake all you have to do is take that beats or note out of its time slot and put it where you really want it. You can adjust the tempo, use the mixer to change the volume of certain parts, and string many parts together to make a song. 

If this is all over your head, don’t worry, any beginner can use Sonic Producer and be a master at it with a little practice. And if you get stuck or lost the members are has many tutorial videos to explain exactly how to do what you want. 

When you’re done with awesome new your song and want to save it, there is even an option to convert your song to an MP3 file and save your beats on your computer hard drive. From here it’s your to do whatever you want with, you can burn it to a CD, upload it to a website, share it with others, or import it in to another program to edit it further or have somebody spit some flow over it. 

The Cons

I’ve read a lot of people saying that video quality of the tutorials isn’t all that great. Apparently the video quality is less impressive than the beat maker, and since the peeps who started DubTurbo are professional musicians and not movie makers, who can blame them . Maybe we can get them to do some better videos in the future. It’s all good.

And some of the tutorials may take a couple of times to watch since the instructors know what they are talking about, but you may have some music vocabulary to catch up on if you’re just a beginner. That’s ok, the more you learn the better beat maker you’re going to be in the long run.

Everybody knows that the first drum machines were made by Roland, and Boss is now the same company as Roland. From Synthesizers, bass machines, and early drum machines, Roland paved the way. All of the classic old school hip hop sounds you know and love and grew up with most likely came straight out of Roland’s early line-up of electronic beat makers and drum machines.

Things have come a long way since the early days of old school hip hop and rap beat making, but some things never change, and Roland/Boss are still the go-to brand for drum machines and beat machines. Their line Dr. Rythm drum machines have been used by thousands of beat makers over the years, and there’s a reason. The sounds are what makes these machines great.

But hold up, what about modern times? Not only does the BOSS Dr 880 Drum Machine have 440 drum sounds and 40 basses, but you can plug your microphone, guitar, or bass in to it to play along with or record out to. That is something we never had in the early drum machine days. Not only that, but the DR 880 also has built in amp-modelling for your guitar and bass sounds, and also has a USB port. What?!

That’s the good news, and I want to be honest here. The cons of this beat making machine are that it’s not so great as a live, stage ready system. For one thing, it has limited memory with no expansion options. So, if you want to make 15 songs and be ready to play them live on stage with this you might be out of luck. Better to get yourself something along the lines of the Akai XR20 Drum Machine, which allows you to trigger beat patterns from the pads during live play.

Also, the Boss Dr. Rythm 880 isn’t great for improvisation – say if you want to hit a fill or roll button and switch to another pattern spontaneously. You can purchase a series of footswitches to trigger different patterns or fills (there are four footswitch inputs) if you need, but there is no button on the front panel to just press and change beats, like an A/B beat function.

This is definitely a studio musician’s drum machine. If you want to make beats, add drum or guitar tracks and add some vocals, this will do it (though I’ve heard that the guitar/mic inputs are a little on the weak side, but the amp modelling and effects may make up for that).

All in all, if you need classic sounds which you can edit and add instruments and vocals to and even connect to a computer via USB in your studio, I would highly recommend the Boss Dr Rhythm 880.

Specs:

- 440 Drum sounds
- 40 Bass sounds
- 100 Preset Kits
- 100 User kits
- 500 Preset Rhythm Patterns
- 500 User Rhythm Patterns
- 100 user songs
- Maximum Note Storage approx. 30,000 notes
- Resolution Per quarter note: 96
- Tempo Quarter note: 20 – 260 bpm
- 20 Pads, velocity sensitive
- Custom LCD backlit display

- 3 independent insert effects (EQ and compression), TSC (Total Sound Control) featuring 3-band EQ and high-quality ambience

Connectors

Rear: Master Out L(Mono), R (1/4″ phone type), Master Out L, R (RCA pin type), Individual Out A, B (1/4″ phone type), Digital Out (coaxial), USB, CTL 1/2 jack(1/4″ TRS phone type), CTL 3/4(EXP Pedal) jack (1/4″ TRS phone type), MIDI In, Out, AC Adaptor jack

Front: Phones (stereo 1/4″ phone type), Guitar/Bass Input (1/4″ phone type)

Power Supply
AC Adaptor (BOSS BRC series)
Current Draw
600 mA (Max)

Owner’s Manual, DR-880 Driver CD-ROM

If you need something a little more versatile for live stage shows, check out the Akai XR20 Drum Machine, which I’ll save for another review.

So, I’d like to give you a primer on some hip hop and rap beat making making vocabulary words. A lot of people know how to make rap and hip hop beats, but they might not understand all of the terminology that goes along with it. These are really just some basic terms, but they may go along way in helping you make better hip hop beats. You’ll at least understand the framework within which you’re working.

Track – A track is what you record an instrument or beats on. The term used to have more relevance when recording was done on magnetic tape. Different types of tape had a certain number of “tracks” that ran along it, which were read or played by a stereo. Generally when using software to record your hip hop beats, one instrument or sounds at a time be added to a track. Whole beats, with all of its parts can be one added to a track. Or, parts of a beats, such as just a snare, or just the bass drum, will have its own track for mixing and panning (more on this later).

Time Line – The time line will contain the tracks and moves from left to right just like you read a book. This is the progress of your beat, or your song. If you move to the right along your time line you’ll see a visual representation of the beats and music as it happens later in the song.

Tempo – This is how fast or slow the hip hop beat or song you’re making is. Most beat making programs will have a way to adjust the tempo. This control on your software may be as simple as a set of “up and “down” arrows, or it could be represented as BPM, a numeric value that shows how many beats per minute your song contains.

Mixing and Panning – A mixer is traditionally a piece of equipment that allows you to adjust the volume of certain parts of a song, or even whole sets of tracks. If you’re a DJ, you would use a mixer to fade the volume from one turntable to the next smoothly. the Panning of these tracks sends a signal to the left or right monitor (or speaker, or headphone) so that you can create a “stereo” effect.

Save and Export – You might have The beats already saved, or you might still be programming and editing your tracks. Saving will work just like it does on any other program, but when you export it, you send it out of the program you’re working in so it can be used later in another program. For instance, you may save your rap beats to your hard drive, but they may not be accessible outside of your beat making program. You will have to export you song to MP3 format so you can edit it in another program or uploaded to the Internet for all of your friends and new fans to hear.

I hope this helps clear up a few things for beginners and anyone else who may not understand what the components of a hip hop beats maker are and what they do.

As much as I love modern rap and hip hop I really have a soft spot for the originators of the classic old school sound. One of my favorite old school hiphop beats makers is a guy named Man Parrish. I heard a song of his on the radio in about 1985 on some late night radio station and it completely blew my mind. A lot of people in the early days of rap and hip hop didn’t make their own beats, some did, but most rappers just sampled something or rapped right over a live band or a record.

You can tell from the Man Parrish song below, Boogie Down (Bronx), that he was going for something really unique when he made this beat for John Ski of Freeze Force to rap over. It took me years to find any information about this song. I had a cassette tape recording from that hip hop radio show in 1985 or ‘86 or whenever, and besides “Freeze Force”, I didn’t know anything about the song except that maybe the title was Boogie Down Bronx (because that was the vocoder chorus). Not until the internet years dawned upon us and I started looking up rarities and researching great music I had forgotten about did I remember that maybe I could find a little info on this song.

It turns out Man Parrish made a handful of the hip hop, electro poineering songs. Being a contemporary of Afrika BamBaataa and having been influenced by Kraftwerk as well, it’s no wonder his sound is so clean and fresh and representative of that classic early Roland 808 drum machine sound that we all associate with vintage rap and hip hop.

Check out this song, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do, and listen to all of the details he added in to this unique song when making the beats and music for it.