Beat Crazy in Atlanta

Mar 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Mike Levine

MPC Front and Center

Although he records to a Pro Tools HD system, the most important piece of gear in LRoc's studio is his vintage Akai MPC3000 groove sampler. “This is the brainchild here,” he said, pointing to the tabletop device. “Most of my drums come from here” (see Fig. 1).

He explained that he slaves it to Pro Tools but uses its sequencer for programming his basic rhythm parts (see Web Clip 1). The MPC, which has had many incarnations over the years, is huge among hip-hop producers. “I've got a signature sound that a few of us, including Lil Jon, have been using for years. It hasn't failed us very often; we've had a lot of hits. For different timbres, I use the MPC and the [Roland SP-] 808.”

LRoc likes the sounds in the SP-808, although he wishes it had multiple outputs rather than just a stereo pair. (He plans to buy an SP-909, which does have individual outs.) He uses the SP-808 mostly for percussion parts, but the MPC is definitely his go-to device. He likes the way its converters add subtle dirt to a sound. “I sample a lot of my drum sounds into the MPC,” he said. “It's not clean, but it's punchy.”

LRoc has been dabbling with a few virtual instruments, such as Native Instruments Battery, which he uses for certain drum sounds. He has the entire Native Instruments suite of soft synths. “I've got those in there,” he said, pointing to his Apple Power Mac G5 running Pro Tools, “and on my laptop.”

Because he began producing when outboard gear reigned supreme, LRoc has been cautious in adopting virtual instruments. But he's now making a big push toward the virtual world. He told me about going to a music store after not having gone to one for a while. “I was like, ‘Hey, where are all the keyboards?’” he said laughing. “I realized then that it's a new day. But I love it. I was hesitant at first, but then I started hearing some of the other producers at So So Def, and they had everything on virtual instruments. And I said, ‘Hey, did your drums come from that?’ They said, ‘Yes,’ and I said, ‘Okay.’”

An Apple MacBook Pro laptop provides LRoc with a portable setup for working on beats when he's not at his own studio. Unlike his G5 desktop at dakitchen, on which Pro Tools is the main sequencer, his laptop features Apple Logic Pro, which he's just getting the hang of.

He has more jobs than he has time for, so his laptop helps him maximize productivity. He uses it to work on tracks at home and if he has extra time when he's at SouthSide, where he goes almost daily. “Working with Jermaine, I have to be there a lot. So that doesn't give me much time. That's what prompted me to get Logic [for the laptop]. There's a lot of downtime there. If I go there at 3 or 4 p.m., I might leave at 5 or 6 a.m. While Jermaine plays some video games or shoots ball, I go in and create some loops.”

LRoc told me that he plans to spend some time in the near future becoming more proficient in Logic and with his virtual instruments. “My focus is on getting everything integrated and working better,” he said.

Beat Making

According to LRoc, his inspiration for creating beats is often triggered by just messing around with his gear or by hearing a particular sound on a synthesizer or sampler. “A lot of times a sound will inspire what I do, too,” he said. As an example, he triggered a cool-sounding vocal patch from his Roland V-Synth XT module (see Fig. 2) that sounded like a choir singing in Latin. “I just bought this,” he said about the V-Synth XT. “It has a lot of great synth sounds in it. I use that sound in order to get a basic ghetto beat.”

He sequenced a melody that featured the V-Synth, and then wove in a slow drum part on the MPC. The Latin vocal sample inspired the creation of this groove.

LRoc explained that many southern hip-hop and R&B songs are set at relatively slow tempos. “A lot of the crunk music was at 82 to 85 bpm,” he said. “The common thread in all those songs is the hi-hats — the high t-t-t sound. You slow it down to get those 16th-note hi-hats, and then everything is built around that.”

Southern hip-hop, he said, is often defined by its drums. “The 808, the boom. The hi-hats, the handclaps. You don't hear too many snares; you hear more claps.”

LRoc said that songs with a “South-style” groove typically have a sonic palette similar to “bass music,” which originated in Miami. The 2 and the 4 are emphasized less than in some other types of hip-hop, and that has a different effect on somebody listening or dancing to it. “In the up-north stuff, you have snares poppin' in your face,” he said. “It makes you nod your head like that, on 2 and 4. Whereas when you've got a hi-hat riding like this [South style], and you've got a 2 and a 4 meshed in and not standing out, it makes you move differently. It's all manipulation; it's how you manipulate people to move [he laughed]. It's just those little factors. When I'm making a track, I'm thinking about all of those things. So it becomes second nature.

“If I'm doing a South beat, we have a kind of formula: a lot of hi-hats and handclaps. I'll start with a handclap, just getting the 2 and the 4 — the pulse,” he explained (see Web Clip 2). Although he follows convention to a certain extent, he likes to add his own touches to his beats. “Sometimes I'll put in the hi-hat to start the beat, but then I'll take the hi-hats out and start putting other kinds of percussion in there.”

LRoc is clearly confident enough in his abilities that he'll push the envelope a little without worrying that the result will turn off his clients. When I first arrived, he played me a beat that featured a New Orleans-style horn section combined with hip-hop rhythms that he'd put together for a client who was originally from Louisiana.

Although he likes to be creative, he does have some sonic staples that he knows will work. “I have certain sounds that I like to use on a lot of my stuff. It makes it easy. A lot of times clients want a song like a song that's already out. So I use certain sounds that are really distinctive from that song.”

Bass in Your Face

Later on LRoc was working on another beat, and I noticed that it had no bass part in it. I asked him if he was just waiting to add the bass. “A lot of times in the South stuff, this will be the bass,” he said, referring to the 808-type kick (aka the “boom”) coming from his MPC.

LRoc said that he often transposes that kick sound to match the song's chord changes. He usually tunes it to the root of the particular chord, but sometimes he tunes it to the fifth. “The drums are harmonic too,” he said. “Subliminally harmonic. It's amazing how tuning a drum will make a song feel better. It just changes it.” He also likes to subtly tune the snare. “If you pitch it up, it makes it a little bit tighter, and it just feels better.”

On the songs that have a synth bass, LRoc often uses the Spectrasonics plug-in Trilogy. “It's just a beast,” he observed. But as a longtime bass player, LRoc hopes to inject more real electric-bass parts into his music. “That's for my next phase. I use certain instruments, and I go in phases.”