I always just chop the part I like, manually. I don't even know how to use the "auto chop" feature on my MPC. P.S. dope beat.

Great post. It's amazing how much great music there is out there. Of all of the digging that I've done, and out of all the records that I own, I've never heard those 3 songs. I'm loving the bongos on the William Bell track - nice!

Cool article. What I usually do is I keep 7 different programs of 7 different drum breaks chopped up and then I load each program once I hae the sample/main sequence down and to get a feel for what different drum sounds would sound like with the sample. Kind of time consuming, but I think that it's worthwhile.

Cool breakdown! I am definitely going to listen to jazz records more attentively for those string sections! What I liked the most about the beat was the drums! Awesome sounds and swing! Didnt know your father but if he was anything like this beat, he was special!

Was thinking about this again today. In sports like hockey and basketball, the greatest players made everyone around them better. I think one of the biggest arguments for Premier is that he's made a lot of mediocre rappers sound good on his beats (Eg. Group Home). Not sure if the same can be said to the same extent for the other guys in the poll.

Great article, Sa'id! This really brings me back to the conversation that we had awhile ago about the matter. I voted Marley Marl mainly because of your point about how he not only discovered sampling individual sounds off records, but he understood it and he knew what it meant for beatmaking! Back to the sports analogy, it reminds me of Wayne Gretzky. He revolutionized holding the puck behind the opponent's net and waiting for players to open up. He would feed them the puck in perfect position, which would usually result in a goal. After Gretzky did this, pretty well every other "playmaker" on each team would take a page out of his book with this play. Like Gretzky, like you pointed out in the BeatTips Manual, pretty well every beatmaker would borrowed from Marley Marl in some way or form. Someone may have discovered this eventually, but it says a great deal about the man when he instantly understood what it meant for hip-hop. Would Premier have been as dope as he was if it wasn't for Marley Marl? It's hard to say. Aside from that pivotal point, the fact that he made beats for LL Cool J, Kool G Rap, Big Daddy Kane, Raekwon, and Rakim goes a long way in my books. Without Marley we'd miss out on an awful lot of classic hip-hop records.

great read! keep it up!

Damn, Great track! I can even hear that signature hi-hat that you use in many of your beats! Awesome!

This comment chain is really good. Bing: Just to clarify, as Sa'id pointed out, I wasn't dissing FL Studio. I still use it every now and again. It's good when I've got my PC with me and I've got an hour or so in between work and class. I just take it out, load up a soul song that I like and practice playing the string sections (or whatever section) with my midi keyboard... As you pointed out, it's very efficient for certain things - in my case it's practicing on the run. I agree that too many people don't give FL respect. Many people have made "bangers" on that software and lots of people don't even know half of what FL Studio can do. As Sa'id said, we had many discussions and based upon where my sound was going, he made an excellent assessment of my situation and pointed me toward the MPC/s950 setup...

I made the setup switch 2 years ago... Gotta say, it's probably the best thing that I ever did. Gotta thank Sa'id for steering me in the right direction. He heard my music and instantly he knew where my sound was headed and explained that with east-coast boom bap, it's much easier to achieve the sound that I was looking for through switching setups and not having to mess around with FL Studio.

This article is CRAZY good! Props...I'm going to try your eq methods when I get home! Also, did you stop using your s950? I noticed that yousaid that you wanted to complete the beat asap. Is that why you sampled back into the MPC instead?

Really liked this article, I think the snare on the "1" is a really nice touch, and I don't think I would have noticed it if you never pointed it out. What I like the most about the beat is how you never overworked the drum pattern by adding the mandatory snares on the "2" and "4" and just went with the gut.