Basics Of Old School Hip Hop

Creating old school hip hop music is not as simple as taking all the old vinyl records out to be scratched with all your might. One must have a feel for the rhythms and a mastery of mixing beats and tunes in order to create a unique sound that audiences will crave for.

There are hundreds of books out there, telling stories of the old school hip hop scene, its music and techniques. Reading about it, and performing it, are two totally different things, one can give you info and the other the actual experience.

If you want to perform this type of music, you need to start by listening. Find copies of the original records and listen deeply to how the beats flow with the lyrics. Begin to discriminate in your head between beat and lyrics while you listen. Now, you begin to understand old school hip hop music.

The beat in old school hip hop music was the heart of the sound. The crowd is kept listening and dancing to a flow of lyrics carried along the sequences and samples. Next step in performing old school hip hop is developing your own method of mixing. The beats have to flow through the sample tracks, carrying listeners on a rhythm going to the next sample cluster, over and over until the end of the song.

If the beats were the heart of old school hip hop music, then the lyrics were the soul. All the excellent beats in the world don't add up to anything if the lyrics strike the wrong chord with the listener. The roots of old school hip hop are in the poetry brought by immigrant artists, and to be able to perform the music right, you must be able to make a connection to those roots.

You will need technical gear to blend it all together into an old school hip hop music sound, of course. The high end stuff could be expensive, but able to deliver good results. You will need an industry standard sampler to start. Gear that will allow you to record snatches of rhythms and beats in a quality fashion without distortion. Then you'll need a sequencer to fine tune the beats on to rhythm.

To advance your adaptation of old school hip hop music you will need a mixer, one that is top of the line. This will allow you to synthesize everything together: samples, sequences, all blended together into a good stereo sound. One last thing you'll need is a multi-track recording equipment to smoothly blend everything up.

If your funds are running low, yet the urge to recreate that old school hip hop sound runs so strong within you, then turn to your home computer. There are software packages out there that will do the work of the studio quality equipment, and will produce a decent sound. Burn your creations onto CDs and listen to it in a good stereo system and check to see if you've got everything down perfectly.



Patience, an appreciative ear, and a knack for music will help you on your way to recreating that old school hip hop music. Let the flow of the beats carry you and touch your soul with poetry, then, you make your own creations and try to see if you can pay homage to old school hip hop music in your own way.