For this assignment I was tasked with creating a “sick beat”. For this I wanted to tie it to my radio program project so I created a intro type song for our upcoming radio show. I used audacity and freesound.org to create and mash together audio to produce this medieval intro. I had a really fun time with this assignment because I love creating and producing new rap instrumentals on my free time and I found this as the perfect opportunity to do an assignment on something I already enjoy doing. The process overall was really simple as I am familiar with the software and I already knew what sound I was looking for. I am overall happy with eh way the sound turned out and I hope to maybe use it for our programs intro.
This “sick beat” was created with me recording the storm last night, converting it to midi, and making a beat with with sticks from the limb that fell on my car! I thought that was funny enough to create this with. I audio to midi’d the beat I made as well, assigning different frequencies to different parts of a drum kit, and then processed everything for a weird ambient, saturated feeling. I’m not sure if this counts as a conventional “sick beat” but I love it anyways.
I am straight up ready to headbutt a cactus. Like I’m not talking soft, place-your-head-on -the-cactus kinda headbutt. I’m talking like all out “this is war” kind of headbutt. Just dropped like 5 hours in this project so you better like it or I will -insert empty threat here-.
Okay so b-wording aside, this is a cool project I did, and my first tutorial! I will begin with explaining the creation of the project, move to the reasoning behind my creation of the project, and then finish with the tutorial written out as well as how I actually created the tutorial itself which will obviously explain how I made mine as well.
My project was to take sounds that you record, around you, or sounds that you find on free domain websites like freesounds.org, and create a sick beat that you can really get down to. My reasoning behind creating this assignment was because I hated all of the other audio assignments that I had found in the category, and I wanted to do something fun. Growing up I was always making a beat on one thing or another, chances are that in high school there was at least one guy like me in the lunch room making something funky for everyone in their proximity to get down to.
So to do this project you need Audacity. Once you have that downloaded (which all of you should already because it’s actually amazing what you can do on that thing) simply begin adding tracks of recorded or imported audio. I’m not going to go too deep into explaining because I made a five minute video for that. In mine I made a recording of myself snapping, rubbing the sofa with my fingernail, banging the table, and tapping my Mac. I then cut, pasted, and chopped up the audio clips to go together the best. This was the most fun, but also time consuming part of the project. I’ll tell you what man, if I was getting paid for this stuff it would be super fun. But having to do this crap for free, ain’t my cup of tea!! Definitely hardwork for all five of the stars you get from accomplishing this project.
If I were to have to do this again I would definitely be much more efficient at this project, and try to make it longer by learning how to loop the tracks. Additionally I would probably try to layer more, as well as add effects to individual tracks. Lay the gnar folks, and remember to carpe diem.
Make a sick beat, using whatever you can find on freesounds.org, and whatever you can record around you! I don’t care how long it is, just get groovy dood.
