Hip Hop Lesson, Part 2
I felt like putting together another lesson, so here we go.
LESSON 2: FILTERED BASS
This lesson is about a technique that was popular in the early to mid '90s (the golden age of hip hop, in my opinion). Referred to by some as "filtered bass", this is essentially where you take an old soul record and apply a low-pass filter to it, making the bass pop out and giving all the high stuff a kind of ethereal background quality. Pete Rock is probably the person who exemplifies this sound.
I'm starting with a loop from the song "Aria" by Placebo (early '70s jazz/soul/rock fusion).
So let's apply a filter to this to get the bass up front.
This sounds pretty bad by itself, but one of the things you learn about hip hop (particularly when you get a hold of the instrumental tracks to some of your favorite songs) is that when things start layering, the ear becomes forgiving of a whole lot of sloppiness. So let's add the Skull Snaps drum beat from our last lesson.
Uhm, still doesn't sound that great. Let's add vocals! More layers equals better, right???
Heyyyy.... not half bad. Still, it sounds really flat. We need some highs in there. Fortunately, the Skull Snaps beat has some very iconic and excellent work on the hi hats (cymbals), so let's just pump up the levels on the high end of the beat and see what that sounds like.
All right, things sound a lot more filled out now. We've got highs, we've got lows, and the vocals give us some nice mid range. But I do like the horns in the original sample, and I want to bring them in somehow. One thing that we could do is just get rid of the filtering on the original Placebo sample, right? That would bring the horns back in.
Oh my god, that sounds like so much ass. You can barely hear the horns. Also, one of the things our original filter did was pump up the lows in addition to muting the highs, and now we've lost that. So we've fine-tuned our bass, but we want to bring the horns back in. What we do here is just the opposite of what we did with the bass: we take the original sample, and filter out the lows and turn up the highs (in the frequency range of the horns).
Okay, doesn't sound so hot, but let's play it along with the filtered bass, our vocals, and the drums.
So the vocals are a little low in the mix, but you get the idea. Now, there's still one problem, we're just coming in and showing all our cards right off the bat. What we normally do is start off with the drums and the bass, and then hit you with the hook, in this case our horns. With just a little arranging we get something of a song.
Now keep in mind: this song is four channels of sound, three channels of two musical samples (the drums and two tracks for the different filters on the Placebo sample) and then one channel for the MC. If you're, you know, actually skilled, you can do some amazing things with this. Check out the video for I.N.I.'s "Fakin' Jax." That's Pete Rock on the beats.
And a brief historical note: I consider "Fakin' Jax" to be pretty much the end of the filtered bass production era. It was actually recorded in 1996, but it wasn't released officially on record until 2003! It's a killer song, but I think what happened was that I.N.I.'s sound was considered a bit behind the times in '96 (the year Tupac was killed, for reference). And from there the album entered label limbo for seven years. It probably would've topped the charts in '94, but the Pete Rock filtered bass sound just wasn't selling like it used to.
LESSON 2: FILTERED BASS
This lesson is about a technique that was popular in the early to mid '90s (the golden age of hip hop, in my opinion). Referred to by some as "filtered bass", this is essentially where you take an old soul record and apply a low-pass filter to it, making the bass pop out and giving all the high stuff a kind of ethereal background quality. Pete Rock is probably the person who exemplifies this sound.
I'm starting with a loop from the song "Aria" by Placebo (early '70s jazz/soul/rock fusion).
So let's apply a filter to this to get the bass up front.
This sounds pretty bad by itself, but one of the things you learn about hip hop (particularly when you get a hold of the instrumental tracks to some of your favorite songs) is that when things start layering, the ear becomes forgiving of a whole lot of sloppiness. So let's add the Skull Snaps drum beat from our last lesson.
Uhm, still doesn't sound that great. Let's add vocals! More layers equals better, right???
Heyyyy.... not half bad. Still, it sounds really flat. We need some highs in there. Fortunately, the Skull Snaps beat has some very iconic and excellent work on the hi hats (cymbals), so let's just pump up the levels on the high end of the beat and see what that sounds like.
All right, things sound a lot more filled out now. We've got highs, we've got lows, and the vocals give us some nice mid range. But I do like the horns in the original sample, and I want to bring them in somehow. One thing that we could do is just get rid of the filtering on the original Placebo sample, right? That would bring the horns back in.
Oh my god, that sounds like so much ass. You can barely hear the horns. Also, one of the things our original filter did was pump up the lows in addition to muting the highs, and now we've lost that. So we've fine-tuned our bass, but we want to bring the horns back in. What we do here is just the opposite of what we did with the bass: we take the original sample, and filter out the lows and turn up the highs (in the frequency range of the horns).
Okay, doesn't sound so hot, but let's play it along with the filtered bass, our vocals, and the drums.
So the vocals are a little low in the mix, but you get the idea. Now, there's still one problem, we're just coming in and showing all our cards right off the bat. What we normally do is start off with the drums and the bass, and then hit you with the hook, in this case our horns. With just a little arranging we get something of a song.
Now keep in mind: this song is four channels of sound, three channels of two musical samples (the drums and two tracks for the different filters on the Placebo sample) and then one channel for the MC. If you're, you know, actually skilled, you can do some amazing things with this. Check out the video for I.N.I.'s "Fakin' Jax." That's Pete Rock on the beats.
Click to viewAnd a brief historical note: I consider "Fakin' Jax" to be pretty much the end of the filtered bass production era. It was actually recorded in 1996, but it wasn't released officially on record until 2003! It's a killer song, but I think what happened was that I.N.I.'s sound was considered a bit behind the times in '96 (the year Tupac was killed, for reference). And from there the album entered label limbo for seven years. It probably would've topped the charts in '94, but the Pete Rock filtered bass sound just wasn't selling like it used to.