The Most Affordable Pieces of Hardware for Making Hip-Hop Music
Sometimes it helps to get out of the DAW and mess around with some synths, samplers, and drum machines. Here are our ten favorite affordable pieces of gear.
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The Legacy of the Roland RE-201 Space Echo
Today we take a look at the best dang echo/delay unit that exists on the market, and it has been since the 1970s – the Roland RE-201 Space Echo.
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2 Ways of Creating Bass Lines in Hip-Hop Beats
In this post, an excerpt of one of the lessons in Soundfly’s Hip-Hop Production course, we go over two ways to use bass lines in hip-hop beats.
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Elbows on Sketching Songs With Pencil and Paper and the Importance of Storyline
Welcome back to Soundfly’s weekly interview series, Incorrect Music, curated by guitarist, singer, and composer Lora-Faye Åshuvud (of the band Arthur Moon). In this series, we present intimate conversations with artists who are striving to push the boundaries of their process and craft. Brooklyn’s Max Schieble has had a prolific year releasing spacey jazz and hip-hop-inflected pop music under the…
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Album Histories Monthly: The Buggles – ‘The Age of Plastic’
Welcome back to our new series on Flypaper, Album Histories Monthly, which brings you the story of a single album each month, in the month that it was originally released. Last month, we covered Afrika Bambaataa’s Planet Rock. This month: The Buggles – The Age Of Plastic Release Date: January 10, 1980 The Buggles became forever associated with MTV when their music video…
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Let Kaki King Walk You Through Her Live Electronics Setup
In Kaki King’s brand-new, free course for Soundfly, Digital Pedalboards, she takes us through why she decided to make the switch to a digital pedalboard, how she makes use of this new, more compact electronics setup, and some helpful tips for how to customize the tech for our own use. Kaki’s setup involves only five pieces of gear.…
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Using Effects to Transform the Sonic Contours of Your Electronic Drum Pad
Musicians today use audio effects for literally everything. Guitarists, keyboardists, vocalists, saxophonists, you name it. Effects play a huge role in defining your personal sound to achieve the exact, desired impact no matter what instrument or genre you play. Yet, in my experience, drummers tend to be wariest of using effects processing in a live setting.…
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Moments in Music: 10 Affordable Drum Machines That Outshine Their Price
Everyone knows that Jeff Mills shreds on a TR-909, that Egyptian Lover shakes up a room with his TR-808, and that legendary percussionist Sheila E (who worked with Prince, Marvin Gaye, Beyoncé, Diana Ross, and more) makes magic happen with a Linn LM-1. There’s no doubt that these drum machines — and the artists that made them iconic — changed…
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Intro to Electronic Drumming: Adding a Drum Pad into Your Performance Setup
Becoming comfortable with playing electronic percussion is a vital skill for the modern drummer, especially when playing contemporary, digital-heavy genres such as trap, neo-soul, and pop-rock. Contemporary music production has a tendency to involve a combination of very specific drum sounds and completely electronic sounds that cannot be easily emulated by acoustic drums, and as a…
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606–909: The Legendary Roland Drum Machine Series
Ah, that classic beat, marching ever onward, familiar as the beat of our own hearts. But the beats we’re so consumed with, the sounds that so commonly drive our daily lives, are not only not the sound of a beating heart (a robot heart, maybe), they’re not organic sounds at all. Yes, yes, whether you like it or…
