So how do you make electronic beats?

[allan_zip]

Listening to these samples, the drums sound like sped up samples.

I remember quite a few years ago reading an interview with Aphex and he was quite candid about his beats. He was singing the praises of Recycle and it's ability to cut up beats that he then tweaked and triggered in his Akai sampler. Now what bizarre midi concoction he uses to trigger his sampler with is another matter. i remember he said he would draw words on his midi piano roll just to see what would come out. Apparently if you make a sonogram of the track on the Windowlicker cd (the one that has a title which is a really long mathematical equation) an image of Richard James appears in the analysis graphic! (true? i don't know)
Squarepusher said he used, on his first two LPs at least, a completely hardware based set-up of step sequencers, synths and samplers with live bass.

 

[inlimbo]

I remember quite a few years ago reading an interview with Aphex and he was quite candid about his beats. He was singing the praises of Recycle and it's ability to cut up beats that he then tweaked and triggered in his Akai sampler. Now what bizarre midi concoction he uses to trigger his sampler with is another matter. i remember he said he would draw words on his midi piano roll just to see what would come out. Apparently if you make a sonogram of the track on the Windowlicker cd (the one that has a title which is a really long mathematical equation) an image of Richard James appears in the analysis graphic! (true? i don't know)

True. I did it ages ago. Pretty cool stuff. Its the track which is unofficially called 'a complex mathematical calculation' or something. If I find the program to do it I will post it.

 

[CanadaRAM]

But remember: Asking "how do I make beats like the pros? What do I buy?"

Is kind of like saying " How do I make a Symphony?"

Answer:
"You buy a Waterman fountain pen with India Black ink (and only India Black), a pad of Acme brand Parchement score paper, 20 staves to the page. Then you make a bunch of little black marks on the parchement score paper, hand it to an orchestra and Voila! a Symphony!"

There's the issue of talent, inspiration, a LONG time getting to know how to use your tools, and a lot of hard work, involving throwing away 99% of what you produce to keep the 1% that is inspired and original. Only, you never know which is the 1% ahead of time.

<At one point in time, I calculated I have something like 50 linear MILES of songs on 4-track cassette multitrack tape. Most of it is dreck>