I made this instrumental some few years back and it has a little bit of a story to it.
I had been a beat-addict for about seven years now but up to the time I made this one, I had never really tried my hands at the Afro-Beat Dance kind of song. As at that time, I started to become really fascinated with the beauty of afro-beat songs.
I think one of the producers I respect when it comes to afro-naija beat-making is Young John. He knows how to combine few elements effectively without "sample overcowding" and yet give a naija song a foreign feel without messing with the afro-dance groove.
So I came home that day from school and I told my brother that I was going to try to make a naija beat. It was feat for me. I was an enthusiast,not a professional I think. I had never been to the studio as at then , it was just me and my computer.
So I took out a pen and made my plan. First I listed the features of Afro-Beat as at then, it has really evolved.
- Naija songs are snare driven, kicks are quite sparse in the underline percussion.
- It's mostly single-melody driven , most especially when it had to be really danceable
- The melodies in each bars are just stepped down or stepped up version of the others with some elements in the layered melody being underplayed and then overplayed from bars to bars. This is done to make sure the rythm is not messed up and yet, the listener will not feel a sense of monotony.
So after making this observations, I went straight to FL studio. the problem with FLStudio is lack of quality samples but FL actually has some not-to-bad VSTs that give some awesome sounds, examples include HARMOR, HARMLESS and my beloved SYTRUS.
So I tried to stick to those three VSTs , most especially sytrus for choice of sounds, then downloaded some "totally-free-to-use" sound pack. i think I downloaded Sam klef' s sound pack .
Then here is the magic:
I didnt have any instrument and I knew to have the best groove, I really needed an instrumental flow, rather than just typing and drawing on piano roll. So I fell back on the most common musical instrument in the world: THE VOICE, turned on my EDISON and connected to the LAPTOP mic, then I hummed everything from melody to groove. That made a lot of sense, even though, it took time to get the best hum sample while I transferred them to piano roll and then made each bar.
After that, a lot of other magic happened and here we are , with this beat.
I love the beat but I won't consider it as finished. I think it still needs some mixing and perfect mastering.
In the beginning of the song, I added some Computer-Generated Voice that says "AKIN on the Beat". Just trying to add a signature before someone else says I did it.
So please listen and feel free to "criticise" me.
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► Listen from source (IPFS)