If you've been creating beats for rappers for any amount of time, you might be finding that it's difficult to maintain a unique style and still create ideas which don't sound like repeats of your previous instrumentals. In fact, you're probably even aware of a few artists who seem to get one idea that they think is working and beat it to death until you never want to hear it again. So how can you maintain a good level of unique production as a producer or composer while still keeping a good deal of variety in your sound? The secret lies in the way that you develop your unique style and how you preserve it as you create new songs. The following techniques will help you to accomplish this so that you can have the best of both worlds with your beats for rappers in regard to variety, production and uniqueness.
Your Effects Are Part of Your Style
Your personal style as a producer does not simply lie within the types of rhythms that you use in your songs and the note selection within your melodies. It also lies within the way that you use state of the art studio effects to color your instruments. If you look at just about any of the masters in the world of any genre of music, many of them have a specific type of technology that they stick with in order to create their personalized sound effects. For ELP it's the Korg M50 88 key keyboard, for Grammy award winner Jason Gleed it's Sony ACID Pro, for T-Pain it's the powerhouse Logic Studio and for DJ Jazzy Jeff it's Ableton Live. Other studio ware for creating state of the art custom beats for rappers and effects include Sonar, Pro Tools and FL Studio. No matter what your tool of choice ends up being, the more mastery you have over a single type of technology, the easier it will be for you to create a unique sound.
Keep Track of Your Effects Settings
Keeping a log of your effect settings may not be the most fun thing in the world to do, but it will help you to be much more successful in the long run. Too many rookie producers or songwriters create something that they really like, but then forget to store the effect settings that they used to do so. Then they go back and try to recreate the same sound and they can't, which leaves them back at square one. However, if you get into the habit of storing your effects settings or making a note of precisely how you used them, you'll be able to develop and refine your own signature sound a lot faster, not to mention the fact that you will save yourself hours of trial and error time in the studio along with fist pounding frustrations that would occur as the results of having to constantly search for the right sound.
Gain Mastery Over the Technology
Finally, it is important that you gain mastery over the studio tools which are available to you and that you stay on top of the new advancements in technology as they come out. You can either do this by countless hours of trial and error, or by connecting with interactive tutorial sites that allow you to gain the knowledge and understanding at your own pace. These kinds of sites can include professional instruction on how to use the latest studio technologies to produce the best beats for rappers that have been through the hands of Badboy, Aftermath, Jive, Koch, Def Jam, G-Unit and Shady Records. With these kinds of tools and techniques at your fingertips, you will be able to develop a unique sound in no time and one that will serve you as an artist for years to come.