Get The Picture
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Let The Beat Build….
I have no musical training. I can’t read music. I can’t play the drums. I’m semi proficient with the trumpet, but that was over 15 years ago, which means I currently suck ass.
I was always, however, fascinated by how music was created. It was mind bottling (yes I know I said it wrong, but Ron Burgandy is a great man) how certain melodies where cohesive with unorthodox drum patterns. I didn’t know how the fuck some of these dudes did it. I wanted to try. I wanted to make people move a certain way. I wanted to make a baseline so serious that my friends’ faces would scrunch up every time they heard it. But, I didn’t know where to start.
At first, I wanted to DJ. That fetish began during my brief stint at Morgan State University. I was cool with a couple dudes on the football team one of which happened to be a local DJ back in his hometown. When he would be at practice, he’d let me tear apart a bunch of records he gave three shits about. He admired my urge to learn on my own (I was toooo proud to let him teach me the basics). When I left Morgan, my love for DJ’ing faded, but I still was infatuated with making music.
I believe it was X-Mas break of 2003. I jumped on this program called “Fruity Loops” (Oh Hai 9th Wonder). I didn’t purchase the full program, but I found a crack in the system where I had the baisc tools to fuck around enough where I could actually make a beat. Only thing is, after each session, I wasn’t allowed to save that actual beat so I was basically practicing. But man was I having a ball.Months progressed and I got better. Every time I came home, Big Homie would ask, “The hell is all that nose you keep making in the library?” I can count on both hands and feet the amount of times I almost blew the speakers on our family computer. After awhile, he got the picture. So during one of my many weekend trips back to Jerz, Big Homie surprised me with Reason 2.5. How the hell he knew what computer programs made beats, I’ll never know. But I guess that’s why he’s Big Homie, right?
As the years went by (3 to be exact), I produced for a plethora of Howard University unknown artists- particularity these two @BroadwayMiller and @deontreblayz. With these two recording over my compositions, I became a household university name, sort of lol. I was even in a production group with this moron, @DarkCatalyst signed to Heavy Syndication, an independent label out of Washington, D.C. Ahhh, those were the days!
Despite numerous amounts of hard drive crashes and late night unsaved beats, I grew a new found love for making music. Remember, I still had no idea how to read or play music so I was really building shit by ear. See, I don’t call myself a producer because I didn’t PRODUCE records. I didn’t build melodies. I didn’t orchestrate a symphony. I didn’t bring in Jazz players to fill in empty slots…I just made took some snazzy kicks, spunky snares and dressed them up with an assortment of decorations. 7 times out of 10, they came out pretty decent. And the other three times, fuck that…I’M STILL PROUD OF EM lol.
Long story short- I miss making beats. I used to sit in my dorm room for HOURS UPON HOURS making beats from scratch and not giving a fuck what a critic had to say about it cause I was having fun and that’s really all that mattered to me. I knew I had so much to learn in area of producing, but I was up for the task. However, during my last hard drive failure, I had to quietly give up the hobby because A.) I didn’t have the ends to fix my comp- I did some serious damage that time and B.) UHTN was on the horizon so I focused my attention on that.
To close out this post, I found two of my favorite beats deep deep deeep in my email stash from back in 2007. The first one is called “I Can See” and the last is called “Ol School.” I thoroughly enjoy both. And now that I finally have them in my clutch, I’ll use them to remind me of a time when I used to have fun. Hell, listening to them now gets me somewhat emotional. Go figure lol.
I Can See (Produced By LowKey)
Ol School (Produced By LowKey)
Sincerely
Low “All I wanted to do was make beats” Key
