Musical Considerations. Inside Perspective (from Lamont)

Hip Hop music has important connections to Afrodiasporic traditions (Rose, 1994; Schloss, 2014) and therefore operates by different rules and with different values than those instilled in many music educators. For example, a much greater emphasis is placed on elements such as groove, feeling, flow, and rupture in Hip Hop as opposed to harmonic and melodic progressions that move away from and return to tonic.

Even compared to many other practices common in other forms of popular music, Hip Hop does not always play by the same rules. In this chapter, we will introduce some of the fundamental elements of both instrumental backing tracks and lyric writing—or more colloquially, beats and rhymes. We do not include DJing and/or turntablism as part of these considerations. This incredibly valuable practice has many connections to beat production, but has so many of its own idiosyncrasies and variations that we considered this beyond the scope of the current chapter and worthy of its own chapters and articles separately.

Inside Perspective (from Lamont).Hip Hop is about finding that place that feels good and then making a home there and then only leaving that place when the new place we are going to feels like home or we can dress it up to make it feel like home and there is a clear path back home. A great example of this is producer Just Blaze who is as Hip Hop as it gets but has told stories of a suburban upbringing. Now a multimillionaire, he regularly shows his home decor that feels like a museum of Hip Hop culture. No matter how big, small, inexpensive or expensive a home is, it can still be Hip Hop. So it stands that when considering the music itself, how it’s listened to, how and when it’s played and how it’s made, everyone participating is trying to make it home. That’s a double meaning.

One of Hip Hop’s primary musical elements is the concept of a loop. The history of DJs looping drum breaks have been described much better elsewhere (Chang, 2005), but the implications of looping are ingrained in other Hip Hop compositional tools as well. For example, every digital audio workstation (DAW) has a loop function. This speaks to home because a loop always comes back to where it started. Because of that, the end and the beginning of the loop have to work in a relationship together. As a beat maker, I always start with the “home” of a song, which is the hook. When composing an intro, pre-hook or bridge, all of those parts are then derived from the hook. Every other section of the beat will contain some elements of the hook and will therefore loop as well. Everything cycles back on itself. Everything feels like home.

Sonically, Hip Hop is about textures, rhythms, pitches, and frequencies. What gets included or excluded in the various sections of a song (as just mentioned regarding looping) creates different textures, which provides vitality and difference and keeps the listener interested. The rhythm of the instrumental generally dictates how the words will be delivered by an emcee. But how the words get delivered depends on the interpretation of the person delivering them. There is no “correct” rapping cadence for a beat. Instead, every rhythm speaks to different people differently. As well, moods, seasons, lighting, and substances can all affect how the person hears and feels the rhythm. For that matter, the same goes for people who create the rhythm.

The pitches—or lack thereof—generally dictate the moods that are delivered and received. For example, Lil Wayne’s “Dark Side of the Moon” makes me cry because the chords are the same chords they played at my grandmother’s Baptist church during the time when everyone confessed their sins and went to get baptized. Rhythms and pitches are translated as a series of frequencies for engineers of the music. Learning to adjust frequencies in a DAW with different equalizers, filters, and effects is just as important a part of Hip Hop composition as creating rhythms or pitches. These audio engineering skills are definitely an essential part of the composition process.

With all of this in mind, it’s important for teachers to understand the following basic DAW functions in order to help their students. This is not necessarily an exhaustive list, but gives an idea of some of the necessary tools for Hip Hop composition in a DAW. Whatever software teachers and students might be using, there are likely plentiful online tutorials explaining these tools in detail:

- Preferences menu: Sound input/output, connections for audio interfaces and MIDI controllers
- Setting project tempo and identifying bar numbers
- Set and toggle loop/cycle feature
- Stop, play, record

- Arming tracks for recording and monitoring
- Volume, solo, mute, and pan for each track
- Create/open VST/AU/Rack instrument device
- Create/open VST/AU/Rack effect device
- MIDI entry and editing on the piano roll, including quantization and velocity

- Audio editing with waveforms, including splitting, cutting, copying, and pasting regions
- Automation
- Basic mixing plugins and effects like compression, reverb, and equalization
- Exporting a DAW project as a single audio file