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How to make a beat from a soul sample

The whole path from a soul sample to a finished beat, and the decisions that matter a great deal more than which software you own.

Soul has been the raw material for hip hop for forty years, and the reason is not nostalgia. Soul records were cut by full bands playing in rooms, which means a four bar section of one carries bass, harmony, movement and a sense of space that no single instrument gives you. Sample four bars and you have inherited an arrangement.

That is also the trap. A strong soul sample sounds finished before you have done anything, so it is easy to drop drums on top, call it a beat, and end up with something that is really just a section of somebody else's record with a kick underneath. The difference between that and a record of your own is in the decisions below.

1.Start with a section, not a whole composition

Listen to the source all the way through once, then go back and find the two or four bars where something specific happens. Not the best sounding part. The part with a movement in it: a chord that resolves somewhere unexpected, a fill, a horn line that answers the keys, a bar where the bass walks instead of sitting.

That movement is what keeps a repeating section listenable for three minutes. A bar that is merely pretty gets boring by the eighth pass. A bar with a turn in it does not.

A practical version of this test: play your chosen section eight times in a row. If you are still interested on the eighth, it works. If you reached for the stop button, keep looking.

2.Find the tempo before you commit to one

New producers pick a tempo and then force the sample into it. That is backwards, and it is why so many beats have a sample that sounds slightly seasick.

Work out the sample's own tempo first. Tap it in, or use your software's detection and then check it by ear against a metronome for a full eight bars, because detection routinely reports double or half the real figure on material with a sparse kick pattern.

Then decide what to do with it:

• Leave it. If the source is at 74 and you are happy at 74, you have saved yourself every artefact that comes with stretching.
• Move it a little. Two or three BPM either way is usually inaudible and can lock the sample to a drum feel you already have.
• Move it a lot, deliberately. Slowing a soul sample from 90 to 70 changes the character substantially, and that can be the point rather than a compromise. Pitch drops with it unless you tell your software otherwise, and the dropped pitch is often the reason it suddenly sounds heavier.

Sample packs that label the tempo on the file save you this step entirely. If you are working from labelled material there is a separate guide on what to do with BPM and key labels.

3.Play it straight, or chop it

There is no rule here, but there is a useful question: does the section already say what you want it to say?

If it does, leave it alone. Plenty of records that people assume were chopped to pieces are four bars played straight with everything else built around them. Restraint reads as confidence.

Chop when you want something the source does not give you: a different chord order, a rhythm the original does not have, a shorter phrase repeated where the original was long and flowing. Chopping to prove you can chop produces beats that sound busy and say nothing.

If you do chop, the mechanics matter enough to have their own guide, and it is the next one to read: how to chop a soul sample.

4.Make room before you add drums

This is where most beats are won or lost, and it is a frequency problem before it is a volume problem.

A full band recording already occupies the low end. There is a bass player on it. If you put your kick and your 808 into that same space and then turn them up until you can hear them, you get a muddy bottom end and a sample that has lost its weight. Turning things up is not the fix.

What usually works:

1. High pass the sample until its own bass thins out. Start somewhere around 100 to 200 Hz and move it by ear. You are listening for the point where the sample loses mud but not body.
2. Put your own low end in the gap you just made. Now your kick and bass have somewhere to sit that nothing is competing for.
3. Check it in mono. Low end problems hide in stereo and appear on phone speakers.

Sometimes you want the original bass and no bass of your own. That is a legitimate choice and it is often the right one on a sparse beat. Decide it on purpose rather than discovering it.

5.Arrange around the sample's own movement

A soul sample gives you a structure for free if you listen for it. Wherever the source breathes, a fill, a gap before a turnaround, a held chord, you have a natural place for something to change.

Three arrangement moves that cost nothing:

• Take the drums out where the sample resolves. One bar of sample alone does more than a new sound would.
• Filter the sample down and back up across eight bars instead of writing a new section.
• Mute the sample entirely for a bar and let your own drums carry it, then bring it back. The return feels like an event.

Layering something of your own over the top is the other half of this, and pairs with the drum version of the same idea in how to layer your own drums over a break.

6.Know what you are allowed to release

All of the above assumes you can actually put the finished thing out. That depends entirely on where the sample came from, and it is worth settling before you spend three weeks on an arrangement.

If you sampled a commercial soul record, there are two copyrights involved and you need permission for both. If you used a royalty free sample pack, the licence should tell you in writing what you can do. If you found the audio somewhere with no stated source, treat that as the answer.

The detail on this is in do you need to clear a soul sample, which is the article to read before you release anything rather than after.

The short version

Find a section with movement in it. Work at the sample's tempo rather than against it. Cut the sample's low end and put your own down there. Use the gaps the source already has instead of writing around them. Make sure you are allowed to release it before you finish it.