Learn About Sean "LiveWire" Smith

Hello to all of the hip hop producers out there, newbies, experienced producers, and famous producers who are making money. This right here was made in order to teach a bit of hip hop production to those of you interested in it. Now, as I go through, I may seem to describe things as though you are newbies. Well, that is because some of you are. Some of you have never touched a piece of software, let alone a turntable or MPC3000.

This tutorial will focus on us software producers. For those of you unaware of what a software producer is, it's those of us who use software to make our music. Aww man, I'm having fun speaking newb :-p! Naw, basically I'll be focusing on FruityLoops, but what I tell you can be applied to most any software, and since I own Reason, (although I tend to refrain from using it because its nowhere near as simplistic as FruityLoops), I know that it's friendly to Reason users. I believe that it should be fine for any tracker/sequencer program, and most hardware also.

Later on, sampling will be used. Most producers have heard of it before, but have no idea what it REALLY means. Well, don't worry about it as of yet, I'll hit on it eventually. Just know that sampling cannot be done in a tracker (not that I know of at least). I use Cool Edit Pro, but SoundForge, ACID, or some hardware could probably work just as well.

Please note that in order to display the patterns and the arrangement of the patterns, I used text-based methods that are explained before the first time of their use. This was meant to start a new way of displaying beats without the use of screenshots. I planned to spread this as a trend for forums and such, but screenshots will be provided to stop any confusion, and possibly make it easier for others to learn the text-based version of the patterns. Please note, however, that the screenshots will be from FruityLoops.

Finally, there may be typos in here. Hell, I can almost guarantee a forgotten apostrophe, uncapitalized "I", a "g" missing at the end of a gerund, a missed letter or two in a word, or even misused vocabluary. Oh well. Instead of bombing me about it, just let me know. I don't mind fixing it.

Also, I'd like to give a special thanks to SonOfLilit for clearing up the discrepancies in my explanation of the envelope, and a few other things. If anyone else would like to contribute, please, be my guest.