Seems that must forums not dedicated to HipHop consist of mainly Electronic/techno/house producers. I make hip hop. I like to sample AND use synths and modules to make my songs. Phatmatik and Battery seem like the best bet so far for chopping samples and re-arranging them. I use Virtual Sampler for Akais and SoundFonts. The mda piano and e piano are in my songs alot as well.
So what are the rest of you hip hoppers using? You got any secret weapons that I should know about? What's the closest software equivalant of an MPC? Also, what do you all use to find and match the key/scale for different samples?

Help a fellow producer out!
Thanks,
Cya!

You can use basically any program to make hiphop.

It come's down to what can you do for the program
as opposed to what can it do for you.

Back in the day's the sp1200 , dx/dmx ,mpc60 ,tr- 808
,s900, were popular gear for hip hop.

These by far can't do as much as the programs we have now.
If you wanted to buy these you had to fork out
alot of money. You had to make them work at all
cost. Be inovative.

I know guy's just using cooledit pro to make
hip hop But these guy's have been doing it
for years and don't just have the technical
knowledge but the life experience which is
just as important when making hip hop or
any music for that matter.

For myself I'm using Fruity Loops along with
cubase , cooleditpro.

Plugins :

Dr-008- for samples
Plugsounds - some nice bread and butter hip hop
sounds.

Tape deck and vcr - I use these to dirty and warm
the sound up then record back to the computer.

Mush

Like the man said, its not what you use, its what you do with it. There is no one programme/instrument that it specific to one genre. I've made Techno/Dance/Hip Hop (sort of) D&B/Rock-ish tracks all in the same host, as have many people.

If you are going to be mainly working with loops, try some of the stuff you already mention, Phatmatik Pro etc,but you can basically do it on/with anything.

Perhaps I gave the wrong impression. Yeah, I know that it's not the machine, but it's the man behind it. But if that machine can do something that other machines can't do (or incomprehensive men can't do), then we have something innovative. Anyways, the hardest thing for me to do is match samples. What if this perfect piano riff I sample is in one key, and this other great sounding string ensemble is in another...what do I do? I'm slowly learning keys/scales by ear, but sometimes I wish some of this work could be done for me to help me learn what goes where.
So yeah, Fruity Loops kicks major ass...Phatmatik kicks major ass, VSampler kicks major ass, but is ther something that can automate some of these key/scale matching problems I have? Generally I can make things match and sound good together, but I have no idea why and how they sound good together. Basically, I'm wondering if there is somehting that can detect and display keys/scales that work with one another. maybe melodyne...but I'm not always working with monophonic samples
Thanks for the input so far though! I need to learn my music theory!
Thanks-
ps: anyone know of any games that teach music theory??? hehe...I'm serious here!

yap.. "playing" the keyboard...

on the link below, there are two rap tracks (near the bottom..) "smoke," and "end of daze.." i did these with some neighborhood boys. "smoke" is mainly nord lead, "end of daze" is a live jam with all of my studio running.. more of this particular set of individuals can be found at mp3.com/deucefamily

these kids don't have any musical experience, yet apart from the rhythm and bass in "daze," all the parts are improvised by them.. i said "sit down, do something.." and recorded it as a loop on a q80. jazzy, huh?

what's a sample, anyway? :p of course, the big 'problem' with hiphop kids is they only use the black keys.. well.. is it a problem? hard to go wrong, and it works for their thing..

really. just use a keyboard. experience should sort you out.

Thought you might all like to hear David Abraham's Stylus demo.

Stylin' Remix

(came out cool, eh DAF?....did a bit of remix trix on it)

spectrum