Samplecraze release eBook: Mixing Hip Hop

17th September 2018 - KVR Audio News

Music production e-learning specialists Samplecraze has announced the launch of their latest eBook package: Mixing Hip Hop — The Definitive Guide for Producers.

Designed for producers of all levels, as well as artists who want to up the quality of their self-produced tunes, author Eddie Bazil takes you through the ups and downs of a real-word hip hop project, revealing a host of industry tips, tricks and techniques along the way, and all the time explaining the why as well as the how. Everything's focused on meeting the needs of classic hip hop productions, but it's all relevant to other urban, dance and pop genres, and for anyone interested in music production more generally.

Like Samplecraze's recent Mix Bus Strategies e-learning package, Mixing Hip Hop takes the form of a hands-on, example-rich PDF eBook that's backed up with dozens of audio and video examples — this time there are over 220 pages packed with useful screenshots, 26 video tutorials and 300 uncompressed, 24-bit 44.1kHz WAV files.

Everything's neatly organized by chapter — read the book, follow the richly illustrated step-by-step examples, and Eddie directs your attention to the videos and audio file that are relevant to what you're reading. About half of the videos are specific to the track Eddie's working on, while the other half focus on production techniques more generally.

The audio files include the before and after multi-tracks and stereo mixes, so you can import everything into your DAW and put Eddie's techniques into practice. Eddie starts with the raw multi-tracks, assessing what's good and not so good about the recordings, and exploring strategies to tackle any problems — everything from noise reduction to replacing or enhancing dodgy recordings. He kicks on from there to create a basic 'faders and pan' mix, before delivering a more detailed mix that delivers on the brief from the artist.

Finally, it's time to sprinkle the gold dust — Eddie demonstrates how a mix engineer can take things much, much further, when they have free rein to stray beyond the brief. He explores everything from creative use of effects, triggering new sounds via MIDI that's been extracted from the audio parts, to sophisticated processing and routing strategies that can be used to apply a truly professional sheen to the mix.

The whole package — eBook, videos and audio — is available now at Samplecraze for £24.99. The 1.4GB download occupies 4.8GB of hard drive space.

For one month only: use the code HIPHOPFIVE to get an additional 20% off Mixing Hip Hop at www.samplecraze.com/product/mixing-hip-hop

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