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If you find that the free hip hop beats does not fit the length of your rap/vocal, you can easily edit the length of the instrumantal beats.

Let’s say you want to have a 24 bar rap verse, but the free hip hop beat have only a 8 bar verse. First you need to load the beat into your recording software. In this example I will use cubase. Then you need to find out the tempo of the beat. If the beat had an intro effect that does not start on the downbeat, you need to adjust the beginning of the file so it’s starts at the first downbeat exactly.  You can always move it back again later to include the intro effect.

Let’s find the tempo. To do that you start the beat at bar 1. Loop the first 4 bars by setting left locator at bar 1 and right locator at bar 5. Turn on cycle, so when the locator get to bar 5 it goes back to bar 1. Then it is just a matter of raising or lowering the tempo until you can hear a clean transition when the locator goes back to bar 1.

Once you have the tempo locked, you can use beats and bar grid mode to cut out pieces of the music. Let’s say the verse starts at bar 9 and continues for 8 bars.   Cut at bar 9 and bar 17. If you want a 24 bar verse, you move the rest from bar 17 to start at bar 33, copy the verse section twice at bar 17 to 25 and bar 25 to 33.

Voila, you now have a 24 bars 1st verse..

Happy recording to our instrumental beats

Let me give you a few tips on recording vocals to the free Hip Hop Beats. Once you have downloaded your free track, you need some recording software to record you vocals to the beat. There are quite a few free recording software programs to choose between, like Audacity.

You also need an audio interface, and of course a microphone, see my other article for tips on choosing a microphone.

When choosing an audio interface I can recommend the 130 dollars M-audio MobilPre USB Interface with Preamp. Reviews here..

Before you can record your vocals you need to import the free hip hop beat into the recording software. In most recording programs you can simply drag and drop the mp3 file into the main window and it will allocate a stereo track for the beat.

Add another 5 or so mono tracks to record vocals on. Why 5? Well, I suggest you use a technique call comping when recording and mixing your own vocals. Comping means that after you have recorded several tracks under each other and you can comp a main lead by simply cut and paste the best parts into one main vocal track. After you have finish comping  you should double parts or all of the lead vocal. Make another 5 or so track and double the main vocal while listening to the main. You need to match the timing of the original as close as possible. When you have a few, you can comp those into a double track. If parts of the vocal is slightly off the main lead, you can nudge the double voc to match.

You might need to stack the vocals even more in parts of the song like in the hook, to get a bigger sound. Once you got all the vocals recorded and edited, you are ready to mix your song.

Have fun recording, and be sure to check back soon for a tutorial on mixing.

When mixing your vocals with the free hip hop beats, a good pair of speakers are a must.

You can have the perfect recording, but if you can’t hear how it sound on most other systems, because you got crappy speakers, you are not going to get a great mix.

So a quality pair of studio monitors is a must. But don’t get caught up in those huge speakers with 12 – 15 inch bass. Sure they sound great in the store, because they have sound proofed the room, but at home without sound proofing it’s going to mess up your sound. The bass will bounce off your walls and celings, even with curtains and carpets installed. You need proper bass traps and measuring the room, adjusting with Eq to be able to handle deep frequencies well.

So unless you are prepared to do that, I suggest going with a small pair of good quality speakers. 90% of the time spend on mixing you will be focusing on the mid frequencies anyway. When you occasionally need to check the low frequency of the mix, use a good pair of headphones instead. Headphones can playback the low frequencies without problems.

But remember, don’t mix your entire mix using headphones only. They don’t translate well compared to when playing on speakers. The stereo perspective and depth is different on headphones, so you might end up with a mix that sounds great on headphones but dull on most speakers.

Happy mixing.

Johnny Jam

Check out our great collection of microphones. As a vocalist you need a great microphone to record your vocals to the Free Hip Hop Beats.

I suggest using a tube microphone to capture the broad frequency contained in a vocal performance. Or if your budget is small a condeser mic like the AT2020 can do the trick. You can find great microphones at awesome prices here.

The most important thing is to make sure the room you are recording in is not too live, meaning the refelxtions from the walls and celing are not affecting the sound too much. Hanging up some heavy curtains on the walls and put a carpet on the floor will usually do the trick.

To avoid pops when recording, use a pop filter in front of the mike. You can even get some that will connect to your mike stand for cheap. Check out the great selection here.

Good luck with you recording session.

Johnny Jam