Yeah, that's why they're referring to the sample company Audentity.

And by from the synth, do you mean the loops and sounds from the actual sampler, or do you mean they created vocal chops using the plugin and uploaded those? Because if they're utilizing the plugin the way it's intended and creating musical vocal chops, there's nothing wrong with it - they created something unique with the idea.

If they're just pulling the sounds straight, without processing or alteration, that's a different issue.

What I'm curious about, though, is that how do ten people write a track together? And then six people produce it. What do all those people do? I'll answer the latter part of my question with this video from an Avicii livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEcq4sXN7jQ

From a business perspective, the only way you get royalty payment on a song is if you have a portion of the writer's credit. When the money for plays is given to the publishing right's organization that collects it, they allocate it into 200% - 100% that goes to the publisher (either you or, more likely, your record label) and 100% that is divided equally amongst all the writers.

For your typical pop song, 50% of the writer's earnings goes to whomever wrote the lyrics, and 50% goes to whomever composed the music. That can get divided differently based on genre, song, and who wants writer's credit (except for the drummer, cause drummers get shafted on writing copyright).

Could be that a lot of those people are just trying to earn a little bit more sustainable revenue. Also why it's a good idea to start collaborating early and often, given you don't just work with any old producer that walks in the door: the more songs you have published with your name on the credits, the more opportunities for pennies, nickels and dimes to accumulate from radio/streaming plays and visual media synchronization and good old fashioned direct downloads.

And that last one might not stick around much longer.

Good morning, everyone! It is time for the inaugural TPF Weekly Beat Cypher. Just post in the thread that you're joining the Cypher and download the samples, follow the simple rules posted below, and spend the next 7 days working on a 1 minute beat. Private message me with a download link to your beat by Saturday, June 11th at midnight pacific standard time, and come check out the thread Sunday morning around this time for the results and next week's Beat Cypher!

THE BORING PART - THE RULES (there's only two)

• You must use both samples provided, and you must compose in the BPM provided. One sample will be a transition sound you place at the start and end of your track, and the other is the featured sample for your beat.
• You have to both post in the thread that you are joining AND private message me with your track before 11:59 PM PST on Saturday for your submission to count.

If you're unsure of how the beat cypher works, here's an article describing it, a video that touches on it, and lastly here are all the Team Supreme cyphers, so you can hear how they did it:



Now, onto the fun part: This Week's Challenge!

Our first sample is a clipping from Kanye West's Get 'Em High - "Uh-uh. I'm try'na catch the beat."

Our transitional sample is taken from the concept music for the video game "Frozen Synapse", a track called Nightpath - Place this at the start and end of your 1 minute beat so I can blend them all together at the end!

Our tempo is 96 Beats Per Minute, so you need to write about 24 bars of music to complete this week's challenge.

Challenge starts now, so get to beatmaking!

REGISTERED CYPHERS:

• Mussar
• myda
• Tympest
• MikeConn
• AnnieTP
• Eidolon
• tom
• Lydian

FL Studio's sampling engine has a transpose knob in it.



Top right corner. Range is how far you can transpose it in semitones, and the knob scrolls in cents (100 cents = 1 semitone).

Use Splice. It's like Dropbox, but for DAWs. Plus you can see your arrangement on the website and have a catalogue of your previous versions.

I don't mean to go off-topic, but what would you suggest for drums? I have trouble finding any good drum samples as I suspect anyone else does. Any tips?

the only plugin i use for drums is sonic academy's kick 2. if i'm starting in ableton's arrangement view i'll usually just drag audio clips straight onto the timeline just so i can work with waveform data as much as possible - it's so much easier to visualize than MIDI notes. if i'm starting in session view, i'll either build up a drum rack or use individual simpler/samplers, then flatten to audio once i've worked up an arrangement from there. For samples, you can't go wrong with Splice; there's a ton of samples that you can audition before you buy (either as a whole sample pack or per sample) - I recommend the KSHMR pack, the Just Blaze packs, the Mixmash essentials pack, and any of the pegboard nerds emoji EP packs.

As far as non-splice sample packs go, black octopus sound is usually pretty reliable, and loopmasters is a staple of the industry. I'm probably gonna get flak for this, but Cymatics actually has incredibly solid drums sounds for that heavy brostep/trapstep style sound. KRNE has been consistently putting out fantastic sample packs for the trap and future bass sound, and Hyperbits put out a free sample pack a few years ago that I still go to for my house-oriented music.

Other wise it's just a fun little thing that you can set aside some time for, over a week or as many times as you want to do it.

Exactly! Besides, how is anyone going to know how much time you put into a track? You could spend thirty minutes or thirty hours on it throughout the week, and the only person who would know that you didn't do an hour a day is you. To be honest, you don't need to even commit to an hour a day. I'm just setting that bar because an hour a day is what I feel is just enough time to get solid work in, without being so long that you feel trapped in your DAW. Spend two days on sound design and composition, two days on arrangement and orchestration, and two days on mixing and mastering. Wake up Saturday morning, put in an hour of finalizing, and send it off to the curator. Or take your own route, however you feel is most conducive to your creative process. To be honest, as long as you're creating music I'm happy.

And I think we have a good start. I'll keep adding names to the list as this week goes, and I'll start curating samples. See y'all on Sunday!

Just so I can keep a running tally of interest, I'm gonna start listing all the names of people who have explicitly said they're interested. Even if it's just a handful of us, that's enough to start so I'll start looking for samples this week and post another thread on Sunday.

Interested Parties:
- Mussar
- myda
- Tympest
- MikeConn
- AnnieTP
- FarleyCZ (Maybe)
- Arktopolis (Later)
- Eidolon