Hi everyone,
I am a beginner producer who's most influenced by cloud rap and am making those style beats. I'm most influenced by Seshollowaterboyz, $uicideboy$, black smurf, SGP, Kray, etc.
My biggest question is... how do you (or rather, how did they) get that old SoundCloud/cloud rap "feel" and "sound" in today's day and age? I'm not talking about synths or chords or anything, but rather the crunch, atmosphere, and specific feel that all those songs had. From Chris Travis to $uicideboy$ to ecco2k to whoever, there seemed to be a certain compression and slight imperfect grit in the mix in every song.
I've tried lowering the bitrate, adding more compression to my master chain, and other things, but nothing seems to REALLY emulate that old sound. I believe modern rappers of a similar style and beats all don't feel the same way either (not just nostalgia-wise), and it feels like even my own songs feel "too clean". I didn't know if anyone would know how to get that 2012-2016 feel? Is it audio/video compression AFTER production? Or some sort of byproduct of that era's equipment?
Some examples that I can think of to help paint a picture would be
"Diamonds", "Wavy World", and "Poplar" by Chris Travis
"Morning Dew", and "WhereTheTreesMeetTheFreeway" by BONES
and practically every song in that same general genre and time period...
Thanks, sorry that it's a bit abstract of an ask, but if you get what I mean, let me know.
You make it sound like it was the 1960s and not barely a decade ago.
cloudrap peaked in 2013 or so imo which is like 16 years ago. times goin too quick lol
Agree haha
U know what I mean, older fl, older mics, old vsts. I didn’t mean recording on tape recorders 😂😂😂
Not sure what ur trying currently, have you tried using clip distortion?
I can try using more of that, I’ve been told that clipping and distorting is bad for the mix, but would that be good for this style?
That IS the style. Volume management is more key. Exporting at lower qualities will also help.
Ok perfect, thanks. I always liked those old $b tracks where the kick was literally drowning out the mix. Guessing that’s the sauce?
Yeah dude I started producing around 2018 because $B really influenced me, one of the first things I've learnt is to put a soft clipper on master and boost that kick to max volume.
This workflow is still being used to this day by many producers, I'm pretty sure that's like IS the essence of many trap songs out nowadays. If I can elaborate on it more, I think the soft clipper besides making the kick knock louder.. is because it pushes the redlining artifacts back down, it creates this crunchy / vintage sound you're referring to. It's really a lot of white noise artifacts, just like looking at a plain black picture vs looking at a picture taken on a phone with the thumb covering it to make it a black picture (the 2nd photo has noise, while the 1st is pure color as much as it can get)
Awesome, will do, thx for the reply
When someone says your mix or tracks shouldn't be clipping/distorting they most likely mean that you accidentally left your tracks on too loud and you are unintentionally getting the 'clip distortion' effect on your whole mix. You don't have to worry about unintentionally making your tracks too loud though with most clip distortion plugins because they compensate for the volume so you are not actually redlining and you still get the 'blown out' effect.
The clip distortion effect happens by taking your audio signal which probably looks sine-like and rounded and clipping off the peaks to make the signal more square wave looking. You can do this via plugin or by turning your tracks up a lot and then exporting them, or with a lot of compression etc...
Here is a video explaining with a visual:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nIQpqoZhrrA
The more aggressive the sound the more clipping and distortion is required in general i'd say.
Thanks so much, I’ll do some experimenting and research today!
Nothing has changed other than drumkits (even that not always). So don’t worry about compression lol this music uses the same stuff you see used now
Ok 👍
Have you tried rendering the file as an MP3? What also might help is to upload it to Soundcloud then download it from Soundcloud. Soundcloud's normalization takes out certain frequencies.
What...
Yeah if you pay close attention tracks sound different on Soundcloud and it's because of that. Sometimes tracks end up sounding worse on Soundcloud. Maybe they improved it nowadays, idk, but that was definitely a culprit to tracks sounding off back in the day.
It's because they just don't like 700hz and decided to remove it? Makes no sense. That's also not what normalization means either.
Can you define normalization I might not understand it
Idk if I’m interpreting this correctly but is this the same thing as having a really loud tracks LUFs wise and then uploading it to SoundCloud or yt or something Because they bring the loudness down? (And introduce potential artifacts?) not sure if that statement is true
Yeah that's pretty much what normalization is. Every platform has its own normalization to make sure every track's as close in volume as possible. Otherwise you'd have extremely loud tracks that might damage someone's ears or speakers. but they all apply normalization differently and whatever Soundcloud's method is strips certain frequencies or used to.
I’ll definitely check that out experiment with a couple new things. I’ll see what works best and gets it closest to the style. I’m looking for. Thanks for the insight.
old and obscure samples
That’s all I use lmao
its a combination of good sample/synth choices (think spacey sorta indie songs, ambient music, airy sorta pads for vsts and similar sorts of sounds) and mostly fairly young dudes that werent formally educated in music following imperfect youtube mixing tutorials and working by trial and error until things sounded good, keyword is good, not worrying about it being perfect is probably an important step. id imagine anyway
use lots of reverb on said samples/vsts, hihats, and snares too
Thank you, very good advice