@rtasure.  Thanks. i will peep his youtube channel.  I do follow a lot of tutorials designed for other daws.  I was really seeking things more sonar specific since I am trying to come up with a more efficient workflow

Here's that X2 Matrix vid of Karl's I was referring too earlier if you are interested.

http://www.youtube.com/wa...5JAFonfeCw&index=2

I agree in principle. I'm a video guy and understand that no plugin or method will make digital video look like film, but you can get close and come up with something pleasing.  i love film, but the time and money savings i get from shooting digital trumps the purist in me.  The filters in those old samplers were so warm and fat. I think the emu filters were even better.

Swiller


An old akai sampler and maschine or similar controller are pretty essential items if you want to make authentic hip hop with a decent workflow. I dont think any daw can claim to make things sound authentically hip hop.

Hip hop was born out of looping disco/jazz records first on turntables, then on digital samplers. I dont think sonar is the issue here. Ease of use and what comes through the speakers are two very different things of course.....

The video posted was impressive in its ease of editing, but the drums still sounded dung to my ears after all that work. No where near how good and authentic that drumloop would sound thrown through an akai s1000 for example. 

I have a good friend who is a hobbyist hip hop producer. He picked up and old akai s2000 rack sampler for £45 quid and now throws all his drumloops through it like a drumloop pre amp. He calls it the best drumloop hardware plugin in the world.  His drums sound great and authentic. They have that digital crunchy sound. A big difference from these tweakeable software clones he was using.  He throws in loops via old vinyl from an sl1210 and it sounds hip hop because thats exactly how the genre has been doing it for decades. That is the sound.

Similarly, drumloops in hip hop originated from samples of acoustic drumkits from old 70s disco records or jazz records. (Funky drummer?)
..So dont discount using session drummer 3 and the 500mb acoustic kits for your base for drumloops. Try loading up the wet3 kit (amazing snare), loading up a hip hop midi part and throwing it through a compressor like roughrider 64bit, which is free. Try that compresor on NY compression setting and i reckon you will be nearer the hip hop sound than spending time chopping up samples like in the video.

Sonar x2 will host, sequence and add fx to the sounds/loops no problem at all.  If you expect to get that authentic sound from a daw alone, i think you will be disappointed, despite how easy it is to edit stuff.

Thanks.  i think the discussion ended up providing a few worthwhile tips and some things to consider

Shambler


Nothing to add except I applaud dubdisciple's excellent handling of replies he has received when some people would have blown a fuse by now
 
I know nothing about hip-hop production so am reading this thread with interest.

One in a crowd hun? Same can be said for every single time someone playing the "ignorance" card in a "hip hop" thread. FFS, it was the FIRST SENTENCE you used. I just have the balls to say it alienated me straight off. Anyways, I made my suggestions. Good luck!

so you were alienated because I asked people to refrain from ignorant replies? I will just leave that alone and say sorry I offended you.

Beepster. I had seen that video before, but I watched it again. It's a good video, but what was shown would probably not work too well for most hip-hop styles. To be fair, that was not the intent of this video and I am going to try an experiment. I'm going to try and map chopped samples to the matrix and trigger with a controller. I already foresee some hiccups with that approach because of the fact that there is no way to control the sample within the matrix other than triggering it. This makes the matrix a great alternative way to input looped material, but does not give it the loop mangling power of something like ableton. Being a longtime Sonar user, I can see where they were attempting to create things along those lines like cyclone and beatscape but each kind of fizzled. Cyclone was kind of cool but just was not intuitive enough to catch on. Anyway, I'll keep poking around.

dubdisciple: Groove 3 has a tutorial on producing Hip-hop. I know you are looking for stuff inside of Sonar and the video uses ProTools but it does show that a main stream DAW can produce HH just fine.

FWIW: I'm not into producing HH but I found some of the production techniques very helpful...mostly what I got out of it is there is no easy path or silver bullet to creating a great tune. It takes a lot of work.

Hope you find what you are looking for.

Regards,

dubdisciple


I hesitated to post this because any reference to hip-hop often is an invite for ignorant comments. It's not for me.  My son and his friends have been getting into hip-hop and have been experimenting with various methods.  They asked about Sonar, but like many who try to use Sonar for hip-hop, they found the workflow very non-intuitive for such things in comparison to other programs.  I know, one can create just about any genre of music on any DAW, but i would be lying if i said Sonar was ideal for this task based on my experience.  The irony of this is that there are many who complain that Cakewalk is focusing on dance and loop based production which is pure nonsense.   Most of the additions to X2 were not geared towards any genre or style of music.  i can also say with certainty that the hip-hop producer using Sonar is likely to be just as frustrated as the guy who feels the staff view features fall short.

Anyway, i have found a few tutorials on youtube, but most (if not all) are by guys who definitely are not hip-hop producers.  regardless of your opinions on hip-hop, most concede with any genre there is a huge difference between the person who loves and breathes the genre and the person who knows the theory behind it but just dabbles. It all may sound alike to you, but there is a reason why some producers are getting 7 figures per song and some are selling "beats" for $25.

I'm capable of putting together a hip-hop song in Sonar.  It's rare when I have to because 99% of the time in my job, the song is already created.  I know when i do, it seems to take me a lot longer than my son and his friends using other methods and the results are mixed

I make hip hop and did so in Sonar for 6 or 7 years. Its the same process as any other kind of music really. Most hip hop producers don't use Sonar because its just not a popular DAW in the hip hop community where most tend to gravitate towards FL Studio and Reason. If you have any specific questions I would be more than happy to help. 

Beepster


I could never figure out FL even back in the old days when it was just a glorified beat box. I am curious about Ableton. I've got a Light version that came with my Scarlett I'd like to check out but I'm a dinosaur by most standards so I should probably just stick to Sonar for now.

The one thing though is Hip Hop is a little different than the electronica/dance type stuff that makes Ableton so popular. Hip Hop is a little more repetitive and I think the sound quality is more important as it's roots are more steeped in R&B than anything. Essentially it doesn't need wicked fast changes and elements swelling in in out. It's more structured so Sonar and it's instruments/effects could indeed beat out those other programs if executed properly. 

On the fly live though Ableton seems to be king.

Of course this all merely based on what I've read and seen on the internet so it might be completely wrong.

Cheers.

Ableton is amazing for hip hop its what I use these days and hip hop is my #1 genre but most hip hop guys are turned off by the GUI. FL Studio is king in the hip hop world for whatever reason though I myself don't care for FL at all and never have.