Creating Texture & Ambience Including Sample Chopping | LoFi Hip Hop Production Basics in Cubase

welcome back once again to the official Cubase YouTube channel my name is Stevie B and this is part three of this series of videos about producing Lo-Fi hip-hop in the first two videos we came up with a simple Loop then we took those ideas and we created an arrangement once we had a better grasp of the structure of our track then we added some more percussive and melodic details and now we're going to add all the finishing touches this is my favorite part of the process we're taking a look at Am

bience and texture primarily we'll throw a few vocal samples in the mix perhaps a few more melodic ideas just kind of scattering some ear candy across the track the very first thing I'm going to do here is go digging for some interesting sounds that we can pull from our samples and loop Collections and as you've seen in the previous two videos we've got plenty to choose from so let's go see what we can find so let's check out our loops and samples Collections and we'll do a bit of digging I'm go

ing to come back to the Lo-Fi dreams collection okay so check this one out [Music] now as a loop that's not going to really do us any good but I like the texture the way that synth sounds and it's not in the right key Either we can transpose it that's fine but let me just see if I can maybe just slice out the first bit of that Loop and use it to texturize one of our cords probably just do the first chord of the progression I'm going to drag this in here okay let's drag everything back I just wan

t to capture this first chord might drag the whole sample back here just a little it's drawn to fade and listening [Music] okay so obviously that doesn't work in the key but if we transpose this down then all of a sudden it starts to sound pretty cool and bringing down the gain [Music] now we'll probably add a bit of Reverb to that later but I'm going to keep that there that works and in fact I'll probably just copy this out to the first chord of each progression let's bring it over to our other

course as well and that is basically the process of texturizing now I'm going to repeat this process a few times and this to me is what texturizing looks like just adding little bits and pieces of ear candy at the right place in time does a whole lot to elevate the vibe so what else do we got kind of like the way that sounds let me drag this in and again I'm just going to cut out this first bit of the loop it's drawn to fade as well and the question is always where to put it trying a few differ

ent things here let's try something like this [Music] totally out of our key but it sounds a little awkward let's try something else here I'll transpose it up three taking the gain down [Music] let's copy this out here copying out to our first chorus this piano Loop sounds pretty cool you can make a cool loop with that on its own again I'm just going to chop the first cord out of that Loop let's drag this in and chopping that out and maybe we'll try putting this where the third chord is hitting

if I transpose this down four steps it sounds like this that sounds pretty interesting so yeah again I'm going to draw a fade in there [Music] so we're getting somewhere with this ear candy might not sound totally developed yet but we haven't even applied any processing yet so at this point I'm just throwing ideas down trying not to overthink it and maybe let's search for some vocal stuff I'm going to switch over to the bloom collection tons of vocals in here something like this could be cool I

think that's in our key as well I'm going to drag that in here I feel like we could fit that in at the end of our progression [Music] yeah that kind of works well Time Stretch this just slightly and I'm just gonna throw this right on the grid here just listening to how that sounds [Music] yeah I like that let's see what else we got in the way of vocals I like this one here and let's maybe drag that in closer to the front of the progression in my mind yeah so these are going to sound really cool

once we add a bit of Reverb to them I'm not going to worry about that right now in my mind okay just listening to how these are all playing off each other right now [Music] foreign [Music] yeah those are super vibey again they sound a little awkward dry but we'll fix that later when we get to the mixing stage so I'm going to copy these three guys out and once more to our first chorus here I'm just going to color code these quickly we'll make the vocals purple ambient one shots can be blue so yea

h tons of vocal stuff from the bloom collection I love throwing those vocal details into a track like this it just adds a lot of Dimension to everything so I'd also like to add some subtle harmonic movement in certain sections and maybe we could start with this breakdown section we're kind of Switching gears there and again I'm always thinking of ways that we can make each section unique and this would be a great place to introduce something new so I don't know let's try pulling up our retro log

synth and see if we can find an interesting patch to play with I love the way this big wave patch sounds just coming up with an idea here [Music] it has almost like a synthwave vibe to it but a really cool retro sound I'm going to put this down quickly here we go [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] so this retro log synth is something that could live in the background something subtle adds some nice movement to the mix I wonder if we could add some kind of like counter melodic idea in this

breakdown section too I'm hearing like a glockenspiel or like a cholesta I'll bring up Holly in here we actually have a Celesta patch here in Italian see how this sounds [Music] yeah that could work here we go [Music] cool I like that let's copy that over okay I got a few more interesting ideas to throw into the session one thing we haven't checked out here is uh pad shop and this might actually come in handy I'm hearing some kind of like floating energy in the last chorus just some Ambient Ener

gy to dangle in the stratosphere of our mix so this patch age of solitude from Pet Shop here might do the trick foreign it's really low in the mix right now but it's going to add some cool flavor to this last chorus let's put this idea down here we go [Music] in [Music] month so I'm just going to copy this midi out for the last half of the chorus and yeah I think that's gonna work and if we want to dig a little deeper into texturization here I noticed earlier we got some really cool stuff in the

Lo-Fi dreams collection like this rain Ambience here this kind of Lo-Fi background Ambience is so cool and there's a lot to choose from here I think I'm gonna omit the ones with the thunder in it this one sounds kind of cool and number three here sounds a little more open let's go with that one I'm going to drag this down to the bottom of the session and there's a bit of weird noise so I'm just going to chop out a section here and loop it okay so let's bring this to the front of our track and I

'll Loop that out let's bring the volume way down [Music] when we get to the mixing stage we're going to use this Ambience and kind of wrap it around the kick with some side chain compression but I'll leave that for the next video for now I'll just keep this pretty low in the mix and one more idea that just popped into my head is using some electric keys and I'm going to use hallion for this just to kind of thicken out our piano sound even though our piano sounds great I'm thinking this is somet

hing that we could introduce in our breakdown here there's some great electric Keys patches here in Holland this aged suitcase patch sounds pretty cool so I'm going to punch in some chords real fast here for this progression I won't force you to watch me punch in these chords one at a time here so I'll just press pause and I'll come back when these are finished okay here we go some simple inversions of the chord progression using the keys patch [Music] I'm gonna copy those out and again copy the

m out to our last chorus I'm thinking for this pre-core section we probably left a little bit too much out so maybe what I'll do is I'll copy out these ear candy one shots and place them in our build up but I'll save the vocals for the last bit and I wasn't going to do this originally but I think I got a copy this cool uh retro patch here out to the last course as well and one idea that just popped into my head as well is adding a ride symbol maybe instead of these hi-hats just to change things

up let's pop another Groove agent into the mix here Cubase has so many great sounding acoustic kits I'm using one here called passion and respect and I just want to use this ride symbol and I want to put that in place of the hi-hat for this last chorus I don't know if I'll keep the hi-hat in there I will for now but let's just record a few bars of this here we go [Music] [Music] and I'll just make sure to color this orange along with the rest of the percussive stuff and that sounds to me like it

could live alongside our hi-hat without any issue and just gonna stay organized I'm going to color these electric Keys red the pad shop and the Retro big wave I'm going to color those green we'll make our Celesta purple and one last thing we need here is some kind of like transition energy to take us into these chorus sections something like this chime sweep that sounds a little abrasive on its own but at low volume maybe with a bit of Reverb I think it could work let's pull that in and let's l

ine it up with bar 29 start of our chorus here let's look at where the sample is the loudest around there I'm going to draw a fade in let's bring the gain way down I'm going to place that over towards our first course as well just listening back [Music] I like that really smooth and that sets us up nice for the chorus well at this point our session is getting pretty busy we've got a lot of great ideas here I think all sorts of interesting things are going to happen when we get to the mixing stag

e I may do a few small tweaks to it in the meantime but it'll probably just be small details I'll make sure to outline those changes in the next video alright that was really fun I'm feeling good about putting all the finishing touches on the track but we still have one more video in this series which will cover my entire mixing and mastering process and that is really going to transform the vibe I think you're going to really enjoy that one because we're going to be taking a look at some of the

awesome plugins that Cubase has to offer as always please hit that like button if you enjoyed this subscribe to the channel and I will see you in the next video thanks for watching foreign [Music] [Music]