Fade
The Beat Strangler
Administrator
illest o.g.
Having won his 3rd Beat This! Competition on March 10th, we had a chance to catch up with Afriquedeluxe once more to see how he manages to get better and better!
What's poppin, how you doin'?
I'm cool, but this winter is keeping me inside my house most of the days, too cold to come out. One day it's sunny, the next we in Moscow, snow all over the place.
This is a hard interview, what do you ask a 3-time winner, other than...
How do you do it? What's the formula?
LOL, unfortunately there's really no formula, as much as I would have liked for one to exist.
Does it get easier or harder as you go?
Nothing ever comes easy, you get out what you put into it. Of course sometimes it can be easier to make a beat than other times, but the overall quality will always depend on how much effort I put in.
What's up with www.afriquedeluxe.com?
Well this is one of the places where my material hopefully in the future will be promoted/sold. I will also be putting some beats up there free for non-profitable demo use. I was going to just use my Soundclick account but we all know how the servers keep acting up.
Can you give a little advice for those first-timers out there?
Just have fun and keep at it because it does take time for you to develop. And you should also remember that not everyone will like your material, or it could be that you don't like a beat you made, but someone else loves it ("one man's meat is another man's poison" I can't remember who quoted this but it sounded cool anyway). Being open minded to influence from other genres can be good too.
How has IllMuzik.com helped you?
A lot! Most especially the competitions because they have helped me up my game.
IllMuzik is also proving to be a good place for networking; there are many connections to be made over here.
What's your favorite section on the site to get those hard-to-find answers?
The Lab is a good place production-wise. If I have a question, I usually first search around the forums for anything related to it. If there are no results, I just start up a new thread and most times people are quick to answer and help out when you ask. So yeah I guess the Lab is one of my favorite sections.
Who are some of your go-to people for questions, and why?
From the site, the guys on my MSN Messenger contact list are the ones I usually go to first. Freakwncy and Dacalion are signed on most times so I usually ask them.
What is your ultimate goal for producing music? (Signed to a record deal, etc).
There's so much I want to learn about music and composing that I don't think there's enough time in life for it. But I'll continue trying to learn all I can and if I do get a chance of perhaps getting signed to a label that will be great. I can then do music all day without worries of trying to make a living. So really my ultimate goal is to be a really dope Hip-Hop producer.
How do you get the best out of your gear?
Reading all the manuals and not being afraid of messing around with all the different functions. When I was learning Reason, I never really read the manual straight through, I just referred to different parts when I needed to, like the shuffle function on the Redrum machine which I didn't understand for a while until I did a search on it.
Since you're rockin an old PC to make your beats with, do you believe the saying "less is more"?
Partly, because with this, one would try their hardest to achieve that mastered sound, knowing the limitations of the hardware. But if someone has all the nicest gear around, they might take it for granted. But then again we all know the quality you can get from the Korg keyboards and Yamaha sound modules.
What are the software programs that you mainly use when making music?
Reason does most of the work. If I record something or I got a sample, I use Recycle to chop it up. I've also got Cool Edit which I use to encode the beats to MP3 and I've got T-racks for mastering (just the basic EQ and Compression).
3 times, are you also (LOL) thinking of retirement?
LOL, Jigga man hasn't really retired, that's probably just a marketing ploy. As for me, no one should expect me to retire from the competition until I get a production deal. Mwuahahahahahaha.
Do you have any other talents other than music?
I can cook a mean omelet but I'm the only one that seems to eat it round the house. I used to skateboard, could kick flip, and jump stairs and all that. But after I snapped a few boards, the sport was proving to be a very costly one. So I quit, but if I do get some cash after buying some better music gear (cause at the moment, music is first on the list), I'll probably buy another skateboard and get back in the game.
What did you think of this Beat This! Competition, being different from the normal (kit not included) beat competition?
It was nice to see how people could utilize the kit to create completely new music. Mike Kilo's beat being a good example. I thought it would be restricting, with all the beats sounding the same, but the contestants who entered proved me wrong, there was a huge variance.
For people wondering what Afriquedeluxe is all about, what tracks do you suggest they listen to of yours?
Honestly I haven't got my favorite material on the net, the only time I'll ever have those beats up is when this CD I'm working on is done and there's rappers on them. So if there's people wondering what I'm all about, the best place to look is here at IllMuzik in the Beat This! section and possibly my Soundclick page www.afriquedeluxe.com.
In the last Beat This! Competition it was based on sampling, something you say you don't really do. So why is it that you still managed to win?
Whenever I enter these competitions, I assume that all the other contestants have got a better beat, so I just never enter anything I feel unsure about. I've done some beats with samples before but there wasn't a lot of chopping. And when I do play my own stuff, I kind of re-sample them and most times make a different melody to what I played on the guitar/keys. So I guess I kind of had some experience with this.
How did you put your winning beat together?
Basically I had like 4 beats done, but in the end I scrapped two of them leaving the main beat and the little intro I had at the start. So to make the beat, I did what I usually do if I'm working with a sample, load it up into Cool Edit to see what bits I like, cut that part out. Load it into Recycle and slice up the various stabs. Import the Recycle file into Reason and then I played with the Dr. Rex machine to bring out the melody.
Any shoutouts you'd like to give?
Yep, firstly to the Verbal Reasoning family (Playa X, Benny, AC, Eric, Sincere, Matthew), then my bredrins at school, you know who you are. And finally my IllMuzik fam, keeping it together and constantly growing, we gonna make it guys!!
What's poppin, how you doin'?
I'm cool, but this winter is keeping me inside my house most of the days, too cold to come out. One day it's sunny, the next we in Moscow, snow all over the place.
This is a hard interview, what do you ask a 3-time winner, other than...
How do you do it? What's the formula?
LOL, unfortunately there's really no formula, as much as I would have liked for one to exist.
Does it get easier or harder as you go?
Nothing ever comes easy, you get out what you put into it. Of course sometimes it can be easier to make a beat than other times, but the overall quality will always depend on how much effort I put in.
What's up with www.afriquedeluxe.com?
Well this is one of the places where my material hopefully in the future will be promoted/sold. I will also be putting some beats up there free for non-profitable demo use. I was going to just use my Soundclick account but we all know how the servers keep acting up.
Can you give a little advice for those first-timers out there?
Just have fun and keep at it because it does take time for you to develop. And you should also remember that not everyone will like your material, or it could be that you don't like a beat you made, but someone else loves it ("one man's meat is another man's poison" I can't remember who quoted this but it sounded cool anyway). Being open minded to influence from other genres can be good too.
How has IllMuzik.com helped you?
A lot! Most especially the competitions because they have helped me up my game.
IllMuzik is also proving to be a good place for networking; there are many connections to be made over here.
What's your favorite section on the site to get those hard-to-find answers?
The Lab is a good place production-wise. If I have a question, I usually first search around the forums for anything related to it. If there are no results, I just start up a new thread and most times people are quick to answer and help out when you ask. So yeah I guess the Lab is one of my favorite sections.
Who are some of your go-to people for questions, and why?
From the site, the guys on my MSN Messenger contact list are the ones I usually go to first. Freakwncy and Dacalion are signed on most times so I usually ask them.
What is your ultimate goal for producing music? (Signed to a record deal, etc).
There's so much I want to learn about music and composing that I don't think there's enough time in life for it. But I'll continue trying to learn all I can and if I do get a chance of perhaps getting signed to a label that will be great. I can then do music all day without worries of trying to make a living. So really my ultimate goal is to be a really dope Hip-Hop producer.
How do you get the best out of your gear?
Reading all the manuals and not being afraid of messing around with all the different functions. When I was learning Reason, I never really read the manual straight through, I just referred to different parts when I needed to, like the shuffle function on the Redrum machine which I didn't understand for a while until I did a search on it.
Since you're rockin an old PC to make your beats with, do you believe the saying "less is more"?
Partly, because with this, one would try their hardest to achieve that mastered sound, knowing the limitations of the hardware. But if someone has all the nicest gear around, they might take it for granted. But then again we all know the quality you can get from the Korg keyboards and Yamaha sound modules.
What are the software programs that you mainly use when making music?
Reason does most of the work. If I record something or I got a sample, I use Recycle to chop it up. I've also got Cool Edit which I use to encode the beats to MP3 and I've got T-racks for mastering (just the basic EQ and Compression).
3 times, are you also (LOL) thinking of retirement?
LOL, Jigga man hasn't really retired, that's probably just a marketing ploy. As for me, no one should expect me to retire from the competition until I get a production deal. Mwuahahahahahaha.
Do you have any other talents other than music?
I can cook a mean omelet but I'm the only one that seems to eat it round the house. I used to skateboard, could kick flip, and jump stairs and all that. But after I snapped a few boards, the sport was proving to be a very costly one. So I quit, but if I do get some cash after buying some better music gear (cause at the moment, music is first on the list), I'll probably buy another skateboard and get back in the game.
What did you think of this Beat This! Competition, being different from the normal (kit not included) beat competition?
It was nice to see how people could utilize the kit to create completely new music. Mike Kilo's beat being a good example. I thought it would be restricting, with all the beats sounding the same, but the contestants who entered proved me wrong, there was a huge variance.
For people wondering what Afriquedeluxe is all about, what tracks do you suggest they listen to of yours?
Honestly I haven't got my favorite material on the net, the only time I'll ever have those beats up is when this CD I'm working on is done and there's rappers on them. So if there's people wondering what I'm all about, the best place to look is here at IllMuzik in the Beat This! section and possibly my Soundclick page www.afriquedeluxe.com.
In the last Beat This! Competition it was based on sampling, something you say you don't really do. So why is it that you still managed to win?
Whenever I enter these competitions, I assume that all the other contestants have got a better beat, so I just never enter anything I feel unsure about. I've done some beats with samples before but there wasn't a lot of chopping. And when I do play my own stuff, I kind of re-sample them and most times make a different melody to what I played on the guitar/keys. So I guess I kind of had some experience with this.
How did you put your winning beat together?
Basically I had like 4 beats done, but in the end I scrapped two of them leaving the main beat and the little intro I had at the start. So to make the beat, I did what I usually do if I'm working with a sample, load it up into Cool Edit to see what bits I like, cut that part out. Load it into Recycle and slice up the various stabs. Import the Recycle file into Reason and then I played with the Dr. Rex machine to bring out the melody.
Any shoutouts you'd like to give?
Yep, firstly to the Verbal Reasoning family (Playa X, Benny, AC, Eric, Sincere, Matthew), then my bredrins at school, you know who you are. And finally my IllMuzik fam, keeping it together and constantly growing, we gonna make it guys!!