one of the few producers who still innovates today jpegmafia stands in a league of his own he's pushed boundaries and created a sound that stands apart from everyone else in the generation where hip-hop producers choose to sound the same but how exactly is he so inventive what does jpeg Mafia do in his Beats that make them so original today we're going to uncover this by analyzing his Beats and breaking down three ideas that he uses in his production that you can use to improve your own beats too but before we start if you could do
me a huge favor hit like And subscribe if my videos have ever helped you out it would really mean a lot to me thank you so starting off a few years back jpeg Mafia was being interviewed at Cambridge and he said something that perfectly sums up his production and what makes it so unique I'm gonna do things I'm gonna make mistakes and make crucial decisions that someone else will never do when I listen to his Beats I often hear techniques and ideas that amaze me because they're just so strange it confuses me how someone could
even come up with some of these ideas to begin with a great example of this is the beat for lean beef patty Elon Musk watch this that's expensive and what makes this beat so weird is how the sample is used instead of using the sample as it is maybe chopping it up and rearranging like every other producer would do jpeg Mafia starts off with this unusual approach he starts by shrinking the sample and giving it a faster pace and an insanely high pitch then after doing this he uses this version of the sample to create
his Loop and what makes this so unusual is that the Sounds in the sample don't function as instruments anymore they're so fast paced and high pitch that they start to work as percussion in the beat instead and because the sample is so high pitched jpeg Mafia builds the beat underneath the sample instead of on top of it it's just a really different approach to sampling you don't hear often so let's recreate this technique we'll use this sample here in the exact same way [Music] and I'm going to start by speeding up the sample by double
and pitching it way up I'm gonna do some eq'ing to help clean up the sample and carve out space underneath now all of a sudden I have this highly rhythmic percussive layer in my beat in the very high end and I can start introducing my own sounds underneath the sample foreign just a really cool approach here one of jpeg mafia's favorite producers is Kanye West and you can see he's using Kanye's sped up Soul technique with his sample here but in an extreme original way but the way he uses samples isn't the only thing that
makes this production stand out it's also the samples that jpeg Mafia chooses a great example of this is the beat for Garbage Pail Kids uses this very strange sample for I think a Japanese noodle commercial from 1985. [Applause] this might seem like a fun random sample to use on the surface but if you break down why he uses a sample it's actually ingenious here's how I see many producers screw this up they start by finding some random stupid video on the internet for one dollar make a funny sound and they try to force it into
their beat which ends up sounding equally as stupid so let's analyze why jpegmafia used this particular sample for his beat and how it works so well so you can start sampling better too here I've done a rough transcription of how this sample was chopped up [Applause] first off if you listen to the vocals in the sample you'll notice that the words are spoken in an almost musical way it's not like he just sampled a bunch of random noises and sounds again I've done a rough translation of what vocal notes are spoken and it actually makes
sense [Music] not only do the vocals in the sample have a logic to them but so do the weird bull sounds in the sample as well here in red is the Rhythm for the vocal phrases and the notes underneath show the Rhythm for the bull sounds that are in the sample [Music] and what's interesting is that the way the bolt is being played those lower notes are actually closer to a triplet Rhythm and this is why this weird sample still works when he makes it into a beat when you break it down it has many
of the properties that will fit into a normal typical structure for a hip-hop beat and this might explain why jpeg Mafia repurposed the sample into a trappier style of beat with a trap BPM and those huge 808s so let's try to use this same idea for a beat here I found a sample of people making seemingly random noises for Disney movies so I'll start by finding a piece that actually makes sense for a beat that has some musical and or rhythmic properties and isn't just a series of random notes so here I took this part
of the sample where the guy is wobbling some thing and I'll manipulate the sample to help me control the Rhythm and the musicality of the sample first oh next I'll take another part of the same sample and again build something that actually has some logic behind it now that I chose these particular parts of the sample that actually have some logic to them structuring it into an actual beat will become easier by the way if you're looking for acoustic drums that fit a beat making aesthetic like these ones these drums are from Fallen music library
pots and pans volume 3 I believe they aren't sponsoring this video or anything I just thought I would share in case you're looking for drums like these so as you can see with this beat what might seem like a random Chaos on the surface is actually very deliberate there are some smart sampling choices that help this beat sound as good as it does but to take a quick second by the way if you want to learn how to make smart production choices yourself and make better beats I want to let you know about my online
beat making program better beat maker is for people who don't have any background in music but still want to make amazing sounding beats so if you want to invest in your beat making abilities spots are limited make sure to apply today if you're interested the link is in the description box below if you want to check it out after this video moving on let's talk about the last final tip that jpeg Mafia really excels at which is how often and how well he makes beat switch UPS I remember seeing that on average he makes a
beat switch up every minute or so which is insane and this is something that producers often struggle with because they don't understand how important graduality is to explain this let's listen to Jack Harlow combo meal [Music] the way jpeg Mafia transitions from one style of beat to another so flawlessly is partly because he doesn't change every single sound all at once for example listen to this part of the beat here [Music] is that a regular wave it doesn't go straight from Danny Brown rapping over a jazz sample and a break beat to jpeg Mafia singing
over an acoustic piano immediately the transition from one of these beats to another happens gradually this is how you can really improve your switch up game if you want to be more bold with your arrangements so here's an example of a beat with two parts right now there's no transition and you can hear it sounds rough foreign [Music] that just sounds bad so let's change this transition from immediate to gradual I'll start by creating a bridge and extending how much time it takes to get from one section to another [Music] one thing that can really
help with the idea of continuity is having similar sounds in both sections this is a great way to help keep both sections sound good one after another and not sound disjointed as you can see right now we're using the same sample in both sections which does help create continuity but everything else like the bass and the drums are different from section to section so let's take some of these other sounds and build new patterns in the next section so we have sounds that span both sections of our beat creating more continuity another helpful technique is
to blur the lines of when these patterns end so instead of having all of these blocks of patterns and at the same time I'm going to change when some of these end and when others start and I'll also do some of the typical transition techniques of adding in those transition sounds and automations and so after doing all that here's how the transition sounds now foreign [Music] [Music] this is just a much smoother transition because of how gradual it is along with many of the other smaller techniques that I've done along the way now like I
talked about before jpeg Mafia often says that Kanye is one of his biggest influences in his production and I actually do have a similar video breaking down Kanye's beats as well that should be showing up next to me so go ahead and click on that if you're interested in checking it out but those are some of the really unique ideas that jpegmafia uses in his Beats that you can use in yours if you've enjoyed this video hit like And subscribe again check out the video next to me but if not I will see you next
week
