Barry Beats Instagram (via Si Spex): https://www.instagram.com/sispex/

Barry Beats Bandcamp (via Si Spex): https://barrybeatsakasispex.bandcamp.com/

Barry Beats YouTube (Via Si Spex): https://www.youtube.com/@Sispex

Once A DJ links: https://linktree.com/onceadj

Summary

In this conversation, Barry Beats discusses his journey into beat making, his experience creating a live cut and paste mix, and his latest project, the Ultimate Fakes compilations. He emphasizes the importance of finding your own sound and enjoying the process of music making. Barry also shares advice for DJs who want to start making their own beats and discusses his YouTube channel and upcoming Patreon plans.

Takeaways

• Find your own sound and enjoy the process of music making.
• Experiment with different techniques and technologies to create unique beats.
• Take inspiration from your favorite producers and study their processes.
• Consider limitations as a creative tool and embrace the power of simplicity.
• Support independent artists and explore sample packs and compilations.
• Join online communities and platforms like YouTube and Patreon to connect with fellow musicians and share your work.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Background

02:50 Getting Started in Beat Making

09:06 Creating a Live Cut and Paste Mix

15:06 Planning and Recording the Mix

24:52 Ultimate Fakes Compilations

31:51 Advice for DJs Starting to Make Beats

39:16 Barry Beats' YouTube Channel and Patreon

44:07 Conclusion

It's a pleasure to have on the show today Barry Beats, the legend, the man, the myth, call him what you want. It's great to have you here Barry. How are you doing today? Great to be here, yeah. Pretty good, pretty good. Excellent. So yeah, we were going to get you on with Sigh on the last episode, but unfortunately we couldn't. So it's really appreciate you finding the time to do it today. All good. So what would be really good would be just to jump straight in and kind of try and understand.

How you got into beat making really, because I believe Si was there in the early days of it, kind of helping you, kind of kickstart your journey. Yeah, well, I mean, he'd been into it for years and years and I've sort of always just been in the background a little bit, sort of, you know, shadowing him, in a sense, kind of see him almost like as my beat making spirit animal sort of thing. So, yeah, so, yeah, very, very much inspired and similar tastes.

almost, I would say, identical tastes. Yeah, I think his style kind of really shows in how you produce. Did it take a lot to pick up the beat making? Well, I mean, I'm not... The thing is, even though I'm kind of on YouTube sharing my knowledge and teaching production techniques and stuff, I'm actually pretty hopeless at technology. I'm one of those people, I know exactly what I want to be able to do, but...

don't really bother myself with all the other bells and whistles, if you know what I mean. It's like, you know, with sample based production, I mean, the long and short of it is all it really comes down to is start points, you know, chopping sample start points, you know, and end points and just, you know, it's not like maybe dance music or techno music where...

lot of sophisticated synthesizer modulating and arpeggiating and all that kind of business. It's kind of just chopping samples up, but obviously the scope there to be as creative as you want is there. And, know, and obviously I'm taking it an extra step with layering my own keyboards and, you know, obviously into the virtual instruments now and, and just, you know, mega chopping, shall we say. So I'll chop something. I'll fill like two, I've got two.

88 key keyboards just so I can load both 88 keys up with the samples So yeah, I probably take it a bit to the extreme but yeah, I mean I guess I just took to it naturally Thing is reproduction. It is a lot of it is just It's kind of your ear. I've always said the main thing is training your ear and just having a love for music I've always had that love for music and Yeah, I think

When you're starting off making beats, you might have the best taste in music, you might have a great record collection and you might know the stuff to sample. But if you're struggling with the technical side of it, then that's going to interfere with the quick inspirational aspect. You need to get those ideas out really quickly. So learning a bit of equipment and finding a workflow that works for you is vital.

Well people say that, I mean, you know, that is the classic thing of, I like the limitations of 10 second sample time and I mean, it's not for me to say that that's not, you know, good for you because if that works for you and you're really pushing yourself, fantastic. For me, I guess the difference is, you know, I was dabbling on those machines back in those, in that time and I was always frustrated that I, you know, I always wanted more sample time and I just think of the stuff you can do now.

have yeah and I did the the back -to -back mix on my YouTube again that was a bit of a well lockdown mission shall we say I mean obviously lockdown bought everyone out or put all the DJs out in it and you know couldn't move for a live DJ set so I kind of inspired by that I thought well I mean I've always thought with Serato you know I see Serato almost as being a

an extension of a sampler, you know, you can trigger samples on there, you can manipulate them. It's probably better than the samplers I was using back in the day, you know. So it was always my idea to kind of demonstrate what you could do, because even, you know, even if I'm DJing, I will loop stuff and kind of make tracks on the fly, you know, if I bring an old record in, I'll sort of chop up the ID points and sort of program it up and I could...

programmed drums over stuff and all that kind of stuff. So I thought, why not try and plan like the ultimate sort of break DJ set. And then I thought to myself, well, you know, I've always been into cut and paste. I've got the Death Star one and I've got the Fly Like a Seagull. So I thought, well, let's finish it off. Let's make it a holy trinity of cut and pastes. So I thought, what else can I do? You know, the first one, the Fly Like a Seagull was basically...

I think I got like the world record or whatever for the most amount of samples in, you know, in a composition. Oh wow. According to Grand Slam magazine. I'm standing by that. I mean, we're talking layered because obviously a lot of it was programmed. So there'd be layered kicks. And I think I was up to, I don't know, three or four hundred different samples in there. So it was quite a few. So I did that one. And then obviously took the mantle of the Star Wars, which I always wanted to do like the ultimate Star Wars.

mashup homage being a big Star Wars fan. Again, that took forever to do. And so I thought, what can I do next? And the only thing I could do next, I thought was to try and do one live, you know, to actually with the help of Serato plan a live cut and paste mix with all the spoken word and just a mashup of breaks and beats and bits and ideas. So.

The planning that went into it, you don't even want to know. It was, yeah, I mean, put it this way, lockdown was almost over by the time I've pulled it off. So, yeah, missed the boat a little bit, but I'm glad I did it. It was a lot of effort. I don't know if I could have been more productive doing other things, but I've kind of got it out my system now. So to go through the different processes, I mean, process number one, dig through.

find a load of crazy records that had to be so obscure they weren't going to get flagged by the old YouTube content ID. So my first mission was to source a load of samples, upload them to 30 seconds of each, upload it onto my YouTube and see which ones got flagged. Yeah and this is something I've read about and this is a good bit of information for DJs that are wanting to mix.

put a mix on YouTube isn't it that's kind of your benchmark way to check if they'll get flagged. Yeah there was a link that I got sent to like a site that supposedly would tell you whether it was on the lists but a few of those that got flagged weren't on that list so it's not a hundred percent and I didn't want to risk doing this whole mix and then suddenly it got flagged and a bit got cut out or couldn't monetize it or whatever so...

Yes, I was very careful from the outset to make sure that everything was flying under the radar. Not even so much a sort of consideration of getting stuff pulled or getting a flag or anything. Also, I just wanted the most obscure stuff that no one knew, that wasn't even on YouTube. So a lot of that stuff isn't on YouTube. So yeah, dug pretty deep in the crates. So I did that first of all.

So then I had a list, maybe 80 records or so. And the only way I was going to pull it off live was to get them to be on a grid at least to get them in time. So then I had to literally, you're talking like 70 or 80 songs, I had to warp in time. And yeah. So yeah, so that way, you know, you can loop little bits because, you know, this is before I'd even planned any of the mix. I had some ideas of things I wanted to try out.

and things I thought might go together well. But I thought there's no way I can even start experimenting and planning this mix out if things are not going to be able to loop properly or they're going to, if I'm going to pull this off in one shot, I can't be sort of feathering the pitch or anything like that. So yeah, that was the next step. And actually it was really good because it taught me some really good techniques for warping.

I was always pretty good with warping for anyone who's not aware or not familiar with warping. It's the Ableton sort of pitch and time manipulating tool. So it enables you to put little markers and squeeze extract and basically get music on a grid or just move bits of it's like elastic audio is called in Pro Tools, but it's basically it makes your audio elastic. You can stretch it and make it fit whatever you want really. So.

Yeah, I did that. And I kind of learned and again, I got a little bit anal on some of it because there's different algorithms. Yeah. Different what they called. Yeah. Sort of this complex, complex probe, melody. So I wouldn't just choose the best one. I'd like record off maybe three or four complex probe being maybe the best one. But whenever there was a bit of flamming or a bit of something else, I drop in another bit. So I was comping. Wow. So.

So because I really wanted the quality to be good. I didn't want it to sound because bearing in mind Even though Serato is pretty good when it comes to pitch and stuff out and up and down You still get a little bit of artifacts from time stretching. So I didn't want to add the warping of Ableton and the Serato pitching I didn't want to

Yeah, I didn't want anything sounding too fazy or flammie. So I mean that this is this This is the kind of the DJ and equivalent of when we were talking to sigh he was talking about how he'd spend like a day Just working on one snare drum. So I think you must have this kind of like obsessive Detail that runs in the family or something. Yeah, definitely some kind of spectrum. Well, you know, I think we're on Maybe on the beat spectrum. He said something Yeah, so

One thing I'm quite good at, I find, is I do tend to, I'll try and do things methodically. I won't just jump to the fun bits, if you know what I mean. Same with beat making, you know, it's about you, it's kind of like DIY, you know, you've got to do the groundwork first and yeah, it might be a bit more boring, but when you do it, you're building on solid foundations, you know what I mean? So yeah, that's basically was the planning. So once I had all those sort of 80 odd tracks in the folder,

then the fun began, you know, then it literally was just like, you know, putting this set together. And, uh, I mean, I started off again, I started off just with the musical elements more or less, just getting the music flow. I mean, obviously if you haven't seen the video, I'll try and explain the video shall I? Cause people are probably wondering what the hell I'm on about. Yeah. We'll, we'll put some links in the show notes as well. Cool. Cool. So what I tried to do, I'm all about concepts and...

first of all when I was thinking I'd love to do a live cut and paste but then for it to be intricate and interesting enough I don't know if I could do it all one time you know what I mean it would just be like a DJ mix so I thought what I really need is I need I need to clone myself I need to somehow lay the musical elements down and as with all good cut and pastes a lot of it is your vocal bits and your scratches and your acapellas and all your sound effects all that kind of stuff that you stick over the top.

So that's when I thought, well, let's try and do it as a back to back with myself. So yeah, so the first stage, obviously I had to do the musical bed. So I had to basically create this, this whole journey journey. I hate that word, but it was a journey. And once that was done, so I hadn't even at this point planned any of the vocal bits. There was a couple of vocal bits I think I put in and sound effects.

only just so I could do the effective links between the tracks but on the whole I was just concerned with creating the music bed which a lot of it was looping, chopping stuff up, reprogramming, doing all that kind of wizardry stuff then when that was pretty much in the bag and I'd get weeks of rehearsing it because then I was like am I ever going to pull this off and you know I was getting there but it's a lot of little notes and

little notations on the Serato of what I had to do because there was a lot of sort of pitch movements. I mean, it took me back to the days of like, you know, the old battle mix in him. But, you know, obviously with the aid of this incredible technology. So yeah, did that then I had to record it. So, and of course I had to do it at night time. So everyone was tucked up in bed and I think I was up to about four o 'clock in the morning, to be honest.

and eventually nailed it. And I mean, I think you see like the look of elation when I actually nail finish the mix. Even down to, I had to rehearse sort of like a little hello and at the end. So there is even like a few little actions, you know, to make it work. So then I had that to work with. So I had the audio of that.

Because again, I wanted the audio to be nice, so I was taking a direct line out of the mixers and recording that. So it was like a good quality mixer. So then I had the video footage and the good quality audio, direct audio. And then it was another, I don't know, few months working out all the scratches and the sound effects and spoken word bits and all the extra bells and whistles that I think was the left hand screen. So.

So then I had to obviously I would be playing out I quite remember I did it but I had it playing on the loud speakers I think the main mix and I had the direct out of the mixer Recording into another channel with all the bits that I was doing the extra bits and again probably three or four o 'clock in the morning till I nailed it and You know as you can see, it's all one long, you know, no edits. That's a lot of work to go into one mix. I know

To be honest, I was hoping it would go like stratospherically viral after all that. And it's done well and it's got a lot of props. And to be honest, it satisfies my itch. But yeah, a bit like the Star Wars is some of the things that I knock out quite quick will do really well. And some of the things that have taken a lot more effort don't kind of get the reception. But they're there. It's all part of, you know, I've built up my channel and it's like, I'm happy with the...

with all the content on it really, you I've put a lot of, you know, I don't really, a lot of YouTubers, famously it's just a thing on YouTube to content, content, content, put it, you know, get as much up, but I'm a little bit of the opposite actually. I'm sort of, I guess quality over the quantity and just. Yeah, but it's so interesting though to, to your point, like when I had SoundCloud,

My SoundCloud was doing alright at the time. I was on about a quarter of a million plays, I think, which I think wasn't bad. But it got taken off for copyright, which is perfectly understandable, because nothing on there was original. Well, I was going to say you're doing quite well on SoundCloud to be done for copyright, because as far as I'm aware, they are one of the lax platforms. It was all pretty obvious stuff.

And like, yeah, like I'd find, I'd select, cause like, I was really into doing mashups at the time and I'd make these ones that I just thought worked really, really well and that I maybe thought were a bit clever as well. In terms of key, structure and things like that, I just thought they'd work really well. But then there's another, you know, you could pull two artists out of a hat, you could say, Nas, Jay -Z, Biggie, in this hand, I don't know.

the police, Bob Marley, Madonna in this hand, just mix them all up and then whatever you do from that, spend 20 minutes doing it, it wouldn't have to all like come in on the one or anything, it could sound like shit and you'd probably still get more listens to that and it's just like, what's the point? So it can be really disheartening. Do you think is that because of the caliber of the artists or you think people are just searching those artists? I think it's the concept and the familiarity with things like that. People wanna hear.

Justin Timberlake and Metallica or whatever it is. You know, could just stick him on a dart board or whatever, you know. Yeah, so it is funny like that. So which of your rhythm roulette's your biggest? I mean, because I know with your recent rhythm roulette, that went crazy. That was kind of 17 ,000 views overnight or something, wasn't it? It was... Yeah, it was very fast. It took off really quickly.

But that's with having a trailer to it and stuff as well, wasn't it? You know, there's a lot. I built it up, yeah, built it up quite, as I said, it's, that's the thing, it's all very well working on a video, but then you're like, oh, now I've got to do all the promo and, you know, I'm not particularly good at sort of bigging myself up sort of thing, so, but it's got to be done, you know, it's, so teasers and all that, all that stuff. It's great now that, you know, you can do YouTube premieres, which are good, you know, they, they,

bring people in. I think, I mean I do a lot of sort of watching other youtubers talking about how to hack the algorithms and all that. So I try to sort of you know take on a bit of that and take that on board and I think it's, I mean the thing at the moment now it seems to be it's less about subscribers, numbers, it's just literally about engagement and how long you can keep people on watching and you know if you can do...

longer form videos and they stay on board then your stuff goes right up to the top you know right so i think i kind of do all right in that because as i said i try and you know i'll spend time editing the videos to make them as punchy and uh yeah and i try and make them as short as possible but not always possible depending on what i'm trying to communicate but still waiting for the you know the big one i guess with the original rhythm roulette

I mean, that's definitely obviously the best performing one that I've got by far, but then that's been up for years, but then that's slowly, that one's always, it's like if you were to plot a timeline, that's just sort of slowly keeps on going. And I get, you know, I'll get four or five comments a week from that one. Have you got, just on Rhythm Roulette, have you got any particular favorites? Good question. Good question. I like Eric Sermons. This was good. It wasn't that rated, but I like what he did because he did.

flip something that was pretty dodgy if I remember rightly. I don't think I've seen his. That's a good one. Oh man there is a couple of absolute bangers I'm trying to remember them. The Just Blaze one was pretty good on my huge Just Blaze. Yeah that one's really good because he's like what I think's cool with that one as well apologies listeners we're getting kind of pretty down a hole here but there's basically there's an amazing beat making video series called Rhythm Roulette on YouTube where...

People will find three random records in a shop and then go and try and make the best beat they can out of one, two, or all of them in their own way. But yeah, so when Just Blaze does his, he's got kind of, I don't know, probably like a group of college kids behind him watching, hasn't he? Yeah, he did it like live, so. Yeah, I think that's really, really cool. But he's a really interesting guy, but really knows his engineering as well, doesn't he? Yeah, I mean, I think for me,

You know, for a noughties onward producer, he's probably done some of my favourite beats, you know. He's a very, very impressive producer. I'm just really trying to remember the one... I like the Psycho Les one from the Beat Nuts. Because I like Les, he's a good chap. He pulls it, it's a very Beat Nutsy beat as well. Exactly. I know what he likes. He likes a quirky... Like me, he likes quirky...

kids records and that kind of stuff. So, and he found, and he made, yeah, somehow he found something that was totally his sound. And it was, yeah, just made me smile. He wasn't the most sophisticated one, but... But beats don't need to be. They don't need to be, no, no. And let's face it, you don't have much choice if you're on the rhythm roulette. You often don't have much to play with. But yeah, I'm trying to think, there was, obviously, I've run...

Everyone mentions the 9th Wonder One. I mean, he did a good, yeah, he was pretty good. It's just really good to see different people's processes, I think. 100%. And see how they get those nuanced sounds. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think if I ever got really unstuck, I mean, the two that I've done, I've done all right with the fines. But yeah, if I really came unstuck, I guess...

What could you do? You could extract some stuff. Oh, no, I'd probably use a technique that I, yeah, I would definitely employ the Melodyne technique, which is one of the last videos I did where I took a really terrible sample. It was some German sort of umpa pub music, traditional umpa music. And yeah, you can change the actual scale. So you can turn it into like a minor scale.

Yeah, I don't know if you checked that video, it's a bit of fun. I was basically trying to find the worst bit of music I could find. I was going to use the theme tune from The Archers, which I still might do. But yeah, something like that. And so if you take something in a sense that's happy, chirpy, and you can make it sound moody, like a mop deep sample or something, and you can even sort of make it sound like you can turn it into sort of Turkish scales or Japanese kind of, you know, scales.

It's amazing. Yeah. So I would probably do that, you know, I would definitely call upon the modern technology to save me. So I, yeah, I'm pretty confident. Yeah. And how many of the sort of going onto tutorials then, how many of those have you done now? I mean, not a huge amount to be honest, you know, I should be doing more, um, which is the plan, you know, I'm definitely, uh, I've got, I've got a big game plan, hopefully that will enable me to do a lot more tutorials and.

I think I just need to do sort of more shorter one. I'm gonna plan on doing some like bite -sized Barry Vids where I'll just focus on a little technique or something rather than just a full full -fledged beat but Yeah, I'm not sure mate. I got off the top of you. Yeah, it's got to be about Seven or eight nine ten maybe amazing and then

I know we're kind of going around here, but the thing that I really wanted to get into with you on this episode is kind of the latest thing you've been doing, which is the ultimate fakes compilations, which are homage to the ultimate breaks. And it's basically royalty free drum loops, isn't it? Yeah. With a heavy nod to some amazing drum loops of the past. Uh huh. Yeah. I mean, that's my latest thing. Yeah. Looking into kind of, uh,

Complete and the Contact which had all these amazing instruments and it had the Abbey Road drums. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, on their own, they sounded okay. But as soon as you start adding lots of different saturation and started grime and getting them sounding really grimy, they were actually sounding like old breaks. And I was like, wow, you know, this is incredible, you know, after all these years of digging.

good results. I a lot of it is kind of, I'd say it's 80 % the instruments and then 20 % the processing. So it's a combination of processing. I guess around this time, the last sort of 15, 20 odd years, people have started making records that mimic like old recordings, you know, from the Dapkings and you know, poets rhythm, all those people have started coming through, making incredible records that just do...

sounds, some of them just like 100 % nail that old sound. But obviously they're all using the same old analog equipment tape. So to my knowledge, you know, no one was really doing it fully in the computer, you know, and I was thinking, well, yeah, and it was never, it wasn't even getting talked about, you know, people weren't even sort of, it wasn't a thing. But yeah, from those early sort of happy road drum experiments and sort of being quite impressed and then sort of native instrument, that's a really great.

bass guitars, so then you're starting building the bass up. There's a, my favourite is the Rickenbacker bass, which is the classic kind of KPM music library sounding bass, you know, starting to play in that with the bass, with the drums. And I guess it sounded like an old library record, you know, and I'm not doing that much to it. So that was, yeah, that was the game changer. When we were discussing your library record.

over email before I had the call and you mentioned to me that it was all done in the box. That really, really surprised me. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people can't really spot, can't tell the difference, you know, and, uh, I mean, I've homed it. I definitely sort of the more I'm, I've got quite a few new plugins that add even more realism. And I think I'm just constantly learning. I mean, my, my main problem with it is I can't really read or play music particularly. Um,

It's like it's all ear and it's all doing things sort of just one bar at a time, laying stuff down. There's a few little things I'm using, a few tools that are helping me out. I use a lot of MIDI extraction. So yeah, I'm just embracing all the technology that I can to help me. But at the end of the day, I'll just labor over something. I'm not the quickest at doing, at replaying stuff and interpolating things, but yeah, get there in the end.

But yeah, the sounds are there obviously with things like keyboard sounds with clavinets and harpsichords and electric pianos and organs. They're always going to sound pretty convincing. So there was never an issue sort of, you know, getting, I mean, I've always been able to, you know, even when I was doing mainly sample, all the sample based stuff, I could still play, I was still playing keys over the top, those kinds of keys and they sound good. They always sit well, but, but things like brass instruments and woodwinds, you know, never sounded good, you know, back in the days, you know, when

Think about the early noughties, you know, even you'd have the Korg Tritons and the Trinity's and Neptune's beats, you know, they were great for what they were, but did they sound like old records? Were they particularly convincing? Not necessarily, you know, they had their sound, but yeah, they weren't, they weren't the most convincing. So I think what was interesting with those though, was that,

Because it took me a while to get into Neptune's and stuff like that. I mean that kind of era in general. There's a lot of stuff where in retrospect, I think it's aged really well, a lot better than a lot of the stuff I would have been into at that time. But with what the Neptune's did, it's kind of like, right, we're not trying to make this sound like anything real. They just went kind of head first into that because they chopped the decay off all the snares and things, didn't they, to have this really.

just really different sound. Yeah, I mean they knew what they wanted, they knew what they were doing. And yeah, I mean, I compared, I'm not gonna name some other producers at the time, but I think they were the ones that really took it to the next level and just had to find their own little sounds. Yeah. But yeah, gotta give them props for that. As I said, they weren't trying to recreate break, shall we say, they just...

They were doing keyboard beats for the sake of, I think originally it was just really for the sake of not having to clear samples and just sort of trying to do original stuff that just had a different sound. It was more space agey, a bit more futurism sort of sound. But yeah, I think you're right. It does, a lot of it does age really well. And yeah, it had a good energy to it. Just rolling back then with the fact that you've kind of got.

A towing DJ and and in beat making, well, more than a toe. You're kind of pretty heavy into both. Have you got any key advice for a DJ who can't read or write music who wants to start making their own beats, like just that kind of first step into it to start? Because it can seem there's so many different pieces of software and pieces of hardware you can use now, so many different ways to approach it. Is there any kind of...

fundamental advice you would give them? Yes, I'd say the first bit of advice I give anyone is before you make any music, before you get a door, turn anything on, work out what you like, what does it for you, you know, make a list of your top five producers, you know, what are they doing, what are they doing that you like in particular, you know, if it's sample -based music, what sort of samples?

are people using that you like, what are the samples that relate to you? You like the jazzy mellow stuff, you like the hard proggy stuff, you like melodic stuff, you like sort of more just stripped down stuff, you know. I mean, I can't tell someone what they like, you know, I can only sort of, I've got my own sound, my own musical taste, but you know, everyone should really just, you're doing music for yourself at the end of the day.

That's your fundamental thing. You've got to enjoy doing it and you've got to just do stuff that makes you happy that you want to listen back to. You've got to try and aim for the sort of music that you'd want someone else to make. You're going to make yourself. So yeah, just search inside yourself. There might even be old songs that you've always loved. Not a guilty pleasure of such, but there might be, you always like that classic JB's track or a Cool in the Gang track with

go chop it up, have some fun, you know, see if you can get make something out of it. Just, just rather than just following a trend or thinking, oh, that's, that's the thing that's hot at the moment. Or, you know, I got a better put some 808s on it. You know, if that's not your thing, don't, don't do it. Just do, do, you know, I think famously that's what most people that have broken through and made a big music career. They always say like, you know, the thing that really, uh,

did well is the thing that I just sort of did what I wanted to do, you know, and what the thing I wasn't expecting to necessarily blow up. So, uh, suppose that's the thing you're going to have more energy to maintain doing as well. Aren't you? If it's the thing that you're just really into. Well, yeah, if you think about it, especially when you're learning, it's not going to be a quick, it's not like you're going to be able to bash a beat out in five minutes, unless of course you just use in sample packs or so, you know, pre -made loops, which again, if, if.

If you enjoy doing that and if you, again, if you're doing that, nothing wrong with it, but spend some time trying to search for those samples that really are like, I call them the scrunch face samples, the ones that really hit you, and emotionally sort of connect with you. So if you're finding those samples, especially if you're starting off, I would suggest not necessarily trying to emulate...

sophisticated, just blaze beat, you know, when you're starting off, just, just get some sample loops, put them together, experiment a bit, you know, we all got to start somewhere. And just learning about bars and just basic structure is, is, is a building block. I mean, cause it can be very demoralizing, you know, if you're instantly getting into the game, just to try and emulate Dr. Dre or something, it's not going to happen overnight. And you're only going to be, you know, you're on a hide into nothing in a sense. Cause yeah, just look at, check out.

YouTube videos, you know, study the producers you like, you know, because a lot of them will be talking about their process. Just, just really embrace it and, uh, yeah, be eager to learn, learn the technology. And again, with technology, you can pretty much most things you can learn on YouTube. There'll be a tutorial somewhere. Although to be fair, one of the inspirations for me getting into making videos was...

When I first moved over to Ableton, a very good friend, Shadow Key, he was on it for years. And yeah, he got me into the basics of it. But then as far as me wanting to be able to really quickly chop up samples almost on the fly, which is always to me the dream. And when I got into that, I made it my mission to really crack it. And eventually I found like an add -on.

that would enable me to do it and basically I just press a key and that will put a sample start point so I can do it live and just over like the course of maybe you know a year of really getting busy you know just deciding I'm going to crack this and make this the quickest sample chopping workflow that I can come up with there were no real good videos showing me how to chop up samples into loads of bits really quickly

I think there probably are a few more now, but at the time there weren't any. It was really frustrating and there'd be ones and they'd be chopping up like something really basic like a Herbie Hancock sample that's been sampled to death and they'd be looping it and chopping it into quarter bars and that was it. You they weren't telling me like step by step and I was thinking there's no really good hip -hop based tutorials that are telling me sort of the real kind of

Chopping up and sample manipulation even though as I said, it's not even that sophisticated, but you know, I wanted to show How kind of once you get the basics how sort of easy it is and you don't have to kind of you know, worry too much So yeah that kind of inspired me. I thought well once I've cracked it I'll try and share it and funny enough even though I did other Videos where I kind of talked about different techniques only like a year or so ago I did write it one at work, which is on there. So if you search

Ableton sample chopping you'll find one of me a little way down and Yeah, if anyone is getting into Ableton and wants a nice workflow for chopping samples really quickly I kind of break it down and yeah demonstrate it quite clearly I think as clearly as clearly as I could so hopefully that will save people a lot of pain that I went through

I think I need that one because I've not seen that one but it could be really really... yeah because that's something that I like about the MPC that I've got. I've got the MPC live and just the doing the chopping on the fly. Yeah. But yeah if you've got that and it's more dexterous to then re -correct afterwards then happy days. Yeah I mean there's basically there's like two methods really and it depends on your sample source. Yeah. You can chop it by beat increments so you warp it perfectly on time and then it'll chop it into either...

quarter bar, eighth bars, whatever, equal in increments, which is quite a good way of chopping. Or if, for instance, your sample is maybe more some sort of less rhythmic, lots of little sounds and stuff, and you just want to get all those little sounds, then yeah, doing it on the fly, pressing the key down every time you want to put in a slice point. Yeah, because I do the clicking the markers and it is a laborious task.

Where's the best place for people to get you then? Is it on the YouTube? Yeah, yeah, you can check me out on YouTube. My channel is under the Size Specs channel. All my videos are on there. I guess it's good to kind of join forces for that sort of content amplification, isn't it? And you've got my bandcamp as well, Barry Beats aka Size Specs. Yeah, no idea what aka stands for, but it sounds good. Yeah.

And the other thing, which has been a long time in the making, and a lot of people have been on my case over the last year saying, Barry, you've got to do a Patreon. So finally putting into a plan. But the thing is with me, I didn't want to just put like a beg and bowl and ask for money for nothing. So I wanted to basically come up with something that would be a really good value offering. So.

for me because I mean it's amazing the fact you know I'm always like I think it keeps me going is the incredible support and the people seem to really love and embrace all the stuff I'm doing so this is hopefully an opportunity so what I'm the way it's kind of work gonna work in a sense and this is maybe I don't know probably a bit optimistic but I'm gonna be instigating something I'm working title operation p45.

The main aim is to become self -sufficient, to do it full -time, which is gonna be my dream, because all I wanna be able to do really is fulfill my potential as a music -making producer, sharing my knowledge, putting me beats out there and being as creative as possible. But as everyone knows, time is limited, I've got a lot of responsibilities, and one of the main ones is me nine to five. So if I can supplement that earning through Patreon, I know it's a massive ass, but...

I do have, because when I was originally thinking, it's never gonna happen, you know, I'm gonna need hundreds and hundreds of Patreons to be able to do that. But then I suddenly thought, well, quite a few people in the past have asked me about whether I offer any lessons or anything like that. So what I'm also going to be offering as part of my Patreon tiers is going to be a top tier where you will get like an hour, hour or more mentorship or personal video tuition. So that option is there as a sort of a...

high -end sort of £100 plus offering but you know you'll get my 100 % committed support there with your music making so I mean I've got so many other plans I'm going to be doing like a month a weekly live stream which I'm planning at the moment which will be every Sunday I'll be live streaming for you know three or four four hours in the evening either making a beat playing through old records having friends around playing just basically hanging out with me in the studio having fun.

I might be looking at a technique, going through a few different techniques, might just be, might have a musician round, so loads of ideas for fun stuff we can do for that. Every month I'll be doing an exclusive sample composition, so you get a royalty free sample which will be like a full composition, like a library, old funk record or whatever. It's going to be 40 years, there'll be the £2 introductory one where you still get like access to one or two of the live streams a week, a month, sorry.

then the next one you get the sample the one up from that you'll get the sample and all the stems and lots of other little things oh you also get a little card sent to your address with a badge a Barry badge I've got they'll be coming in the post soon I'm waiting for me Barry badge so your chance to basically yeah help me out operation p45 for anyone who will be supporting me before p45 is hopefully a

resounding success, you'll become a member of Barry's Black Squadron. Now, the Black Squadron is a unique opportunity to become either a foot soldier, a corporal, sergeant, or commander in chief, depending on your tier. So, yeah, that's the plan. And obviously, if you support me at this stage, you'll still get some good rewards. I'll be offering some good value, but...

the objective is to do it full time and then there'll be videos, there'll probably be more Barry content than you actually want in your life. So yeah, if I could, you know, that's the thing, if I could be doing this full time, you know, the amount of interesting things I could be doing, yeah, I'd be doing loads of stuff. So it'd be loads of videos and yeah, that's the plan anyway, man. Great stuff. Well, yeah, once it, once that's all up and running, let me know and we'll be sure to share it out on the, on the socials. I appreciate that man. Amazing.

I really enjoyed chatting to you and catching up today. Yeah, it's been fun. And I'm going to be getting some more of the ultimate fakes as well. I think I got one of them, one of the albums. I'm going to be getting more of them for sure. Yeah, we're up to four now. So yes. And again, it's like a combination of you've got classic breaks, you know, your Apaches and you know, take me to the Mardi Gras and all those things are in there. And I've kind of basically they're the ones that take the longest is because I'm trying my best to get as close.

I can using well addictive drums is probably my favorite one that I use you know Abbey Road a little bit but addictive drums is incredible so the amount of manipulation you can do on that is yeah anyone looking to get into this I would strongly recommend check out addictive drums for drum manipulation and making fake breaks basically but yeah until you get that check out me yeah

sample kits because there's one shots as well on there so you know you can fill your boots and make your own ones but yeah so there'll be there's original ones on there there's my cloned classic brakes yeah check them out if you're after drugs and they're cheap they're you know five or each or a little more if you're feeling generous great stuff right thanks very much for your time Barry yeah thank you mate most appreciated take care mate catch you later