I’ve been enjoying some of the stuff on DJ Design’s YouTube channel. His stuff from back in the day is awesome and I dig his current stuff on his channel as well.
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wooooooooooaaaa thats a dope model! damn those go very high in price nowdays. they got everything u need no?
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Top work!! Love it
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Thanks very much!
Yeah. I like the look of those. I’ve never owned one though so can’t really comment. People steered me toward Portastudios when I was looking around and I’m really happy with mine. You should ask DJ Design on his YouTube channel. I bet he would give you good info.
like others have said, there are a bunch of things you can do to make synths fit. i typically don’t use really harsh sounds, going for more analog sounding stuff from the TAL juno vst or repro-1/repro-5. those cover just about anything you could possibly want. then use side chain compression to bring the drums to the fore, eq where needed, and drop levels or toss some dirt on top. it’s totally doable. practice making room for your different parts, whether they’re samples or instruments, and you’ll get better at it.
Thanks everyone for all your input, really amazing tips and advice in here. I will do a deep dive into everything later. I already tried to apply some of your tips in the beat I made for my first beat battle submission ever (will post it there) and feel that I at least succeeded partly to blend in the bassline more than I would normally have 
I also found some great free plugins/Ableton racks that were quite useful here Best LoFi VST Plugins 2021 (Free & Paid) - BVKER
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Holy smokes, this is a piece of art!
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I swear by the Legowelt Smackos Tape Station listed in that link. 
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This thread is obviously of high interest to me!
Now that I’m in a (somewhat) better place, I’ll try to find a bit of time to participate.
Lately, I’ve been more about introducing synths (and thus, more composition) into my beats. Still sounds somewhat boombap-ish, but it’s a step closer to my endgame: bridge the gap between the Dilla funk and Autechre sense of abstraction and textures. Still a long road ahead.
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Thanks for pointing that out. I decided to take a look and holy mackerel, this guy has a lot of great (free!, although I donated) stuff on his website.
Also some really nice sample packs full of crunchy and dirty drums. As a little bonus for me, I also found out that he is Dutch by scrolling through some of the sample names
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For every everyone, if you want me to include your Soundcloud/bandcamp/YouTube (choose one please ) in the starting post, please send me a PM and I will add it there.
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Yeah his sample packs are great too. And the website 
Off topic
Also a pioneer of the studio full of plants thing 
Going off topic but cool to watch him at work
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As I always struggle with bass lines, I was looking for some inspiration. Then I saw that one of my favorite YouTube teachers just released a video on that topic:
Just wanted to drop this here for the hip-hop heads. The first half of the album is all beats, either from my MPC One or my Pocket operator. It was definitely a challenge to get these beats done in a day apiece, but I had fun doing it and hopefully got a smidge better at making beats.
(The rest of the album isn’t hip-hop so ignore that for the purposes of this post.)
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Dope! Sounds to me like you’re becoming a master of the mpc…
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Here’s my latest video… I’m trying to improve my videomaking skills. I’ll try to post beatvideo’s every 1 or 2 weeks!
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Very nice beat! Also, love the vid. Very nice shots.
Question: are you preparing your samples/loops in a daw to get them in the right bpm? Or do you use a Digitakt like approach to “time-stretching”?
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So, the million dollar question -
What are your views on using sample packs?
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some discussion here
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