What's up beat people? As some of you may know, I have been dropping beat tapes like bad weather all over the streaming networks for several months now.
So, let's start at the beginning, and answer the question of what is a beat tape and how it differs from a mixtape. The term "beat tape" is a loose one, because it attempts to unify people who are not labeling themselves and who don't always identify with each other as making beats for the same purpose or even in the same genre or sub-genre. So I can only really tell you what a beat tape is to me, and how I view it's history based on my personal history.
A beat tape can be made as an album or urban soundscape for filmmakers, which is one on the same. In that context the changes are guided by the instinct of letting the best parts be heard the longest, volumes are allowed to vary drastically like a ballet score, and passages are allowed to remain drumless for however long is necessary. I call that a "dynamic arrangement."
The more common function of a beat tape is to present prospects to vocalists. When I do this I call it a "buffet arrangemnet," because it's all linear where no sections repeat once they stop looping. On the MPC this is a really nice method, because I can make a set of totally different loops with one group of instrument sounds, then copy each loop twice, and make a drum-dominant breakdown and a melody-dominant breakdown. Then I arrange all that into one song by putting the two breakdowns on each side of their master loop, and connecting the drum or melody breakdowns in an undiscerning way that makes the loops compete instead of cooperate. This is all done so that a vocalist can give me a total equasion of how many bars they want for each part to play, and they can give me the exact minutes when a part appears. This only works with more seasoned artists accustomed to taking this kid of initiative. A lot of your rappers just want readymade stuff and are not this discerning.
The third and last major category of arrangement on a beat tape just traditional arranging, which is when aproducer is claiming that a beat is fully arranged for 16bar verses and either a 4 or an 8 bar chorus/hook. Those breakdowns I mentioned in the buffet style are intended to be potential bridges when they are put in place traditionally, meaning they are there for handy transitions in a traditionaal arrangement, as well as more obvious intro/outro parts. If the arrangement is the most traditional it can possibly be, then it will have a four bar intro, an 8 bar hook, a 16 bar verse, an 8 bar hook, a 16 bar verse, and end on the hook, all transitioned with little 2-bar bridges. However, if it at least has two 16 bar parts that are steady, and a nice 4 bar part that gets your attention, it could still be considered a tradtitional arrangement style. As long as it is considered a ready-made song that is simply missing the vocals, and as long as the intro is not too indulgent. All these arrangement styles can be mixed, but it's good to be able to identify them individually first.
See, who said this stuff was over their head? The most normal type of beat tape is the hardest one to explain, but these are all just formulas that a producer puts in place so that they can have something steady to adjust instead of just always adjusting everything at every stage and getting lost in the creative stages. I have to establish a plan and see it through, then adjust and form a new plan each time. Some producers work on refining one work flow, but I made Weird City on Logic Pro, and most of my other tapes in this series on the MPC, but before that I used multiple other devices, which each have a distinct workflow and I try to figure out the benefits of each device, mainly in how it is set up. In the end I think it is great that the average person cannot tell that Weird City was made on different gear than the other Truckulaverse tapes. I am cutting this thread off here, and starting a new one for each beat tape to be discussed on it's own.