Gathering a bunch of old vinyl albums and scratching them with all your strength, is not what performing hip hop music is all about. One must have a feel for the rhythms and a mastery of mixing beats and tunes in order to create a unique sound that audiences will crave for.
There have been hundreds of books written about old school hip hop music and the techniques of working as a disc jockey in the club scene. Reading about it, and performing it, are two totaly different things, one can give you info and the other the actual experience.
Before you start performing this type of music, listen. Find the original recordings, and listen, really listen to the flow of the beats with the lyrics. As you listen, begin to separate the beat from the words in your head. Now, you are starting to get to know the music that is old school hip hop.
The very heart of hip hop music sound is the beat. The crowd is kept listening and dancig to a flow of lyrics carried along the sequences and samples. Developing your own system of mixing is the next step of performing old school hip hop music. The beats have to flow through the sample tracks, carrying listeners on a rhythm going to the next sample cluster, over and over until the end of the song.
If the beats are the heart of old school hip hop music, then lyrics are its soul. All the excellent beats in the world don’t add up to anything if the lyrics strike the wrong chord with the listener. The roots of old school hip hop are in the poetry brought by immigrant artists, and to be able to perform the music right, you must be able to make a connection to those roots.
To create the right mix and produce that old school hip hop sound, of course, you will be needing some gear. Quality wouldn’t come cheap, top of the line equipment could be quite expensive. You will need an industry standard sampler to start. A tool that enables you to record fragments of rhythms and beats in high quality and without distortion. You then need a quality sequencer to finesse the beats into the proper rhythm you are seeking for the new mix.
Now, in furthering your interpretation of old school hip hop, you should get yourself a top of the line mixer. Samples, sequences, this thing will allow you to synthesize everything together into a good stereo sound. One last thing you’ll need is a multi-track recording equipment to smoothly blend everything up.
If your funds are running low, yet the urge to recreate that old school hip hop sound runs so strong within you, then turn to your home computer. There are software packages out there that will do the work of the studio quality equipment, and will produce a decent sound. Create CDs through your computer and listen to your creations through a good stereo system to see whether you got all of the effects down perfectly or not.
Patience, good listening skills and some creativity will help you on your way to recreating old school hip hop music. Let yourself be carried away in the flowing beats, and let your soul be filled with poetry before creating your own version, and you just might find yourself paying homage to the music your own special way.