{"id":1366,"date":"2024-12-02T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-02T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/?p=1366"},"modified":"2024-12-02T10:57:29","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T15:57:29","slug":"my-odyssey-making-beat-tapes-using-capcut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/2024\/12\/02\/my-odyssey-making-beat-tapes-using-capcut\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Beat Tapes Using CAPCUT: My Odyssey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Inside every young man is a wolf, and that wolf wants to make bad SoundCloud beats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CapCut is a video editing software. There are many relatively cheap ways to create music digitally, but this shouldn\u2019t be one of them. What my freshman year self did here can be broadly categorized as a bastardization of everything that goes into music. In my efforts with the program, I run my hand across a Goodwill clothing rack with my eyes closed, stop randomly to pick various parts of an outfit, and then try to put it on without using my hands. Also, in this metaphor I\u2019ve never dressed myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many other bad ideas, this one came about via boredom. I celebrated my 19th birthday by hitting pro level on Wii Sports Resort bowling. I had hit pro in classic Wii Sports bowling earlier that week. I wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer. I wish I could tell you it was then and there that I had a dramatic eureka moment, and decided to make a beat tape in CapCut, but that\u2019s not what happened. I just started doing it one day. Additionally, I think \u201ceureka\u201d implies a good idea, and this was not a good idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does someone make a beat using CapCut? I will kindly refer you to the pamphlet for that one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get all that? No? That\u2019s okay. It\u2019s kind of like a step by step guide on how to slip on a banana peel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During my freshman year, I locked everyone out of the AROUSE studio for two weeks, cried outside of Bulls, accidentally dressed as Katy Perry to a Lady Gaga themed party, told someone my name was \u201cGrerro\u201d, and wore a homemade ninja mask to every home football game. I would say this beat tape is still the most embarrassing product of that year. I would like to give you a tour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ROUGH AROUND THE EDGES<\/strong><\/a>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The title of the mixtape is \u201cRough Around the Edges\u201d. Yeah. I\u2019ll be using the terms \u201csample\u201d, \u201csong\u201d, and \u201cEP\u201d fast and loose for the rest of this article<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TRACK ONE: Wake Up Your Mind<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m so excited. Are you excited? Let\u2019s wake up our minds. Together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the songs in these EPs have clunky loops. That being said, this song starts with a really clunky loop. Also, as the title suggests, one of the three samples smushed together here is an unsettling voice saying \u201cWAKE UP YOUR MIND. WAKE UP\u201d. I don\u2019t think you could really put a time signature on this, and you don\u2019t need to, because it is gone after about 15 seconds, and replaced by something completely different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second part of the song is characterized by one looped keyboard sample. Hip-hop is a genre that started with the drum and bass breaks in funk songs. These intruments are integral to the genre. The sample I took the keys from also had really nice drums and bass, but I took them out. Instead, I add one or two really compressed drum blasts every 8 counts or so. That\u2019ll do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TRACK TWO: Good Times<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good Times has a phonograph filter over the entire song. This is something that CapCut provides. The grainy nature of the track suggests that the \u201cGood Times\u201d are simply a passing memory. A bout of reminiscence. A look back on your life before you listened to any of this. But you are here now, and you must stay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are two little quirks to this song that I employ frequently throughout my discography. Firstly, I like to let a track breathe. Give it 2-3 seconds of complete silence at random times. It builds tension. Secondly, sometimes I couldn\u2019t find a sample that was exactly what I desired, so I would take matters into my own hands. Here you can hear me dictate \u201c2, 3, 4\u201d into my iPhone\u2019s speaker and restart the loop there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TRACK THREE: Kap<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sampling was born in controversy. People who didn\u2019t understand the art believed it was theft. However, if done correctly, the act of taking a portion of a pre-existing song and then transforming it into something else is just that: transformative. Unfortunately, as previously established, I don\u2019t do many things correctly here. Kap really isn\u2019t very different from its source material, Pasteur Lappe\u2019s \u201cMore Skele Movement\u201d. I threw in more compressed drums and a really weird vocal sample, but it\u2019s really just a worse version of the original. I also made a Playboi Carti remix.<\/a> It probably has more artistic merit than anything else here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TRACK FOUR: Track 4<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boring stuff here. Loop some drums and bass. Then, add a pretty obnoxious vocal sample. Then, add nothing else. Not even a name. This is how you get \u201cTrack 4\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TRACK FIVE: Rainbows<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my own way, I am emblematic of the ineptitude of so many institutions. As humans, if we make any type of progress we are extremely reluctant to walk back on this alleged progress. It\u2019s way easier to slap tape on a leak than to get a new boat, but when your boat\u2019s deck has 20 pieces of tape applied to various spots, it\u2019s probably time for a new boat. It\u2019s why so many government websites look like they were made in the 90\u2019s. It\u2019s why Rainbows sounds the way it does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I accidentally stopped the main sample that comprises this beat about a half a second early. That\u2019s what happens when your sampling software is your phone\u2019s screen recorder. Rather than go back and just redo the sample, I took out the roll of tape. I tapped rhythmically on my desk. I hummed and put a CapCut filter over it. I crumbled up a paper bag. Anything to fill the half second of silence between loops. None of it worked, but it all stuck around in different ways. This boat may sink, but it must find its fate on the seas. It is said that the rainbow was a sign of goodwill from God, promising Noah that no more world-killing floods would occur. This song proposes a new story, one of the rainbow being a swan song left by the boats that would not stand up to the flood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sent these songs to some people. When you spend a somewhat substantial amount of time screen recording and video editing a song together, you want someone to hear it. One of these people was my then roommate, who I sent a link to the tape, adding \u201cif you want, you can listen to these when you get the chance to\u201d. He decided that he did want to listen, and that he had the chance to right then and there. We sat 15 feet apart in Mack 238, and wordlessly listened to the entire tape as he played it out loud from his phone\u2019s speaker. Then he said \u201cNice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would receive no praise for this project. I would receive no meaningful experience. I would receive nothing of value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I made another one. And it was worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BEAT TAPE 2<\/strong><\/a>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In March 2023, Beat Tape 2 was released. I changed none of my methods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TRACK ONE: Return<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Return. The long awaited, much anticipated return of Brady Virtue to the CapCut beat production scene after a whole month of silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This song originally had a completely different vocal sample, but my little brother didn\u2019t like it, so I changed it. I sent every song to him, and would size them all up like he was a journalist reviewing an actual piece of music. Instead he was contemplating songs that I sent as videos over iMessage. Thanks Ethan. Love you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TRACK TWO: Weird<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I mean yeah. Just a series of unsettling sounds. You can try to predict what it\u2019s going to sound like, but I promise that the actual sounds are more weird. The song plays like a good joke. You have this terrible, annoying beat, and then it always gets worse, but in a subversive, additive, unexpected way. It\u2019s executing the \u201cyes, and\u2026\u201d rule to a tee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TRACK THREE: Too Much<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a pitched down sample at the beginning of this track that leads me to the conclusion that Beat Tape 2 is objectively more funny than my first effort. Rough Around the Edges was certainly not good, but Beat Tape 2 might have some of the most hilariously bad beats known to man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TRACK FOUR: Real Thing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think there\u2019s an insinuation within the track that the \u201creal thing\u201d is sex. Just so you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TRACK FIVE: DOA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first half of the beat contains me stomping. I was just slamming my feet on the ground in the Mack Hall stairwell, and at least one person walked by as I was doing so. It also sounds like I sigh in the middle of this beat which is really really funny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m a little fuzzy on exactly why I named this one DOA. I think it was something with the military and soldiers dying with the whole marching thing. I don\u2019t know. Nobody cares. It\u2019s over. We\u2019re done. Go home. There is no lesson to be learned here. There is only a lab rat who has been locked alone in a box for 8 months, trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s the samples I could find on Spotify<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inside every young man is a wolf, and that wolf wants to make bad SoundCloud beats. CapCut is a video editing software. There are many relatively cheap ways to create music digitally, but this shouldn\u2019t be one of them. What my freshman year self did here can be broadly categorized as a bastardization of everything […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[34,20,27],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1366"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1371,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions\/1371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}