As a hip hop producer, I'm sure that you are constantly searching for new and fresh sounds, as well as methods to create your own hip hop beat samples. If you're new to the game, you might find these methods innovative and even inventive, but if you've been around for awhile in the beat making game, you may already be familiar with these techniques.

Nonetheless, I'll put you down with the methods that I use to get dope samples to make my beats with, and hopefully you can use these tips to your advantage as well.

Bargain Bin Vinyl Shopping

I suggest going to your local record store if you have one in your area that sells vinyl, and hitting them up for every $.99 record that you see in sight. It doesn't matter what genre the record is in, country, pop, jazz (especially jazz) classical, whatever it is, buy it. This goes the same for CD's too. You never know where you will find that oh so intricate synth line or guitar riff, or even those obscure drum hits that you can snatch away and make your own. So the more records and CD's that you can find to fuel the beat making fire, the better.

Youtube

I think that this might be the favorite method that I use, because your source material is virtually endless. EVERYTHING is on Youtube. All kinds of music! Cinematic scores even! The internet is like a one stop shopping source for peeping out samples, and Youtube is a good go to source.

I like to listen to music all day, especially satellite radio or Pandora. So I'll chose one of the stations that typically play old school music, and if I hear a song that I think I can flip, I'll take down the name of the artist and the title of the song, and then I'll do a You Tube search for it.

Once you find your song, all you need to do is use a program called soundflower (which is free) to record the output from Youtube into the input of your recording source, or you can use something like a touch Ipod and use a 1/8 inch to ¼ inch TRS cable into your audio interface, and record it that way. If you don't have an audio editor, try Audacity, it's free.

This is a quick and dirty way to build your sample library, but remember, sampling could cost you in the end, it sucks to have a dope song recorded and the artist does not want to clear the sample for you. But most artists are cool about it, so don't let that hinder you. Just always remember to give credit!