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Hello world!

TL;DR,

• an afrobeat instrumental made in ableton live 9.5
• the song is 3 minutes long, an used part that wasn't supposed to make it to the final mixdown was left in there by mistake, apologies, I've gotten really sleepy.

continue here
Its been an amazing time on steemit, and for the longest of time, I had sidelined my music production skills to pursue other endeavors. Well, with the august deadline for my afro steem EP(extended play, like an album but shorter) coming up, I just had to resume work on my music.

The time is currently 2:08am in the morning in this beautiful country of Nigeria, and what better time to produce a track?

Afrobeat production

One thing y'all need to know about afrobeat is that its very beat driven, much like dance music, there is usually a steady kick, that gives the song its pulse, followed by a 1-4 snare pattern on a 4 bar loop. There is of cause, the addition of shakers, congas, bongos and so many other textures to give the song some life.

Afrobeat songs aren't really about the lyrics, but rather how you can move your body to the song. Things such as straight Quantization, or drawn out melodies don't sit well with afrobeat style of music as those don't allow the song to breath.

Of cause you can always get creative.

Baselines are one of the most important elements of any afrobeat song, and depending on what you are aiming for, can be either drawn out(long bars of single keys) or groovy played.

For this particular track, I used live samples where possible from my collection I had amassed over the years.

I also used studio drummer from Native instruments as I believe that gives the song a sort of live feel towards the half way mark of the production.

I really hope you enjoy this song. If there is large demand for this, I might just make it available and create something else for the number 3 slot of my EP.

There isn't a whole lot going on in this song, for those foreigners, this may be a difficult song to vibe to, but for my African brethren, its one of the easiest songs to jump on.

If you've heard the likes of wizkid, burnaboy, lilkesh, then this shouldn't be a problem for you to land on.

Now of cause my EP is going to cover genres from around the world, Im still thinking of how to fuse afro and EDM together, though Ill probably take a look at sicker/maradonna by Niniola.

Cheers, and enjoy.

This is @destinysaid, Nigerian music producer, mixing engineer, showbiz entrepreneur and community builder.

Instruments used

Ableton live 9.5 32bit
Strummed acoustics 2 by Native instruments for guitar part
Xpand!2 by AiR technology for the main melody
melodic percussion from a dreamstation instrument, inside kontakt by native instruments
sensual sax multi inside kontakt from native instruments
drums from various afrobeat and trap packs
airy synth from xpand!2 by Air techgnology
bass line from velvet by Air technology
chorus PAD from xpand!2 by Air technology

Apology!!!

There is a little section at the end that didn't get cut off during the mixdown, of cause this is by no means the final mix, infact, this is like mix 1 out of 20, ill still be working on this, and having artists jump on it before the august deadline.

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