Creating Your Hip Hop Track For Free

Whether you are an aspiring musician or you want to create music for your business or project, it can be done using free resources online. You may even follow tutorials on Youtube on how to use mixing software, create beats and make a finished product. If you plan on using beats or audio clips from other sources, you must assure that you have the legal rights to it.

Getting Your Free Beats

Whether you need beats as a base for your track or you need some inspiration, there are websites out there with free hip hop beats that you may legally use. Just be sure to check out the terms & conditions and the type of license indicated on the website.

If you plan on creating hip hop music that will give you monetary gain, you need to be sure that your beats are royalty-free. Abiding by the rules laid out by the beat creator will mitigate the chance of being sued in the future.

Free Music Production Software

Aside from your creative spirit, the most important component in creating hip-hop is using the right music production software. While paid options are superior in many cases, you may fare just fine with the freeware or open-source solutions available on the web.

Some software suites to consider include:

• Audacity – This is like the open-source Swiss army knife of audio file manipulation. You can splice sound clips together, record audio, modify the speed or pitch, and open nearly every audio file format. The best part is that this software suite is available for pretty much every operating system, including older versions of Windows & Mac OSX.
• LMMS – This is a cross-platform music production suite with a built-in MIDI keyboard. There is a song composition editor, FX mixer, and instrument effect plugins. You may also import MIDI files from similar music production software suites.
• orDrumbox – This is a virtual drum machine that allows you to create or modify beats. It has a pattern design input that allows you to assemble sounds with a certain number of beats. The synth emulator is also useful for creating tunes. It is available in Windows, OSX, and Linux.
• Mixxx – This is a DJ mixing software designed to create mixes on the fly, making it useful when playing at a live event. Considering it is free software, it has quite the advanced mixing interface so you can make full-fledged music.

Publishing Your Music

If you want to give back to the world, you can also publish your music as royalty-free to get your name out there and to help other small creators. Some of these platforms include:
• Soundcloud
• Youtube (with video or album art)
• Bandcamp
• Spotify
• Tidal
• Audiomack

If you want to sell your music, you can try out iTunes or Reverbnation’s music ditribution.

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Final Thoughts

You don’t need professionally licensed music or software to create hip-hop music. That being said, there will always be an investment of time and creativity to create high-quality tunes, with the beat being one of the most important components.