Hooks and samples in reggaeton

Hello, and welcome to the third lesson in our unit, Reggaeton: From Puerto Rico to Global Phenomenon. This lesson is entitled Hooks and Samples in Reggaeton. My name is Mr. Norris. I'm gonna be taking you through this lesson. we're gonna be building on our knowledge from the last couple of lessons and exploring some really exciting music as well. So without further ado, let's get stuck in. Our outcome for today is that, "I have created a melodic hook and bass line for my reggaeton composition." So again, we're building on some of the composition tasks that we've already done. Our keywords, the first is hook. Now, a hook is a short, memorable musical idea that catches the ear of the listener. It can be instrumental or vocal. Sampling is our second keyword, and this is using a preexisting clip of music or sound to create something new. And then our third keyword is tonic. And the tonic is the home note in a key. It's also the note that the key is named after. So for example, the tonic in C Major is C, or the tonic in F minor is F. So the first part of our lesson today is looking at melodic hooks in reggaeton. Let's get into it. One of the key features of reggaeton is its use of melodic hooks. These are short, memorable musical ideas that catch the ear of the listener, so they hook the listener's attention. A hook can be played by an instrument, in which case we call it an instrumental hook, or it can be performed by a singer, in which case we would call it a vocal hook. I'd like to pause my video and listen to the clip. Try and pick out the hook in this reggaeton song. You can do that now. Okay, let's move on. Pop songs often have more than one hook. A short melody that is repeated and memorable is likely to be a hook. Let's pause my video again. Listen to this very famous pop song and see how many different hooks can you pick out in this short clip. And remember, that includes vocal hooks and instrumental hooks. So you can pause my video and have a listen. So here are the two main hooks. There's a vocal hook and an instrumental hook. If you pause my video, you'll be able to listen to those two individually and then we'll move on. Okay, let's move on. Many of the hooks that we hear in reggaeton are sampled, and this is where the composer uses a preexisting clip of music or sound to create something new. This clip here is part of a very famous reggaeton song called "Mi Gente". I'd like to quickly pause my video and just have a listen to that clip. Now that you've listened to it, I'm gonna reveal that the hook in that song is sampled. So it's taken from an earlier song called "Voodoo Song", now you can have a listen to that one now and see if you can pick out the hook that was sampled from "Voodoo Song" and put into "Mi Gente". So pause my video, have a listen. So this is a great example of sampling in reggaeton, and sampling of a really memorable catchy hook. When writing songs, reggaeton artists will sometimes sample a hook like this, but they can also compose them from scratch. So it doesn't have to be sampled, it can be made up from scratch. Let's check your understanding then. So firstly, what do we call a hook formed by a singer? Is it a voice hook, a vocal hook, a singing hook, or a song hook? I'll give you a few seconds to work that one out. The correct answer then is a vocal hook. That's what we call a hook performed by a singer. True or false, hooks in reggaeton are always sampled? And then once you've worked out true or false, I'd like to think about why is it true or why is it false? I'll give you a little bit longer to do this one. So pause my video, come up with your answer, and then you can unpause it and we'll discuss the answer. Okay, so the correct answer is false, hooks in reggaeton are not always sampled, and the reason is that they are often sampled, but they can also be composed from scratch. So we can make them up from scratch rather than sampling them. So it's time for Task A now. There are three reggaeton clips here. Each clip, I'd like to identify whether it contains an instrumental hook, a vocal hook, both, or neither. So in each box for the clip, you're gonna write Y or N for yes or no, as to whether it includes an instrumental hook and whether it includes a vocal hook. So you can pause my video, listen to the three clips and complete the table. It's time to go through the answers then. So in the first clip, there was an instrumental hook, but there was no vocal hook. In the second clip, there was no instrumental hook and no vocal hook. And then in the third clip, there was both. There was an instrumental hook and a vocal hook. So well done if you managed to pick up on all of those answers there. So the next part of our lesson is gonna be looking at creating an instrumental hook, hook played by an instrument. We're gonna watch this video now, and this shows us how to go through the process of composing an instrumental hook for our reggaeton composition. So I'll play this for you now. Now I'm gonna have a go at creating my catchy, memorable instrumental hook. Now for this composition, I'm gonna need an electronic or synthesised instrument, as most hooks in reggaeton tend to be on electronic instruments, rather than live instruments. The first thing I'll do is explore lots of different sounds. There are lots of good ones you could use in Synthesiser. So GarageBand, you could use some of the Bell sounds, maybe some of the Classics, you could explore Synth Leads, those are definitely good ones to use, maybe even Synth Plucked, and find one that you like that creates the effect that you want. There are also electronic instruments outside the Synthesiser area. I found some good ones in this Keyboard area, and the one I've actually settled on is this one called Dreamy Smooth Vox. It sounds like this. (dreamy music) So it's clearly sort of electronic sound, but it sounds a bit like a voice, and I quite like that sort of unusual effect. So I've decided to go for that and that's the one I'm gonna use. Now, in order to come up with my hook, again, like we always do, we're gonna have a go improvising over what we've already got. So I'm gonna loop a section of my drumbeat. So I'm gonna loop the first eight bars of my drumbeat. It doesn't really matter, 'cause it's just played in the background while I'm improvising. And now that I've found my instrument, I'm gonna try and create a pattern that is one bar long, so four beats long, that is quite simple and quite catchy and memorable, and that I think fits well with the drum groove. So I'm gonna come up with various different ideas. You can watch the keyboard on the screen as I'm improvising to see some of the things I'm doing. And then I'm gonna try and settle on one that I like. So let's get this playing. (upbeat reggaeton music) So there's lots of different ones there, and I was trying to use no more than three or four different notes in each of those, because you don't want to make it too complicated. You do want it to be quite simple. I've come up with this one here that I quite like, that I sort of came up with towards the end there. (upbeat reggaeton music) I quite like that one. It sounds quite interesting. It works quite well with that voice sound and I think it fits well with the drumbeat. It's fairly simple, it uses four different notes, and I think it's quite catchy. It's the sort of thing I could imagine going away, sort of humming away to myself, because it would kind of get stuck in your head, and that's what you want from a hook. You want something memorable and catchy. So I've come up with my hook, I've practised it, I'm ready to play it. I've got my instrument, let's put the metronome on, let's put the playhead back at the start. I'm gonna turn this loop off and let's just record one bar of it, here we go. (metronome ticking) (upbeat reggaeton music) So I could quantize it, (upbeat music) depending on my rhythm, It will determine what I quantize to here. The shortest note I've got is a quaver, so I can quantize to an eighth note. Let's loop it. And I've had the volume up quite high there while I've been playing it just so you can hear it. But I think now I'm gonna bring it down to have a bit better balance with the other parts. Let's have a quick listen. (upbeat reggaeton music) I think that's about right. So that's my instrumental hook created. Let's talk through those steps then. So to create an instrumental hook, first we choose an electronic sound, so a synthesiser. Then we're gonna improvise some ideas for the hook over the drumbeat. Try to keep it simple by using only three or four notes. So don't use too many notes, keep it simple. And try and create something catchy and memorable. Record in one bar of the hook and quantize it and loop it so it lasts up to bar 16, so 16 bars of your hook. And then finally, check the balance of the hook to the drumbeat. So make sure they're both the right volume and you can hear them both equally well. Let's check your understanding of this task then. So which of these instruments will be most suitable for a reggaeton instrumental hook, a classical guitar, a violin section, a synth voice, or a bass guitar? I'll give you a few seconds to work out your answer. And the correct answer then is a synth voice. Well done if you've got that one. That's because it is an electronic sounding instrument and mostly, hooks in reggaeton are created electronically using synthesised sounds. So it's time for your task now. You're gonna create an instrumental hook for your reggaeton composition. There's our success criteria. So it uses an electronic synthesised instrument. It uses only three or four different notes on the keyboard. It's simple, memorable, and catchy. And it's quantized, lasts for one bar, and then is looped to bar 16. So you can pause my video and give that your best shot. Now let's move on part two. So we're gonna listen to this hook and I'd like to know what could this composer improve about their hook? Here we go. I'll play it for you now. (upbeat reggaeton music) So let me pause my video and get your answer down and then when you're ready, unpause it and we'll go through our answer. Okay, so let's talk this one through. This composer could have improved their hook by choosing a more suitable instrument for reggaeton. So a synthesiser or electronic sounding instrument. At the moment, they're just using a piano, it's not very typical of the style. And secondly, they can make it simpler with fewer notes. This would make it more catchy and more memorable. So well done if you wrote either of those two things. Let's move on then to the next part of our lesson. So now we're gonna look at creating a reggaeton bass line. Bass lines in reggaeton, like hooks, are often short and repeated. In a second, you're gonna pause my video and you're gonna listen to this clip. This is that song "Mi Gente" that we listened to earlier. And I'd like to know how many different notes does the bass play in this song? So you can pause my video, have a listen. Now it can be quite difficult to pick out the bass line when you're listening to the whole song. So now we're gonna listen to just the bass line on its own, and I'll play it for you here, again, see if you can work out how many different notes it plays. Here we go. (upbeat bass music) Maybe you picked it up then, this bass line uses three different notes, and most bass lines only use a few notes. So just like hooks, we don't want to go over the top and be using too many different notes. We wanna keep it simple. And in this case, we've got three notes in this bass line. Bass lines often use the root of the chord, but when there's no chord sequence, we can use the first note of our hook as a starting point. So this is a slightly different way of conceiving of a bass line. Rather than basing it on the chords, we're gonna be thinking about the first note of the hook and trying to create a pattern from there. This first note is usually the tonic note. And the tonic note is the home note in the key. For example, if we were in the key of C Major, the tonic would be C. If we were in the key of A minor, the tonic would be A. And usually this is the starting note of our hook and therefore our bass line. We're gonna watch two more short videos now. The first one looks at choosing an appropriate bass sound for our reggaeton composition, and the second one then looks at how we would go about creating a bass line from there. So I'll play these two videos for you now. The way we're gonna create our bass line here is gonna be slightly different from the way we've created bass lines previously. Previously when we've done this, we've been using a chord sequence and we've taken the root note of each chord and made a bass line from that. In this process, we're gonna try a slightly different way and we're gonna be creating our bass line, not based on chord sequence, and not based on the root notes of chords, but instead we're gonna do it linking it to the melodic hook that we've already created. And this is a technique that is often used actually by reggaeton producers and artists. We're gonna start off by creating a new track. And as we know in reggaeton, most of the sounds that we hear are synthesised, they're electronic, so are our bass sound is no different. We're gonna be looking for a synth bass or an electronic bass. In GarageBand, if we go to Synthesiser, and click Bass, then there's a big long list here of all the synth basses you got on GarageBand. On different software, you might have to go into Bass and then click Synth Bass, but usually it's accessed through Synthesiser. Now, 808 is a term that we've come across quite a bit with the instruments in reggaeton. And as I've said before, 808 was a type of synthesiser that created sounds that were very popular in reggaeton when it first emerged and have continued to be so since. So when we're looking for a bass sound, anything with 808 in it might work quite well in this. The other kind of bass sounds that might work well are anything with sub in it. So here you can see I've got Deep Sub Bass, that might work quite well as well. And the bass sounds that we're looking for, the bass sounds you tend to get in reggaeton, are quite mellow, they're not really punchy, they're not really crisp, they're often quite subdued. And so these sounds will work quite well with that. As I've said with when we were doing the drum kit and when we were doing the hook, there's no right or wrong necessarily, but an 808 or a sub bass will be a good starting point and lots of those will work quite well, but you might well find something else that you prefer and that's absolutely fine. Be creative and, you know, use sounds that you want for your project. Okay, so I've had a explore through some of these already and I've decided I'm gonna go for this one, this Squeaky 808 Bass, which isn't actually very squeaky. It sounds a bit like this. (mellow bass music) So I think that will work quite well with the hook that I've already created and work quite well blending with the other sounds that I've already got in my project. Now I'm ready to have a go at creating a bass line. And the starting point I'm gonna use is I'm gonna find the first note that I used in my melodic hook. So if I could remember, I would know that the first note I used was A, but if I couldn't remember, I could just open it up here and have a look at my first note in the MIDI editor region down here. And I can see that that A is my first note in my melodic hook. So that's gonna be the starting note for my bass line. And the reason for that is because we're not using the chord sequence, we need something that anchors and links the bass line and the hook and makes them sound like they're in the same key. So this is quite an effective way of doing that, just by using the same first note. So I'm gonna find A, (bass note thumps) there's A on my bass, and that's gonna be the start of my bass line. Now, just as with the other tracks, we are gonna create a one bar loop because that will then mean it fits with the hook and it fits with the drum patterns as well. As we know, reggaeton does use these samples and loops and repeats them over. So that's in fitting with the style as well. So I've got my starting note, A, (bass note thumps) I'm gonna try and create a one bar, so that's four beat loop. And to do that, I'm gonna do the same process that I did for my hook, which is I'm gonna repeat this section over and over again and I'm just gonna try some different combinations of notes. As we've talked about before, we want to make sure we keep it nice and simple, so don't try and over-complicate it. And as a rough guide, I would say you don't want to be using more than about four different notes. That's not a strict rule, but as a general guide, if you're using much more than that in one bar, it's gonna start getting a bit complicated. Whereas simplicity is key with this, trying to keep it nice and simple. So I'm gonna start on A, I'm gonna put those other tracks on. I'm just gonna experiment and improvise and see what I can come up with, here we go. (upbeat reggaeton music) I'm gonna make these nice and quiet so we can hear the bass line as well. So I've got A, that's A there. (mellow bass line) So there's lots of different ideas I've been trying to experiment with there. I've tried using (mellow bass notes) some of the black notes around A. I've tried jumping around. So I did one that jumped from A to C down to E and then back up. I did some that just used the white notes around A, so I tried some like here (mellow bass notes continue) and I tried different rhythms as well. I tried repeating notes and that's what improvising is. It's just trying lots of things, and some of those didn't work very well, and some of those worked better than others. So I think that last one that I was doing there I quite like, it sounded like this. (mellow bass music) It's nice and simple. There's not too many notes in it. There's only three different notes. It starts on A, and it's a four bar loop and it's a similarish rhythm to my melodic hook, but it's not identical. You don't wanna create an identical rhythm, but it is linked to it and sort of fits with it. So I've created that. I'm gonna record it in now. (metronome ticking) (upbeat reggaeton music) Just one bar will do, gonna loop it, and then I'm gonna quantize it. Now here I only used eighth notes, quavers, so I'm gonna be selecting eighth, and then I'm gonna adjust the volume of them all now when I listen through to it to make sure that now I've created that, I can bring the volume down and that I've got a good balance between them. (upbeat reggaeton music) I am quite happy with that. So that's my bass line done. To summarise those steps, then. To create a bass line, first we choose a mellow synth bass sound. So something like an 808 or a sub bass is usually quite effective. You don't want anything really punchy and bright. Secondly, for the same process as you did for your hook, we're creating new ideas and recording the bass line, so that's through improvisation. And then use a slightly different rhythm to your hook. So try and avoid copying the rhythm of your hook exactly. Try and have a slightly contrasting rhythm so we can hear them separately. Let's check your understanding then. So what is the most important note for the bass to find when there is no chord sequence? Is it the tone, the root, the bass, or the tonic? I'll give you a few seconds to work that one out. And the correct answer is the tonic. You might have said the root there, and I can understand that error, because the root is the bottom note of a chord. But really what we want is the tonic, which is the home note in the key. True or false, the 808 and sub bass sounds are the two most suitable sounds for reggaeton? And explain why, so why is it true or why is it false? You can pause my video, come up with your answer. Okay, so the correct answer here then was it's true. And the reason why 808 and sub bass sounds are the most suitable is because both of them are quite mellow and reggaeton uses mellow bass sounds that are not too punchy and crisp and bright. So well done if you got that. Task C then, you're gonna create a reggaeton bass line. Here's some success criteria. It should use a suitable synth bass, ideally a sub bass or an 808, it uses the same first note as your instrumental hook, and it is the same length as your hook, so that's one bar long. It shouldn't use more than four different notes, it is quantized, and it is a loop. So it'll last the same length as your hook. So you can pause my video now and have a go at creating that bass line. Now that you've created the bass line, we're gonna reflect on it a bit. So I'd like you to assess your bass line against this success criteria. What do you still need to achieve? Go through the table and for each success criteria, mark Y or N for yes or no so you can identify what things you still need to make sure you've done with your bass line. So you can pause my video and complete that table now. Okay, hopefully that was useful for helping you to realise how you can still develop your own bass line. Let's summarise the lesson then. Reggaeton often uses melodic hooks, which are short, memorable musical ideas that normally repeat in a song. It's possible to create hooks by sampling or by composing them from scratch. The bass lines in reggaeton are usually simple and repeated. They're typically based on the tonic, which is the home note in a key. So thank you very much for taking part in today's lesson. I hope you enjoyed it and got really stuck into your composition task, and I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson, thank you.