Here's a recent beat I made. The piano and drum hits are chops, and the bassline was made using a basstone i recorded out of my keyboard. The break I chopped is Lee Dorsey - Get Out Of My Life Woman, the pianos come from Barry Manilow - Could It Be Magic.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/wt40pc

All feedback is appreciated, please let me know if the beat works or not

I would've known those drums anywhere because Nas sampled it for Memory Lane(Sittin in the Park) on the Illmatic joint which is one of my all time favorite albums, but you definitely have a winner there I love the way the chops sound. It gets harder every day to compete with people here, there's no hate so everyone gets real feedback and a chance to step up the game. The Mpc user's on FP are like a girl with PMS, they make sounds that are painful to your ears and never stop naging you.

Nice laid-back beat man. Have you tried some compression on the bass to make it sit further forward in the mix? Dunno - could be good or it could ruin the balance you already have...

Another thing that could be worth investigating is a very slight bit 'o compression over the entire mix to make the sounds gel together a bit more. Yes, I am a compression freak. Sorry 'bout that I'm trying to cut down lol...

DrS303 - yeah they're archetypal rap drums, aren't they? glad you dig it.

606man - you're definitely right about the compression. i didn't spend alot of time mixing this*, and the parts aren't quite sitting together as well as I'd hoped. it's also not meant to be too crisp though, so I might leave it

i've definitely gotta get my ears recognising where and how to compress, eq, etc

Cool Bananas man.... I hate 'giving advice' on other people's work becuase you always end up looking like an arrogant twat. Which I'm not. Way too nerdy for that

daaaaammnn.. shit is hot! i like how u put that piano roll and bassline together. Slight master compression would have really given more breath and air to this one here. Drums are banging too. Decent beat overall.

This is sick. Nice work with those chops. I love to hear me some dope chops. I agree that the bass could be fattened up a bit. Aside from compression, you can try a little bit of the drive from the filter.

thanks for checking guys

what master compression settings would you recommend? in terms of ratio, attack, release?

head nodder, nice chops man

nice beat, never heard anyone chop those classic drums before. good chopping too

this shit is dope. if i was a mc i would love to steal your tracks to rhyme on lol. i dont remember if it was you, but i think it was, you said you dont make hip hop tracks that often? well if that was you im more than impressed. you got it down good

thanks man, yeah that was me. i'm glad you'd want to rap on it, that's some good praise

cheers to everyone for checking the beat out, i appreciate it

yeah, I'm diggin this. real classic hip hop sound.

the shit is just what I love about hiphop : piano chops and dope drum samples.

One sad thing : it's too short...

Compression always depends on the signal that you are feeding into it, so there's no easy option, unfortunately.

What you can do though, apart from the ol' "just trust your ears" BS, is use a spectrum analyser on your audio, in a chain after the compressor (you can even use the compression on the 404 and have the Spectrum Analyser analysing the output - all in your DAW of course).

This allows you to 'see' what the compressor is doing to the signal, which is great when you are trying to learn (and before you trust your ears!) all about compression.

Seriously, there are a million articles about how compression works and nothing taught me as well as looking at the effects of compression on a signal.

Get 'Voxengo SPAN'; it's free and very good.