How to Make a Tight Rap Demo on an Even Tighter Budget

The most successful rap artists in the business work with the most gifted and talented producers, programmers, musicians, and recording engineers to help them bring their vision into reality. For the up and coming artist, he or she has got difficult choices to make. Does one invest the time and money in all the equipment necessary to self-produce a CD, or do you buy ready-made rap beats and hip hop instrumentals off the internet.

A fully produced royalty free hip hop instrumental from the web can be a very cost effective option, especially if you are just putting together a demo to showcase your talent. These non-exclusive instrumental beats can be licensed for very little cash, and usually can be downloaded in the form of a simple wav. file, Broadcast wav. file, or even an mp3 file. For those that have never heard the term "non-exclusive", it simply means the source site is granting you a license to use that beat for your demo purposes. Some sites offer "exclusive" beats which can mean different things on different sites so read the fine print people! Usually an "exclusive" rap beat will cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars, but once licensed, the site will remove that "exclusive" rap beat or instrumental from their on-site catalog, so only you can use it for your album. Pretty cool.

If fully produced hip hop instrumentals are the best option for you, then when checking out beats sites listen to the quality of the demos presented. Do the beats sound professional? How do the recorded demos sound? What format will the music be on once delivered? Will you have the tools necessary to convert the file into some other format if you needed to? It’s worth mentioning that in some cases, the producer that created the beat may in fact be a terrible recording engineer.

I would also tell anyone looking for just about anything on the internet to not assume that the first ten "beat-makers" are the best or most qualified just because they are in the top 10 for that query. Certainly visit and start listening to the demos on those sites, but I would also suggest you dig even deeper to the beat shops on pages 2, 3, and beyond. The reason for this is the guys that came up #41 for rap beats might be amazing producers, but horrible web designers. Seek and ye shall find.

You will most likely run across some beat and instrumental sites that give you access to thousands of beats after you pay their membership fee. Again, listen carefully to their production and their recordings to help you deciding whether that’s a good investment or not. What good is it to have access to thousands of beats, if the audio quality and production is not up to industry standard?

Once you have your beats chosen and downloaded, you have many options as far as audio software you can use to record your rap or vocal in. The majority of the big expensive software like Cubase, or Sonar, Acid from Sony, and others will have scaled down or home studio versions that can be had at a fraction of the cost. It’s also worth mentioning that there are some budget microphones available that connect directly to the computer via USB connection that don’t need a mic pre-amp.

In closing, with a small invest for the recording software and a inexpensive mic, and a handful of hip hop instrumentals or rap beats, an artist can make the demo of their dreams without breaking the bank.