Finebeats

A week ago to this very day, we promised a weekly update with our favorite UK producer Stealf. And true to our word we have caught up with the man himself to see how things were going and whats happening under the radar right now. First thing we were keen to discuss with Stealf was how the LP “The Artful Dodgers” with Solomon was going, here’s what Stealf had to say:

“Originally, I was going to mix the tracks down and get them ready for mastering, but due to my other commitments and Solomon knowing a professional mix engineer, we decided to go that route with it. So I’ve been mixing down the beats and getting them sounding perfect. Some of them were quite old too and I had to do a fair bit of work to bring them up to scratch but they were good enough for Solomon to record his vocals on.”

Being as nosey as we are we wanted to ask Stealf about the process he goes through when tweaking his beats :

“With the older beats, I had to run the samples through a lo-pass filter and then on a separate track, through a hi-pass filter to fill it out a bit. The drums needed compressing and EQing again too. I’m always surprised when I open up an old beat and see how I mixed it down. There was also a lot of editing and a few of the beats needed the format changing cos of the way Solomon wanted them to flow.”

So now that we knew what had been happening since we last spoke we wanted to know what work lay ahead for the completion of the LP :

“There’s 2 more tracks still to get recorded, another solo Solomon track and the feature track with Sha Stimuli and Chaundon. The feature tracks timescale will depend on when we can get the guest vocals recorded. Apart from those 2 remaining tracks, the mixing and mastering and choosing the track order, there’s still the artwork to do too, but that’s a step we’ll get to much further down the line.”

Since we were up to speed on the LP we wanted to know what other projects Stealf has on his radar at the moment, and what we can look forward to from him:

“Right now, I still have the EP with JackitDown Brown, which is almost complete too. That’s gonna be something special too. JackitDown really has his own style and he sounds crazy on my beats. My album has just been mastered and is still on track for the May 23rd release date, and apart from the 2 leaked tracks, it’s gone very smoothly so far. I’ve also started work on a collabo mixtape with Clas-Sick, an artist from my label too, which is gonna be some real hip hop. I’m keeping busy. I have spoken to a number of artists about some new work, Ruste Juxx, Freeway and Canibus, but this is still all talk right now.”

However before concluding this weeks Stealf Diary we weren’t going to let him off that easy and we wanted a tip of the week off of him to help us mere mortals learn how to make a track bang .

Stealf Tip Of The Week:

“One of the best tips I could give someone who wants to get in to production is to make sure you find your own sound. It’s more important than anything. Imitating someone who inspires you won’t make you a good producer/beatmaker. Let that inspiration influence your sound, don’t imitate it. Finding your own sound involves loads of different things, from the way you chop up a sample, to the way you use your drums, how you layer your drums, your format and even down to the way you mix the beats down. At the end of the day, I don’t want someone to say “That sounds like a sick boom bap beat”, I want them to say “That’s a sick Stealf beat”. Keep it locked on Friday’s for more from the Stealf Diaries.

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