Lil Soy Sauce Distills the Beat Tutorial to its Simplest Expression

As a beatmaker, I’m always fascinated by YouTube as a source of infinite knowledge. Whatever I'm trying to learn - a musical skill, a marketing trick, a different genre entirely - there’s a bunch of videos waiting for me. Some have powerful production value, some are very humble, and some have are just incredibly smart, like Lil Soy Sauce’s Remaking series.

Short, economic, stylish… This is what a beat tutorial would look like if it was directed by Wes Anderson. Most videos are simply comprised an overhead shot of a MIDI keyboard on a white backdrop.

A disembodied hand plays the various parts of a popular track one after the other. As the parts loop, one over the other, they bring the instrumental to life.

From Cardi B to Lil Skies, hip hop is a very minimal music genre, and sometimes it’s hard to hear the different elements of a track, or to define where the magic happens exactly. Thanks to Lil Soy Sauce, we can easily see how easy it is to produce a great beat.

Here are some of my favorites.