Happy Easter To Everybody I decided to Start this Thread to be a Starting Point for anybody wanting to Produce New Jack Swing (The R&B & HipHop Fusion which makes you instantly feel Happy and ready for a Party).

New Jack Swing is a fusion genre of the rhythms and production techniques of hip hop and dance-pop, and the urban contemporary sound of R&B. Spearheaded by producers Teddy Riley and Bernard Belle, new jack swing was most popular from the late 1980s to early 1990s.
Merriam-Webster's online dictionary defines new jack swing as "pop music usually performed by black musicians that combines elements of jazz, funk, rap, and rhythm and blues. New jack swing took up the trend of using sampled beats and tunes, and created beats using electronic drum machines such as the then-new SP-1200 sampler and the Roland TR-808 to lay an "insistent beat under light melody lines and clearly enunciated vocals. The Roland TR-808 was sampled to create distinctive, syncopated, swung rhythms, with its snare sound being especially prominent.

If you know some more Plugins or Producing techniques for New Jack Swing reply and i add them to the Starting Post.

Instrument Section:

Drums & 808's:
Roland - TR-808 (VSTi)
D16 Group Nepheton (VSTi)
AlyJames Lab VPROM (VSTi)
AlyJames Lab Simmons Drums Extended (VSTi)
Drums In Yo Face (Drum Samples)
JS aka The Best Weapon X Evolution Vol. 2 New Jack Swing (Drum Samples)
Smash Up The Studio - New Jack Swing Vol. 1 & 2 (Drum Samples)
Loops4Producer 24K New Jack Swing (Drum Samples)
Akai Professional x Smash Up The Studio - New Jack Throwback (Drum Samples)

Orchestral:
UVI - String Machines 2 (UVI Falcon Libary)
SWAM - Saxophones (VSTi)
SWAM - Woodwinds (VSTi)
Roland SRX (VSTi)

Organ:
Modartt - Organteq (VSTi)
IK Multimedia Hammond B-3X (VSTi)
Yamaha - YC-3B (VSTi)

Keys & E-Piano:
AAS - Lounge Lizard (VSTi)
Gospel Musicians - FM Tines (UVI Falcon)
Gospel Musicians - Neo Soul Keys (UVI Falcon)
Spectrasonics - Keyscape (VSTi)

All-In One Stuff:
Korg - Triton Extreme (VSTi)
Korg - M1 Legacy (VSTi)
UVI - Darklight IIx (UVI Falcon Libary)
Roland - Zenology Pro (VSTi)
Roland - DS-50 (VSTi)
Roland - Juno-106 (VSTi)
Roland - Jupiter-8 (VSTi)
EMU - Mo Phaat for E-MU Emulator X3 (VSTi)
Martinex AX 73 (VSTi)
Air Music Technology - Xpand!2 (VSTi)
U-He Diva (VSTi) (For Nice Look and better usability Volta or AIKO Skin is recommended)
Specterasonics - Omnisphere 2 (VSTi)

Effects:
Roland Juno-60 Chorus
Roland Zenology FX
Lexicon MPX Native Reverb
Decap's Knock

Tutorial Videos:
VLNT. The Plug - How To Make New Jack Swing

Dillie Gang - How to make new jack swing

Music Tech Training Centre - How to Make a New Jack Swing Beat in Logic Pro

GRGE - COMO HACER NEW JACK SWING

RnbBeatStore - How To Make 90s R&B New Jack Swing

 

Last edited: Apr 11, 2023

Link to my free New Jack Swing Drumkit on AudioSex so that you can get started right away.

https://audiosex.pro/threads/njs4life-new-jack-swing-drum-kit-audiosex-exclusive.69582/

 

Last edited: Apr 9, 2023

Some More Tutorial:
Busy Works Beats - Retro 90's Rnb New Jack Swing Tutorial

Alt24 - 90's New Jack Swing Tutorial

VLNT. The Plug - This Legendary VST Is All You Need For New Jack Swing!

Diyanna Monet - MPC One New Jack Swing

dilliot2k - Music Therapy. Episode 2. Journey to New Jack City

 

Tutorials #3
Sunglasses Kid - Making Bruno Mars style "New Jack Swing" 80s beat in 10 minutes

Ave Mcree - New Jack Swing MPC Music Theory & 90s R&B History

NaturalPhil - New Jack Swing - NaturalPHIL Drum Tutorial

dilliot2k - Remaking Janet Jackson - Control - How to make the beat - REMAKERT2K

MoneOnDaBeat - @MoneOnDaBeat Beat Session #37 | Making New Jack Swing Beats

 

Some Legendary New Jack Swing Music:
Guy - Groove Me

Bell Biv Devoe - Poison

Wrecks-N-Effect - New Jack Swing

TLC - Ain't 2 Proud 2 Beg

Today - Why You Get Funky On Me

 

Some More Legeandary New Jack Swing
Keith Sweat - I Want Her

Bobby Brown - My Prerogative

Johnny Gill - Rub You the Right Way

Boyz II Men - Motownphilly

Guy - Spend The Night

 

massive! tutorials untill 2030!

 

When producing New Jack Swing, you definitely must not be shy about saturating the drums hard and use gated reverbs on snares. And it's gotta punch. Most of these tuts don't get it right. And you definitely need to up your music theory game to get some fly chords and nice voicings.

Fun fact: the Bomb Squad (Public Enemy) produced tracks on the first BBD album which is cray.

 

Added your Tips to the Starting Post thx 4 sharing your knowledge.

 

The one thing I’m hearing with these New Jack Swing tutorials is that EVERYBODY is afraid to sample. People are referencing Teddy Riley but Teddy sampled… more than you think. Groove Me, I Can’t Let Her Get Away (Michael Jackson), We Got Our Own Thang (Heavy D & The Boys), Teddy’s Jam, Teddy’s Jam 2, Gotta Be A Leader, New Jack City, trust me, I can keep going.

This is the element that sorely missing. Now, I understand that people are afraid of getting sued. Tracklib is a great service and you don’t need to sample lot. I just think that part of the fusion elements in NJS with hip hop was the sampling.

 

Dope threat BlackHaze1986!

I love this genre, been trying to make it for the last couple of months and recently found out that alot of the classic New jack swing drum sound can be found on the Alesis sr16.
For example the Bell Biv Devoe - Poison Snare is on that lil machine
Just wanted to add that

 

Basically, New Jack Swing is just soul with fancy outfit, so, assuming we have an ordinary soul song ready, we just need to apply the following arrangement to NewJackize it

• First of all, on your drum machine turn the swing knob to full scale
• Program a lot of unnecessary offbeat hits on the kick drum
• Snare will be double the volume of everything else
• Apply an obsessive gate reverb on drum buss
• A funk drumloop sample (played at half volume) will greatly improve the groove
• The bass plays when kick does (Lately Bass preset from DX7)
• Stabs, stabs and more stabs (ORCH2 from E-MU library highly recommended)
• Guitar plucks from any fm synth
• Shortest reverb ever on voices
• Sample some bits of singer’s voice and play it randomly on the keyboard with your elbow
• Insert here and there classic hiphop vocal samples

Note for mixing: mandatory: the final mix have to sound "dry”. Also, forget about making bass and subbass sound loud, the whole song takes place on the midrange.

Done!

You can't go wrong with this list: a few years ago, Bruno Mars made a new jack nostalgia song to celebrate that glorious period, following all the stereotypes just mentioned

 

Some of the classic keyboards that were used during this time period was the Korg M1, especially the organ sound, the Yamaha DX-7 which features the Lately Bass, and possibly the most important of all, the Roland D-50 (I also heard that he used the Synclavier once or twice). Guy’s first album, as well as Al B Sure’s first album used the D-50. The TR-808, Oberheim DMX, and the Alesis SR-16, which is a combination of the sounds from the Alesis HR-16 and HR-16b were the goto drum machines of early NJS along with the drum sounds from E-MU Proteus (the Groove Me snare can be found there) and the E-MU Mo’ Phatt.

The keyboards listed come as soft-synths while the SR-16 can be found as a Kontakt library, along with the Mo’ Phatt. The other drums can be found as sound packs all over the internet. Samples From Mars has a crazy collection!!

Also worth noting is that the SP-1200 was also used during this time as well. That grit serves those drums WELL. And Inphonix makes the best DAW ready emulation of the iconic drum machine with their RX-1200.

Anything Roland based can and will serve you well.

Also note worthy, if you’re looking to recreate the earlier NJS sound, gated reverb on the kick and snare is necessary. Doesn’t have to be much, but in the late 80s -early 90s, they were still using gated reverb. Groove Me by Guy and Turned Away by Chuckii Booker are good examples of this.

 

Last edited: Mar 29, 2024