Mustard & Travis Scott - Parking Lot (FLP & Stems)

Hey patrons!

Exciting one today! We have a flawless recreation of Mustard (formerly 'DJ Mustard') and Travis Scott's 'Parking Lot'. This was done almost entirely natively within FL Studio, and I'll be breaking it down for you here, and in more detail soon on YouTube.

We're stepping up the accuracy here once again. As in… Damn, we really nailed it this time.

To access this project fully you will need:

• Latest version of FL Studio

• Izotope Imager 2 (Free VST)

• Pitchwheel (Paid VST)

If you don't have FL, don't worry! You can still access the stems and drum samples from this remake.

I tried my hardest to make this project as minimal as possible, while keeping it as accurate as possible. Both external plugins were essential. Go get "Izotope Imager 2" if you don't have the full version, hands down the best free imager. Anyway. Here we go:

808:

Not the Spinz 808, believe it or not! The exact 808 is a modified version, the "SPINZ CLICKY 808", which you will find in the attached files. This is a highly rare sample, and is very useful in adding to songs that don't contain a kick. This version has a shorter, punchy transient and different sound processing to the original spinz. I compressed the sample as done in the original song, which is why the sample you'll have access to is specifically the "SPINZ CLICKY 808_2". This is a more useful version in my opinion.

As for sound processing, the "SPINZ CLICKY 808" has some stereo information, which we do not want! You almost always want your 808's in mono (particularly the low-end) to avoid phasing issues and to have a generally cleaner, more professional sounding mix. This is why I added "Fruity Stereo Shaper" on the mixer, and used the "mid" preset. You can also convert to mono on the mixer channel directly, but I wanted to show you this alternative technique to achieve that.

Drums:

Before we go through the samples, one really interesting production choice made in this instrumental was all 3 percussive sounds were sent to a mix bus, where they were moderately stereoized using Velvet Noise-based decorrelation. 

Really quick, what is that? "Velvet Noise-based decorrelation" is modern approach to adding stereo detail to sounds - particularly useful in sounds that play in mono - most often drums. This is different to the HAAS effect, which was more common in the past, blending the mid channel with slight delays in the left and right channels. VNBD instead spreads the mid channel by blending it with a series of fading velvet noise bursts. This is a more subtle and natural approach.

So, I brought the clap, closed hat and open hat onto the mixer and added the FREE PLUGIN "IZOTOPE IMAGER 2". This offers VNBD, which we used to add more space into the drums.

Closed Hat:

The exact closed hat used in the OG was the "808 CHH", that I found by doing a deep dive into my gargantuan sample collection. There are many similar hats out there, of course. I'll give you a quick list of alternatives I located:

• "Metro CL Hat 3" - The Lunch77 Metro Boomin Drumkit

• "LD Hat3" - OVO Drumkit

• "BWB 5 Bonus Hi-Hat (2)" - BWB 5 Bonus Kit

• "BQ_hihat_closed_chunk" - Everyone in 808 Mafia Kit

• "Hat_Closed_09" - Lex Luger Kit

• "Hihat (Scorpion)" - OZ's Sicko Kit

• "Hihat (Rambo)" from OZ's Batman's DarkSoul Kit

• "SOUTHSIDExPVLACE_hihat_hayes" - Splice - 808 Mafia Presents Palace x Southside Kit

As you can see, sample recycling is absolutely rampant in the music industry, I can give you way more examples, and I shall do so in future posts. Enjoy the tea ☕️.

Open Hat:

The exact open hat was the "Open Hat 5", that I got from the "Sumeenk Drum Kit Vol.1". Again, even though these exact drums are very hard to find, they are recycled like crazy! Bunch of alternatives I found:

• "oh #wylin" - upmadeit" - SYZYGY Drum Kit

• "Ophat (Cardo)" - CARDO-SUPERMADNESS 2K24 Kit

• "808 Mafia Open Hat" - The Lunch77 Metro Boomin Drumkit

• "DBoyOh_2" - DrummaBoy Kit

• "BWB SFTB OPEN HAT 2" - BWB UPGRADE KIT VOL 1

It's honestly hilarious seeing big time producers attach their names to all sorts of recycled samples and pine them off as their own - especially when they do absolutely no modifications whatsoever. So yeah, I don't claim to own these samples, but what I'm doing is curating and educating. What you do with this info is your business :)

Clap:

Okay, I'm starting to get tired writing and want to go film the video now, but let's keep charging! Hope you're having a great day wherever you are btw. Clap is the "Lex Luger Slap Clap", I don't even want to tell you how many producers claim it's theirs (and I doubt it's Lex's original sample). There are lots of variations of the slap clap, so check out the one in the description, that's the exact version. Also the sauciest version in my opinion.

Sample:

The original sample comes from a song called "God Will Make A Way" (1974), by Sweet Spirit. Really beautiful, it comes in at 2:55: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRaAHWnLlFE

To remake 'Parking Lot' exactly, you'll need to chop out 16 bars from the sample after 2:55. The sample was then increased in tempo - in an annoying way that lost me a lot of sleep - I'll be going through that in the video remake, but you can see for yourself in the FLP attached.

Important: I added a paid plugin - QuikQuak's 'Pitchwheel', to this sample ON THE MIXER. I did this for a small reason, but a key reason, and something important to understand. Instead of increasing the pitch of the sample inside FL's native sampler (A.K.A the audio file that opens up when you double-click on a sample in the playlist), I added Pitchwheel as a post effect in the mixer. You'll notice that it adds a "watery, spacey" effect to the sample, which is less clean than pitching the sample up in the sampler, but the imperfect-ness of this can be a nice edition for creating a Travis Scott/ethereal type of effect. I also added some compression using fruity compressor to balance the dynamic range, and automated an EQ for parts where the high end of the sample is cut, using a low-pass filter.

Alright, that's it for me. Other Travis remakes coming are 'The Ends' and '90210'. I'm gonna go film this video now.

Cheers,

Aiden