Things You'll Need:
- Condenser microphone
- Electronic metronome
- Quality headphones
- Digital audio workstation software or hardware with pitch and time warping ability
- Low-latency sound card or audio interface
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Step 1
Record the sample in the highest quality possible. This involves two things: using a quality microphone, preferably of the preamped condenser microphone variety, and giving your beat box artist some sort of click track to work with in his or her headphones. No matter what the human beat box tells you, they are not able to stick to exactly 120 bpm without a click track.
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Step 2
Try changing the frequency of the click track, lower on the "1" and higher on the "3," to give them that kick-snare feeling to work from. Adding a simple bass line into your beat boxer's headphones might throw off some artists and help others.
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Step 3
Hook up an audio interface, if you are going to be recording directly to a computer, that can handle near-zero recording latency. If you are unclear on what this means, do some study into available recording PCI or Firewire-based audio interfaces, and select one that meets your needs and price range.
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Step 4
Finish the session, and listen to what you have recorded. Even using a click track with bass, your human beat box will likely have strayed in and out of the rhythm slightly. If you want a final mix that makes the listener go "Wow!" you need to have the rhythm perfect. First, you need to choose a section that seems to gel as close to perfect with the beat as possible.
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Step 5
Open up Audacity--a free and open-source sound editing program. Load your sample and select it. Go under the "Analyze" drop-down menu, and select the "Beat Finder" option. If your beat box track is very close to spot-on with the tap, it will place red vertical bars along the top of your edit window, one for each beat of the "1-2-3-4." If you only get the red beat markers for one beat out of every four, your sample is not accurate enough, and you should find a better section of your original track or ask your artist to come back.
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Step 6
Cut the sample so that it lines up with the red beat markers exactly. Save the sample, and open up your primary digital audio workstation software, be it Pro Tools, Acid, Ableton Live, or even REAPER. All of these programs give you some leeway to do fine-tuning within the rhythm, providing a visual representation of how your sound waves line up with the beat.
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Step 7
Play the sample back within your audio workstation software, and apply a click track over it. Does it sound perfect? If not, you will need to do some fine-tweaking of the waves, while switching the dynamic time-shifting option on. Each of these programs work slightly different for this purpose. The easiest to use is that in Ableton Live, and it does a fine job of shifting the frequencies to "snap" to the beat with minimal loss of audio quality.
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Step 8
Double-click on the waveform after you have loaded the sample into Ableton Live, and a close-up of your sample will appear graphically in the lower right hand corner of the screen. Make sure you have the bpm set at the same rate as your sample was originally recorded. Just like in Audacity, you will find graphical markers for where each beat is. The fun part about Live is that you can set reference points at each measure, and then shifting the sample to make it line up perfectly is as easy as dragging to the exact point where the beat lies. The sample will be automatically stretched between points, without shifting the pitch whatsoever!
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Step 9
Consult the manual if you are using another program, but the process is very similar. After you have fine-tuned your beat box sample, you will have a perfectly timed drum track to use in your finished beat, with that unique sound that only a human beat box can provide!
