How to Create a Rap Beat

A well-crafted beat is an essential part of a good rap song. Beats come in many different styles and speeds, but they're all similar in that they give rap the structure it needs to accommodate its emcees' lyrical imagination. Creating your own rap beat is pretty easy, but producing one that's truly outstanding takes time, passion and patience.

Instructions

1. Choose your beat's meter. Almost every rap song's in common time or 4/4, but you're free to experiment with non-traditional meters, such as 6/8 and 7/8.

2. Think of an emotion you want your beat to convey. Many rappers create energy, fire and even aggression in their lyrics, so these are important emotions to mirror in your beat. However, beats can also be playful, clever and laid-back.

3. Create a bass drum pattern for your beat. Most producers re-use their bass patterns, so come up with one you feel anchors the beat and gives it a strong sense of rhythm.

4. Add snare drum hits to the bass drum loop. You can use alternate sounds like claps, whistles and clicks instead of the traditional snare sound, if you want. Snares usually go on beats 2 and 4.

5. Sprinkle decorative percussion sounds around your beat's bass-and-snare backbone. Hi-hat's usually an essential instrument for classic hip-hop tracks, but anything from synthesizers to strings appear on contemporary rap tracks.

Tips & Warnings

• Recording suites like ProTools and Logic are great, but you don't need something so complicated for making beats. Look for free software that gives you basic sampling and recording functionality.

Resources

• Modern Beats offers a huge library of sampled percussion sounds.