How to Make Music Beats

Video Transcript

"No promises on making a hit here, but I'm going to show you one of the ways to approach making a beat. A lot of people start off with some kind of loop, whether they're going to use it or not, some kind of sample that will kind of establish a groove that maybe when you make your drums you might follow. Maybe you can guess this sample. So basically you have the sample looped in there. Obviously setting the right tempo is important to capture your loop. You can also change time signatures, 3/4, 4/4, 6/8. You can get really tool with it and every measure have a different time signature. Most hip-hop though is usually 4/4. Maybe after that start with a hat, do kicks or snares. Let's start with a hat. So you got your hat in there on a track. Going to another track. Now obviously you can do this in any order you feel, however you're inspired to do it. For this we're going to do a snare. I guess one part to remember is at some point you actually are emulating a real drum player. A lot of times drummers will kind of roll the stick on the snare. I'm not going to record it because I might not get it right, but I would've. A lot of drum machines have quantization which will kind of put whatever you play here kind of quantize it so that it puts it in time on the count. The tempo is absolute, if not you're out of time. Sometimes it will slow and quantization will make little articulated rolls not sound quite right, which is what I'm hearing here. A lot of times a drummer with the kick will do a phantom hit before the main. And that's basically it, the sky's the limit from there."