How To Make Beats: What Kanye Knows That You Don’t
What To Do When Your Beat Falls Flat
To someone first starting out, learning how to make beats can be a serious mystery. You get all your software running, or you got your MPC plugged in and you build your first loop. You got the kicks, snares, and hats all in the right place, but as you play it back it just sounds generic – like a robot or a preset – it falls flat. You play your beat back to back with to your favorite jam and it just pales in comparison… What exactly is Kanye doing to his beats that you’re not?
Click here to learn How To Make Beats >
How to Make Beats: “The Three Nuances”
The first key to understanding how to make a beat is that beat producing is in the details. It’s all the little things that add up – the subtleties – I call them the Three Nuances. If you can just nail just one or two these Nuances you’re going to get your beats to the next level – if you’ve got all three perfected, you’re going to be headed to the big leagues.
Nuance #1 – The Quantize
The problem most people have is that they build their beats on a strict grid. While this can be fine – some of the greatest hip hop beats of all time have been built this way – if you want your beats to stand out and sound “new” – you need to break out of the grid and come up with your own grooves.
K.I.S.S. – Keep It Swinging Stupid
A drum machine is just that – a machine. If you want your beats to slide and swagger, you need to give them a human element. This means trying to make your machine-created beats sound as much like a human drummer as possible.
A human drummer isn’t able to play perfectly, like a drum machine can, and so a human drummer will play some of their hits a little late and some of them a little early – breaking out of the grid. These little “mistakes” are pretty much imperceptible to the human hear – but they are the key factor in what gets played in the club and what doesn’t.
This is how the real, original beats are made! The secret to The Neptunes beats is that actually start making their beats with Pharrel playing on a live rock drum set and then preserving his “mistakes” by programming their drum machine around his original loops!
Nuance #2 – The Velocity
Nuance #2 is similar to the Quantize because it also is another way to make your beats sound more like a live, human drummer. The human drummer, unlike a drum machine, hits the drums in an infinite variety of ways – hard and loud, softly, to the rim of the drum, directly in the center, rolls and flams, and ghost notes. All of these different types of hits contribute to the groove of his playing.
It All Comes Down to How Hard You’re Gonna Hit It
Again, just like the Quantize, the wide variety of types of hits is very subtle and almost imperceptible to the human ear – but is that crucial difference in what gets people to dance and what doesn’t.
I’ve met many a wanna-be producer who tells me “I just want my beats to kick as loud as possible” – and this is understandable. A drum hit cannot be “loud” with a “quiet” sitting next to it, young skywalker.
Make It Funky Now
Take a listen to the most sampled drum loop in hip hop history – The Funky Drummer. Notice all the tiny drum hits – these are called grace notes and ghost notes – the variety of velocities is really what makes it funky.
When you program your beats in a drum machine you can actually program in the Velocity after they’re written. If you use an MPC or a keyboard to input your beats, chances are you’re already controlling the Velocity – but going in there after the fact and tweaking the Velocity by hand is what really separates the amateurs from the pros.
Nuance #3 – The Sound
Now this is the Nuance that everyone seems to jump into first. They start flipping through samples, downloading kits, and EQing – trying to make their beat sound good. But the fact is – a well programmed beat will sound good IMMEDIATELY with just a stock 808 kit if you’ve got your Quantize and your Velocity right.
DON’T TOUCH THE SOUNDS UNTIL YOU’VE GOT YOUR QUANTIZE AND VELOCITY LOCKED DOWN!!!
Getting your sound right much more deep and subtle than most people know. Here are several strategies – I could turn each of them into their own how-to guide on their own…
- Beat Layering: The true pros take multiple samples and layer them on top of each other to create original sounds.
- Beat Tuning: You want your drum sounds to be in the same key as the song – this means taking your samples and tweaking them to the right notes.
- EQing: Knowing what frequencies to bring out and what to take out can be the critical difference in making your beat jump or not.
Again, all of these little tweaks are the things that make your sounds sound like a true original beat or the generic stuff you hear all over the internet.
It’s An Art Form
Making beats is an art form, not a science – if you’re going to get your beats banging, understand that you’re signing up for tons of experimentation and lots of exploration. Learning hip hop production is a lot like learning a language – I can teach you the definitions of the words, but you’re never gonna really “get it” until you start actually talking to people. Start by understanding “The Three Nuances” and you’re already way ahead of the game.