Make A Beat: 5 Things You Should Know Before You Make A Beat

Now we will look at how to make a beat in more detail. The following five things all relate to timing, or the placement of each beat within the song. Timing is the most important aspect of beat making,

Time Signature and Bars

You need to know something about how music is written before you plan your beat. The Time Signature is used to specify how many beats to a bar.

Click here to learn to Make a Beat >

The time signature is represented by one number on top of another. The top number shows how many beats to a bar and the bottom number shows what type of note it is, eg, full note, half note or quarter note.

Quantizing

If you can never seem to hit the drum at precisely the right time, Qantising may be the solution for you.

When you want to position a group of beats in a song, the quantizing function included in most software can atomically align each note to the nearest grid mark on the screen. You can select a quantize value that determines where on the grid the notes will be placed.

Different types of quantizing give you various levels of control in the editing of where each beat is placed. Some different types of quantizing are:

Swing: Allows every second note to be offset slightly, so you get a swing or shuffle feel to the beat
Random Quantize: Useful if you do not want a mechanical sounding beat.

Dynamics

Dynamics refers to how a note behaves over time when struck. Understanding dynamics is crucial to beat production, because is lets you control the sound and duration of the notes and how they relate to other sounds in the mix.

The duration of a note consists of three parts.

Attack: the initial response to a note being struck
Decay: The time it takes for the attack to die down.
Sustain: How long the body of the note continues.
Release: How long it takes a note to end.

Fiddling with the dynamics is another way of making your beats sound less mechanical.

Try to layer the dynamics of the beat to give it a more interesting and natural sound. The simplest way to do this is just to hit the drums at different velocities.

Ghost Notes

These are notes which are almost silent. Using ghost notes means you can add life and body to a drum pattern. When a note is really silent, you can feel it rather than hear it.

Panning

Panning refers to the placement of the various sounds in between the speakers. For a Hip Hop track, you should place the kick drums and snare drums in the centre of the speaker field. Place the hi hats, and pedal hats just off center.

Play around with dynamics. They are your key to original sounding beats. Make a note of interesting changes and when they occur. Good luck!