How do YOU make beats?

[oheuthanasia]

I'm a different musician. I can write music, production, whatEV in a heartbeat. My only problem is, "THE BEAT". If i had a beat to a complete song/transitions laid out, i could throw the music on top, vox, etc no problem. I have been searching for the best ways to make beats and have had to solid lead. I have tried fruity loops, then i even tried sampling beat sounds from my triton to import into fruity loops, i've tried logic beats, i've tried the korg beat machine, iDrum, etc. I am just looking for some kind of solid way for beats. I'm a lazy ass with beats and just can't find the easiest, professional sounding way to make beats. I wish their was some kind of hardware or a program that made it that much easier. Please help out and post how you make beats! Thanks so much.

[IanBuzz]

Hey oheuthanasia,

I used to and still kind of have that problem, but what I would say to you is..
Pick up a book that shows you how different drum lins are made by different
styles... i.e. funk will have a lot of hits on the e - a (one-e-and-a) and once
you learn what you want it is a lot easier to try to make it. Just spend a bit of
time with a good o'l drum styles book.

I hope that's been some help !

-Ian

[evernaut]

http://www.anarchysoundsoftware.co.uk/html/anarchy_rhythms.htm


This is something you may enjoy.

I also detest programming beats by fiddling with midi in sequencers...I'd much rather tap things out...but I was giving this a spin the other night and fed a Reaktor generated noise through it.

Instant ( and unique) electronic beats!

Fully tweakable too - I'd highly recommend a go.

[stringtapper]

I use a drum pad. I have hardly any stick technique at all but I can crank out some pretty sweet beats using a combination of the drum pad and Ableton Live.

This is what I do in Live but I'm sure you can translate it to your DAW of choice. What I do is set up a midi track and put a kit on it (iDrum, Addictive Drums, Impulse, whatever you've got) drop an empty midi clip on it and make the clip however long you want the phrase to be, then copy the track a couple of times.

Now record onto one of the tracks. I start with just a kick snare combo. Let that loop and then record onto the second track. I usually add a hi-hat pattern here. Then maybe some rim clicks or a different snare hit here and there. Then some cymbals. So you just keep adding the parts of the pattern one at a time, improvising as you go along. If it sucks delete and try again. When you've got a good beat copy all of the notes into a single clip and delete the duplicate tracks.

This works for me and I find I get better results than just penciling in notes.

[dewdrop_world]

Sorry in advance for the hijack, but...

[ploy]

1. headphones - listening to a beat you like and steal it (difficult in free jazz, i know)
2. midi files out there - you can adjust them easily
3. randozimers - create a little engine with tiny miditools that generate a 5 minute chaos map full of broken beats, cut the little pieces you like


and i really like the randomizer in redrum (reason), it´s a great tool for freak fresh beats maybe officially considered "professional" in some years. yeah "professional" beats are simple, there are just a few and they got exchanged all across every day.

[jmcdaniel_ee]

I know what you mean: It seems like most composition time should revolve around chord progressions, melodies, and song structures (at least with a majority of the styles I write in). But in reality, way too much time has to be spent on programming rhythms, because there seems to be no quick way to do it.

There's the dilemma: do you start with templates and pre-programmed patterns and possibly compromise a fresh rhythmic approach to each song, or do you start from scratch, which takes a lot longer, but allows for more unique rhythmic ideas?

[elektro80]

[elektro80]

[West_Berliner]

i tend to either fire up Reason and just look for sounds in the ballpark of what i'm looking for, and then build around that, or ill fire up Logic and Attack, and pick a bpm, turn on the NL2, and play the pattern in by hand, and if needed ill quantize it, and then record additional parts in by hand, and repeat the process until i have a beat im happy with. I usually play it in by hand for quite a while, so that the looped segments are as long as possible to avoid them sounding like loops and sounding boring!

[MrHope]

I do most of my rhythms is Tu2 (Tuareg II) http://brambos.com

It has a 32 step drum sequencer with 8 tracks of .WAV files that you load up. It submixes those 8 tracks down to a stereo pair. You can then mix 12 different stereo pairs of patterns or loops and have any of them change during each measure of the sequence. There is also the ability to change the starting offset of sounds or patterns, and a beat chopping/rearranging feature. There is reverb, flange, distortion, filtering, and delay. After you are done creating, you can export a the results to a .WAV file. Tu2 also has a built in synthesizer and a built in instrument sampler.

I like using Tu2 because I can construct the drum patterns visually. Another nice feature is that it auditions each sample before you select it, so you don't need to know the exact names of the sample you use. Just use some that sound good.

Other times I use the VST sampler LoopaZoid. It allows the loading of 48 different .WAV files assigned to MIDI keys. It's easier to make more complex patterns with Tu2, but sometimes it's fun just to pound out some rhythmic ideas with LoopaZoid.

[cebec]

[thisaccountisabandoned]

I'm making all my beats by myself, mostly with Reason's Redrum

it's really simple.


or just use Hammerhead Rhythm Station

[Acoustic Interloper]

I use right handed picking patterns on a banjo or guitar. Sorry, but its true I especially like strange accents. My favorite is

ONE and two AND three and FOUR rest (see http://home.ptd.net/~dparson/dafx06_dparson_final.pdf )

But that's just the beginning! You can switch patterns with or without changing the meter signature, yo can damp strings instead of hitting them, and then you can add left hand hammers-pulls-slides-chokes, either at sub-or-super multiples of the right hand pattern, or at non-multiple timings. It's exactly like harmonic vs inharmonic partials, except as applied to the frequency and phase of the fingers, not of the sounds themselves.

Then of course there are delays and echoes of these things in an FX chain. I'm just getting started on using finger picking speed as an LFO. Too busy orting old midi stuff from XP to OSX this week,

[softfreak]

they make themselves.

[espion]

I recommend a few different techniques, not just for beats, but for any kind of weird sound creation:

1) Sony Acid 6
drop samples and loops into your project, chop them up, slice, cut, paste, reverse, duplicate, add effects, loop, destroy, export.

2) Native Instruments Battery 2
use ReCycle to beatmap your loop, export all the hitpoints, then import it into Battery, with all the beats mapped to your keyboard - assign different sounds to different output channels with different effects on each one - reverb, delay, pitch, ring-mod, flange, etc.. or combinations! Make an interesting loop, save it, then start changing individual hit sounds, or adding extra ones in..

3) Reaktor
get a beat, put it into reaktor, twiddle knobs randomly for half an hour!

4) The DBlue glitch. It speaks for itself.

5) Ableton Live
drag various loops into your project, use envelopes to mute certain parts, or control your send/return levels, apply effects and try to create something fresh from the samples/loops you used.


Layering samples to get more unique sounds is recommended. I NEVER use dry snare samples - all my tracks have at leat four layers of snare to get it to sound punchier and more unique than the next persons tune. Too many people use presets, and presets are generally unimaginative, generic and overused.

Oh and I would like to add, that Reason is a good program for making music, but its sound quality output is really bad.. a program that supports a higher sample rate and VST instruments/effects is always going to be better for making music..

phew.. that was fun!

[softfreak]

how about taking some drum lessons ?

[adamg]

[arcticbeard]

My advice is just experiment.
I dont really use a standard way for making beats.
Often after I have found a new riff I tap out a basic beat to play along with. Then after the music has built up I will embellish the beat to follow the music, adding accents etc, on the keyboard, this is good for dynamics, then maybe I'll use the Swing Quantise, enhance the dynamics etc (in LOGIC).
Often I'll combine these with loops made using Reason, Fruit loops, Recycle, Audiomulch, Synth pulses, & I also have a miked up drum kit which I use for Cymbals, tom hits, snare rolls, & misc percussion etc.
Sometimes I use no drums/percussion at all. It is good to mix electronic percussion with real percussion - you get slight offsets which sound more "human". Depends on the feel you are after.

Most of my music is a series of experiments, Its fun getting to the end result, but the learning process & discovery is the real gem.

[bachus]

If you wanted to go completely insane* there's always the
Schillinger System of Musical Composition

*Note that while I endorse insanity in general I do not endorse Schillinger's in particular.

[Papuna]

I think doing beats is msot easy problem to me...

I just take kicks, snares, hats crashes toms and so on with wave format..

and than, I am making it, I mean, I do not use loops, I MAKE MY DRUM LOOPS...

[Stanley Pain]

[Acoustic Interloper]

[kara]

Do you know Liveslice ?
Excelent to make make new beats out of existing loops

k

[XpanderXT]

1. MPC - can't be beat for making beats.
2. Live - great for dealing with loops.
3. Logic - with Battery or their drum thing or Kontakt works well.
4. Reaktor - can be really cool but not very user friendly.
5. Reason - Redrum - it works well.


Those are what I use.