Making beats on your mobile device is now a potent reality for Apple’s Iphone. Intua (featured above) has developed a music creation platform called Beatmaker, which appears to be a beatbox, loop sampler and sequencer all-in-one package. This is the most robust beat-making package I’ve seen for any mobile device. Automatic sample slicing, FX (EQ, delay, bitcrushers) and FX busses, live pattern recording and song export are some of the features advertised. This seems to be a step beyond some of the early idea-jotting mobile software like the mpc500.

Another beat-making app that seems to be making waves is Beatphone (featured below). This “studio in your pocket” app for the Iphone features one-shot and loop pads, samples in “any” format, and up to 256 samples polyphony, which is no doubt a powerful tool for getting ideas down while on-the-go. Check out the demo below.

A glitch can be defined as a minor malfunction, mishap, technical problem or snag.  When manufactured intentionally in the digital realm and replicated over several musical bars while being processed through distortions, decimators, manglers, sample granulation, spectral analysis, morphing, resynthesis and cross synthesis, you have an art form.  Made popular by names such as Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher, Plaid, BT, and Hybrid,  to name a few, the rules and techniques used to make glitch music are ever expanding.  

Beyond the manual slicing and surgical precision arrangement required to produce such feats of sonic greatness, there are some very effective tools to help this process along.  Here are some of the better ones in no particular order:

• Native Instruments Reaktor
• Buffer Override
• Glitch
• Ableton Live
• Audio Mulch
• SuperCollider
• Kyma

Some of these are free, simple, and straightforward, while some of the others require an intellectual and financial investment.

If you’re lucky enough to own a Virus T1, a recent upgrade to the OS unveils Atomizer which is a new realtime performance beat slicer, stutterer and mangler. Check out the video below for a taste of its sonic blunt force trauma.

Hip hop is the blood line of our musical culture. It circulates our energy and keeps our ears and souls alive and on fire! Hip hop beats are raw and rugged and reflect the most human side of us. My goal is to show you how to make a hip hop beat of your own so that you can express yourself through the hottest form of music on the planet! I hope to show you what you need so that you know how to make a hip hop beat from start to finish using a step-by-step system.

Structure of a Hip Hop Beat

When speaking of hip hop music, generally the “beat” refers to everything in the song with the exception of the vocals. That means a hip hop beat is made up of drum patterns or loops, a bass line, supporting orchestration, and often dubs inserted like punctuation marks are in text.

The various elements of a hip hop beat can change and develop throughout the song or can simply loop over and over under the vocals. While arrangements can vary greatly, hip hop songs usually follows this classic pop structure:

Intro 8 bars Verse 8-16 bars Chorus 8 bars Verse 8-16 bars Chorus 8 bars Break 2-8 bars Verse/Chorus 8-16 bars Fade Out 2-8 bars

Elements of a Hip Hop Beat

Let’s revisit the four elements that make up a hip hop beat:

1. Drum Patterns or Loops

This provides the rhythm and could be considered the absolute most essential part of a hip hop beat. There are two ways to lay down the rhythm of your beat. First, and more complicated, is to sequence your own drum patterns using software samplers, hardware samplers, and a sequencer. Second, you could use drum loops that come included with your sequencer or that you purchase online and process and alter the loops as you wish.

You can also do both of these, mixing a self-composed drum pattern with a pre-made drum loop to create a complex and layered groove. Remember, this is hip hop, and rhythms can be as simple or complex as you want to make them.

2. Bass Line

Again, you can use pre-made bass loops found in your sequencer, but with bass lines, it’s a much better idea to compose your own using a soft synth or hard analog or digital synth in your sequencer. Hip hop bass lines are usually relatively simple and support and drive the drum beat with their thick and low pulse. It is also common for hip hop beats to have a sub bass layer as well to fatten the low end even more.

3. Supporting Orchestration

This simply means choosing instrument sounds that complement the foundation you’ve already built for your song and composing music to support your beat. Choosing instruments simply involves trial and error. Try to imagine a band playing together creating your beat. Who are they and what instruments would they be playing? What style would they be playing in? Try to imagine their characters. Are they smooth, funky, sexy, silly, fun, adventurous, sad, intense, carefree, gentle, or rough?

4. Dubs

Dubs emerge from deep down in the roots of hip hop. Pioneering hip hop artists sampled short drum beats, vocal artifacts, record scratches, riffs, chords, and single hits to add flair and character to their beats. Today, dubs are a signature of hip hop music. You can buy dubs online, use samples included with your sequencer, or you can sample them yourself and process them to fit your beat.

Now, before we get into actually assembling and arranging our beat, let’s discuss a few technicalities that are essential to understand before you start.

Technicalities

Hip hop beats tend to hover around 80-100 bpm, but of course this varies greatly. Trust your gut and your mood when you sit down to create your beat.

Rhythm is all about the groove. While some beats are left quantized with no swing, hip hop tends to have a groove based on 16th notes with a swing value in the range of 57-83%. Past around 57%, the groove starts to relax and into 70%, you’ll hear the classic hip hop groove. Try this method with your beat to see if it works: quantize the kicks with a 24th note groove and the rest on 4th, 8th, and 16th notes. Try removing any kicks on 2 or 4 as well. Experiment and see what sounds good to you.

The Hip Hop Drum Kit

The beat you create can only be as good as the sounds you choose for your drum kit. Your drum sounds can make or break your beat. Let your character come out through the sounds you choose. Let yourself be serious, silly, or sexy through your beat.

One drum sound that tends to be characteristic of a hip hop beat is a kick drum with heavy sub bass. Hats can range from real hat sounds to electronic noises. Usually they are grooved on the 16th notes. Snare sounds often reflect the character of the song you are composing: clean, full, compressed, sharp. They are often relatively understated and are rarely dominant. Claps almost never sound realistic but that artificial clap is a trademark of the hip hop beat and remains very prominent in the beat.

Assembling the Beat

While there is no rule for how to do this, here are the steps I take to create the basic beat:

1. Create an 8 bar pattern foundation in this order: kick drum, claps, hats, then snares. 2. Create a bass line. 3. Add supporting orchestration. 4. Copy this pattern to use as your second 8 bars. Then go back to the original 8 bars and drop out some of the elements so that they don’t kick in until after the first 8 bars. 5. Copy the first 8 bar pattern to the third to start working on a chorus. Here, you need to get creative in your alterations. You could change the drums, the bass line, or you could change the rhythm. Experiment and have fun! Then, add new orchestration to the chorus.

Arranging the Beat

Again, there is no rule as to how a hip hop beat should be arranged into a song, but here are the basic steps I usually take:

1. Now that you have a 16 bar verse and an 8 bar chorus, copy all 24 bars so that you have Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus. 2. Develop a break for the next 8-16 bars. Basically, this is an alternate chorus in which you can add or drop out elements, remove all elements but the kick, or change the orchestration. 3. Add another verse or another chorus and fade it out. 4. Now is when you add your intro. It can be 2, 4, or 8 bars and the only rule I would give it is that it should have at least some flavor of the essence of the beat. I often choose the most interesting part of what I have created so far and use some of it as the intro by modifying it but highlighting the hook. 5. Your beat serves as a bed for the vocals. Now that your beat is in song form, prepare it for the vocals by smoothing it out. You might want to add some fills to the drums, add effects, add transitions between parts, or rearrange some of the orchestration.

If this sounds complicated, don’t worry. It just takes practice. There are plenty of resources that include videos to help you learn how to make a hip hop beat step-by-step.

I hope this guide helped show you the basics of how to make a hip hop beat. It’s all about practice. Try emulating the beats of your favorite songs to start and then add your own flavor. The possibilities are endless. Good luck and have fun. Keep it bangin - that’s what hip hop is all about.

DJ Lutris

From its humble beginnings on the london rave scene in the early 90’s, when breaks were innocently looped instead of sequenced, and vocals pitched up instead of timestrecthed, to the present day, it has always been at the cutting edge of electronic musical innovation. Much of the scene’s early output was characterised by a total disregard for the conventions, techniques and rules of the day (largely because none of the producers knew what they were), while todays producers are among the most skilled, meticulous and innovative there are. But the common thread is a determination to rinse it, and rinse it in even more ingenious ways.
As the production bar in drum ‘n’ bass has been rased on an almost seasonal basis, it’s taken the learning curve with it. Even producers who don’t like the genre will often sit and marvel at the complexity and density of modern DnB productions. Also drum ‘n’ bass has a distinct sound, and it places emphasis on different areas of the mix to other genres, so that even producers in other types of electronic music can struggle to achieve that DnB vibe.

20 MUST KNOW DRUM ‘n’ BASS TIPS

1- Layering chopped up break beats (DRUM LOOPS) is a good way to get that authentic DnB sound. For a tight, modern sound, put each hits end point before the next drum sound occurs: simply leaving the end point at the end of the sample makes it easier to program junglistic beats, but you’ll either have to tune or time stretch it to make sure it plays at the correct tempo.

2- One of the main advantages of using really tightly chopped beats is that you can easily pitch bend your drum part up and down without it ever going out of time. This technique can be used to create stunning percussive effects. For the best results try combining this method withother forms of processing such as filtering or degrading effects.

3- If your track’s switch lacks bite, try using a different break beat or rythm pattern to keep the crowd on their toes, processing such as pitch shifting or flanging can do miracles here.

4-When using heavy compression on your rythm track for that fat break beat sound, you may find that your beat gets overpowered when a big kick drum sound is triggered. Consider putting any such sound on a seperate channel with its own compression. If your kick drum needs enhancing, try beefing it up with a layered TR-909 kick drum sample, but resist the urge to turn it up too loud, make sure the sub bass and beat still have enough room to breath.

5-By using a variety of layered re-programmed breakbeats, you can quickly build up a complex rythm track. The trick is to make it sound like one cohesive part that develops and builds, rather than several different parts all fighting for space. The golden rule is to accurately program your drums in the first place, although additional EQing of flabby kick drums, cymbals and hihats may help reign in errant beats.

6- For those liquid funk moments, a housey organ bass always sounds great. You can make your own using sine, pulse or triangle waves low-pass filtered until you get just a few harmonics poking through. Try detuning one oscillator up seven semitones for a handy fifth that will bring back some old school memories.

7- These days it seems everyone is rockin the saw wave lead. This sound is easy to create - short attack and release envelope, a little chorus or pitch modulation on the saw wave and your there. Things can be made more interesting with a little degrading effect, and a bit of glide can add an interesting twist to your nasty lead noise.

8- For artificial intelligence style warbling synth lines, an LFO tied to the filter cutoff is your best bet. Make sure the LFO’s phase is synced to the start of the note and try a variety of rates and phase positions until you come up with a suitable noise. Experiment using different wave shapes, LFO amounts and filter cutoff settings,and try further developing the sound with a little LFO based pulse modulation.

9- When using ‘real’ instrument samples or presets, it’s important that they sit comfortably alongside your more processed sounds. If possible, create reverb and delay send effects so you can place all your sounds in the same virtual space. Along with good playing or sequencing, reverb can disguise synthesized reverb sounds. For an even more pronounced effect, try applying a reverb pre-fader soundscape style effects.

10- Make more sophisticated arpeggiator leads by applying frequency or pulse width modulation envelopes to the sound and varying the decaytime. High-pass work well with this style of sound. When filter sweeping the sound in or out, try automating another synth setting, such as one of the envelopes decay time or filter envelope amount. For a trancey sound, delay is a must, but don’t make it too extreme or you may mask any chord changes.

11- Now days, most virtual analogue synths feature a massive amount of wave shapes for you to experiment with. Instead of using a sine wave, try a variety of different wave shapes and low-pass filter them to remove all but the lowest frequencies. This will give you a sub bass with more interest than a standard sine tone, which can be enhanced further with tube amplification and other effects.

12- A proper sub bass is all important when creating DnB tracks. In order to create the desired wall of sound effect, the bassline has to hit the low end of the frequency spectrum. The easiest way to create a sub bass is to use a sine wave with a very short attack time and quick release. Try using this sound to double the lead part, thereby adding beef, but remember to watch the levels, as you can have too much of a good thing.

13- Another classic DnB sound is that of the ‘Reece’ bassline, as used in Renegade Feat Ray keith’s Terrorist. While it’s unlikely you’ll get in trouble for sampling this much loved tone, you can create your own version by layering up detuned square waves with a touch of low pass filtering. This can then be resampled and further processed to create your own fearsome basslines.

14- Another good way to keep the energy levels up on a switch is to introduce a kick drum roll underneath the main beat.

15- To create the familiar wah-bass effect you’ll need a synth with a an oscillator set to a wave shape with at least a few harmonics (ie, not a sine or triange), filtered with a low pass filter. An LFO or, alternatively, a short attack and decay envelope, can control the cutoff of the filter. When using an envelope, the note must be retriggered quickly to create the undulating bass riff.

16- Variation can be added to wah-bass riffs by modulating the LFO speed or envelope amount via key-following, eg, the higher the note played on the keyboard, the quicker the LFO oscillates or the more envelope is applied to the filter cutoff. Try varying amounts of one or both of these techniques to create progressively more twisted bass flutters.

17- When adding overdrive effects to filters, try out the different distortion types available and experiment with varying amounts of your chosen effect. Using vast amounts of overdrive may sound menacing,but in the context of a track, less is often more. Try starting out with a small amount of distortion and increase the levels slowly until you reach the optimum settings for your sound. The key is experimentation!

18- Another parameter that requires judicious tweaking when creating distorted bass noises is resonance. While it’s very tempting to crank everything up to the most ear bending levels, try to stick to subtler settings- the highest db filter won’t necessarily sound the best. Experiment with a combination of filter types and resonance settings until you get just enough harshness to offset the, rumbling bass end.

19- If your using an LFO to create your wah-bass, there are a couple of options available to you. Syncing the LFO to the track is a convenient way of getting it to play in time, but you may find the flexibility of the LFO rate control is worth making use of instead. Try any alternative phase and shape settings to create a variety of sounds.

20- Try using your synth or samplers pitch envelope to automatically bend notes downward. Experiment with different attack, decay and level values, and additional LFO pitch modulation, to create some unusual effects. If your instrument is capable of it, try applying different pitch modulation settings to each voice for yet more twisted bass.

Making beats is not necessarily genre specific.  From hip hop to drum and bass to experimental glitch music, the fundamentals of beat making can be used to create solid foundations in any electronic music genre.  Here are 5 tips to get you started:

1) Sequencing Software

You have many options here.  In general, the thing to look for is flexibility.  Programs that allow simultaneous layering of loops and programmed beats with many plug-in options are the ones to go for.  Some moderately priced yet very powerful packages are FL Studio, Ableton Live, and Acid Pro. They are all very popular, fairly robust and quite intuitive. On the higher-priced end of the spectrum Apple’s Logic Studio or Pro Tools are hard to beat. Logic Studio is Mac Only however, so if you’re a PC user this won’t be an option for you.  It’s worth doing the research to find out which packages fit your budget and your particular needs. Download  trial versions where possible.

2) Loops

Loops are usually a good place to start making beats no matter which music genre you are working within.   Many of the sequencing software packages come with hundreds of loops to get you going.  There are also thousands of third-party loop libraries to choose from to fit your style of music, but pay attention to file formats.  Programs like Logic Studio and Acid pro automatically time-stretch loops to fit the tempo, but in order for this to work properly, the file extension of the loops must be in the proper format.  

Once you find a loop that fits the general vibe and rhythm you’re going for, it’s generally a good idea to change it up a bit.  One way to do this is by slicing the loop into pieces and rearranging it’s components.  This can be done with slicing programs like Recycle, or directly in your sequencing software (most have editors built in for micro-editing purposes).   This is also a good technique for changing the beat in transitions as the song progresses.  

3) Layering

Layering is useful for helping your beats become more sophisticated and interesting.  There is no limit to what you can layer into a beat.  The only rule here is to keep everything you add in a consistent rhythm.  One way to start is to find a few loops that work well together, slice them up, and add pieces of each beat into the timeline.  Ideally you’ll have each loop on its own track for processing purposes once you get the initial groove working.  You can also use full, unsliced loops if editing is not your thing and process each to help them sit well in the mix.  It’s a good idea to have certain loops come in and others drop out as you progress in the timeline to keep the beat interesting.  Depending on your style of music, fast and slow loops playing together can create a good contrast.  For this to work properly, you’ll have to choose loop speeds where one loop is twice as fast as the other.  For example, if you have a loop at 80 bpm (beats per minute), layering in a loop at 160 bpm could work nicely.

For adding more punch and overall control to your loop(s), another good technique is to layer in programmed pieces like a kick, snare, or hi-hat.  Most sequencing software packages come with some type of drum synth or sampler that isolates individual hits.  When played along with a loop, this technique can thicken up a beat or add depth to a frequency range that may have been lacking in the original loop, for example, a solid kick drum to help drive the beat.

4) Creative Processing

Processing in this context involves adding effects to a beat to alter or shape it in some way.  This is a very broad topic with endless possibilities.  For the purposes of this article I will only name a few.

Besides adding EQ and compression, which you will likely do at some stage, creative use of distortion is a tried and true method for adding punch, crunch or harshness to a beat. From mildly offensive to overtly obscene, distortion can impact your beats to a high degree. To do this, insert a distortion plug-in on the track you want to alter.  Most sequencing software platforms come with some distortion plug-ins.  Logic Studio comes with 6 ranging from bit crushers to phase distortion as well as top notch guitar amp modeling.  Experiment with presets and changing the parameters until you get the effect you’re looking for.  

Pitch shifting is another good method for changing up loops or programmed rhythms.  This can be done in a sampler or in as a plug-in insert.   Pitch shifting a loop down a few cents is very common in down-tempo style electronic music, but can be applied in some fashion to almost any genre.

There are also many 3rd party plug-ins that take a lot of the work of programming and editing out by automating these processes.  These “beat manglers” are great for creating unique and powerful beats.  One very useful and reasonably priced mangler is Replicant by Audio Damage.  It’s a delay-based effect good for adding stutters, filter drops and randomization to your loops.  It’s utility should become obvious as you fiddle through the presets.

5) Unity

Once you have the loops and programmed pieces arranged and layered to your satisfaction, an important last step is to unify the pieces so that they fit together sonically.  One way to do this is to group the tracks together or send them to a single bus for global processing.  So for example, if you have 4 drum tracks consisting of 3 loops and a programmed beat track, you could set the output of these tracks to a single bus and “glue” the pieces together with some light compression and a little eq.  This will also help you listen for any errant pieces that muddy up the mix, which can then be addressed on the individual offending track with eq or editing out the offensive frequency.