Dubstep Drum Beat

[Sacki]

Anyone help please. Anyone have a template sort of thing to indicate where to place sounds to make a dubstep drum beat. Eg kick on beat 1 snare on beat 3 and so on. Googled my head off and am lost.

Thanks
Sacki

 

[Ddream]

Hey, Sacki!

As far as I know, the kick is in the first beat, snare in the third, and Hi Hats every 2 or 4 beats. BUT this is the most basic pattern you can do.

My advice is that you should build this basic pattern, then star experimenting with it. Adding more elements (a crash cymbal, or any other percussive sound), and try to make it blen with your melody (the bass, the wobbles, the leads, samples, anything you want!)

Also, you can speed up things, changing where you put the kicks and snares/claps, without changing the tempo of the song. You can even do some amen breaks (mostly used in Drum and Bass), with the average dubstep tempo (130-140BPM).

Hope I helped!

 

[DMTian]

Try to build the pattern of kick at 1, snare at 3 and so on, and hihats on every beat. Now add another kick a quarter before snare and another one a half after. This should create a stupid basic rhythm, but now you can build from here by adding/removing some kicks and mainly alternating hihat pattern, preferably with more hihats. You can change anything except the snares, I would keep them the same.
Remember to keep that halftempo feel, too small gaps between percussion elements can kill that feel.

 

[Ddream]

You can change anything except the snares, I would keep them the same.

I think you can change the snares to match some notes you use in the leads or the wobbles, or to just mess around and create some unpredictability to the song.

 

[Halfnhalf]

What they said

Other tips: The only drum sounds that should be quantized to the grid are the kicks on the one. You should try pulling the snares and other kicks back slightly off grid to add some swing and authenticity. Or you could freeball it and turn the quantization off completely for those sounds. You can also try that with the last hi hat in the every bar. Remember to vary the velocity of your hats which will also add the feeling of swing / syncopation to your beat. Using the triplet grid is a good idea for adding shuffle. Sometimes i leave a measure w/o a kick on the one just to add some room to breathe. Layer your drums with multiple drum / clap samples and / or white noise. High pass drums to make room for BASS!!

 

[MORZ42]

Some helpful links to consider:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySmbXYFmWcM


http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul10/articles/dubstep.htm




These helped me a ton when I was learning.

 

[bandcoach]

so quick bit of googling found these sites with less than stellar presentation of good info

right click on the images to open them in their own tab so you can see them at full size

Dubstep for Beginners – Part 1: The Drums

This one has little info on what is layered for the kick and snare hits and even less on what other instruments are added in; the basic info about tempo and hit placement are sound. There are 10 examples in all which can be reduced to the following grids:

Dubstep Tutorial Day 1: Making a Dubstep Beat [7 Day Song] » Boy in a Band

Again, great info but its mired in swathes of text without images to support what is going on. Whilst this reason-centric, it can be applied to any daw. Grid images come out as:

and this one where the images need to be clicked to see what is going on

Dubstep Basics

The grids I have used are designed to allow up to 32nd triplets to be shown but not 32nds

Any one beat is broken up as follows:

note level

1|13| 25|37​

2|14| 26|38​

3|15| 27|39​

4|16| 28|40​

5|17| 29|41​

6|18| 30|42​

7|19| 31|43​

8|20| 32|44​

9|21| 33|45​

10|22| 34|46​

11|23| 35|47​

12|24| 36|48​

Crotchet/Quarter-note

X​

Quaver/8th-note

X​

X​

Quaver/8th-note triplet

X​

X​

X​

Semi-quaver/16th-note

X​

X​

X​

X​

Semi-quaver/16th-note triplet

X​

X​

X​

X​

X​

X​

 

[Sacki]

Thanks for all the advice people will have a broswe around the links and see what i can come up with.

Thanks again very helpful stuff here

 

[DMTian]

Just learn how to arrange hi-hats and kicks first, that's in my opinion more important in dubstep.

 

[SireProductions]

What i do is put snare where usual and kick on 1, then place kicks wherever you feel fit best with the rythm your making. if your making new school arkasia type dub go for lots of different hi hats and sounds and variate them while slightly changin the kicks every other measure. reggae style dub uses less kicks to breathe, ambient type sounding snares and has a generally more shuffly feel to it. you can do whatever you want with the beat as long as you keep as least 2 snares on 3

 

[Sacki]

This is what i have upto now people. Please advise on errors and such.

Thanks

https://soundcloud.com/sacki2011/****ing-sookie

---------- Post added at 06:37 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:17 PM ----------

https://soundcloud.com/sacki2011/****ing-sookie First try guys what you think?

 

[colourforarebel]

Just listen to a dubstep record and try to memorise the beat. Just by tadada and so on. When you go back to your song you should be able to reproduce it. And to get the sound is all about getting the right samples. Search for vintage drum machine samples, compress them and add shit loads of reverb on the snare.