First beat help

J

Jesse Langford

New member
Hello,

My hobby is rapping, but I got a midi controller and decided to do some producing. I found it fun digging for jazz melodies to chop up, feeling like I'm on pro era. The only problem is I really suck with drums. I understand you have to feel the drums, but this is my first beat and I just realized despite all the boom bap I listen to I know NOTHING about HipHop drum patterns.

Can someone give me advice, resources, etc. I'm really at square one here and am ready to take off! I downloaded Premo's drum pack, figuréd they'd be good tools to start.
 
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Freedrumkits should be known by everybody imo that site is literally the perfect site for free drums.
Loopmasters is also a large repository of drums.
Vengeance too.
Modules like kong and tremor.
Synthesizers can do digital drums and some physical modeling but very complicated tbh.
Traumah drums, those are alright too.

and lastly, sound designing involving any of the above or from scratch with a mic.
 
Starting point for drums is to have a kick on beats one and three of the bar, and a snare on beats two and four.

Hi-hats can be added on every eighth note to keep the track moving, or less frequently (or indeed, more frequently if you so desire)

Then you can make adjustments and add in extras as necessary or to make fills or to add a bit more originality.

Of course, this is just a starting point for drums in general, like you say, you have to feel whats right. This'll get you up and running though!
 
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Thanks,

I really do get that music is suppose to be creative, but I feel like i need to work on the fundamentals to make a beat that is rap able. I did what you said, but the but wasn't very rappable at all.

All I know is when I spit on other beats I hear a (what I think is) snare on the end of the bar, that's where I know my line should end. I really am ryhmatically challenged, any resources you can guide me too?
 
Find a good drumset instructor in Pittsfield, Maine, and take some drum lessons-- whether you want to be a "real" drummer or not. Listen to lots and lots and lots of backbeat (grove-oriented) music and practice counting and tapping along; listen to music with syncopated ("funky") beats and try to follow along with your basic "1,2,3,4."

Actually, the first suggestion is the most important (albeit the most time-consuming and costly). But even if you took just a few months of drum lessons (perhaps explaining to the teacher exactly what it is that you really want to do), this would give you an invaluable jump-start to your drum/percussion/rhythmic knowledge and vocabulary.

GJ
 
Im in a similar position to you. I rap but decided to try out producing. I've downloaded a few free drum kits and laid out the basic structure of the track e.g kick, snare, hats. Its the melody part im stuck with though. I've managed to come up with some dope melodies but they dont go with the drum pattern at all so Im forced to put that aside and carry on experimenting. Looks like its gonna be a long gruelling process but I feel like its going to benefit me in the long term. If you want we can help each other bro, just PM me.
 
Collect sounds. Build your kit. Work on your drum mix.

If it helps... Here's part of my workflow...

The hard sounds (kick & snare) are generally made up of a selection of individual sounds, layered on top of each other.
My own 'current' kick is made up of 2 kicks (1 THUD & 1 BOOM) & a ride cymbal (ride is panned left, kicks centred)
My current snare is made of 2 snares and 1 of them has a slight delay on it... (Both snares are centred)

i use 3 different hi-hats (not layered) closed (Panned slightly right), openish (panned slightly left) & open (panned right - opposite that ride cymbal).

My groove comes through with the hats. I spend more time editing hi-hat patterns than kick/snare patterns for sure... In fact I'll often have a 2-bar kick/snare pattern & a 4/8-bar hi-hat pattern...

I put reverb and compression on some sounds within the layers but not others... Experiment.
i do have reverb and light compression on the whole drumgroup.

If your clipping, turn down the channels. Leave the master alone. Turn your monitors up.


hope it helps. Experiment, practice, rinse & repeat.
 
I'mNoGuru said:
Collect sounds. Build your kit. Work on your drum mix.

If it helps... Here's part of my workflow...

The hard sounds (kick & snare) are generally made up of a selection of individual sounds, layered on top of each other.
My own 'current' kick is made up of 2 kicks (1 THUD & 1 BOOM) & a ride cymbal (ride is panned left, kicks centred)
My current snare is made of 2 snares and 1 of them has a slight delay on it... (Both snares are centred)

i use 3 different hi-hats (not layered) closed (Panned slightly right), openish (panned slightly left) & open (panned right - opposite that ride cymbal).

My groove comes through with the hats. I spend more time editing hi-hat patterns than kick/snare patterns for sure... In fact I'll often have a 2-bar kick/snare pattern & a 4/8-bar hi-hat pattern...

I put reverb and compression on some sounds within the layers but not others... Experiment.
i do have reverb and light compression on the whole drumgroup.

If your clipping, turn down the channels. Leave the master alone. Turn your monitors up.


hope it helps. Experiment, practice, rinse & repeat.
Click to expand...


Wow! Good info, but I'm just focusing on patterns right now... Got get that down first! Thanks.
 
Jesse Langford said:
Wow! Good info, but I'm just focusing on patterns right now... Got get that down first! Thanks.
Click to expand...

LOL!

In that case...

try: BOOM BAP BA-BOOM BOOM BAP BOOM-BOOM BAP BA-BOOM BOOM BAP BOOM
with a: tic tic tikka tic tic tic tikka tic underneath :victory:
 
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I don't think anyone mentioned tempo(bpm). The tempo of the track is important for the kind of beat you're trying to make. I remember when I first started my tempo was always high and I never understood why I couldn't make a beat I could actually flow on. Check your bpm, I know if you use fl studio its automatically at 140 and that's high (unless you use double time, in which case you'd have to make the snare hit on a different pattern) but play with the bpm put anywhere between 60 - 100 for a wide range of hiphop styles.
 
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Great insight Sheldon Mack. Understanding scope of tempo is really important to rhythmic understanding in general, on a number of levels. One example? I get a lot of younger/wannabe rappers asking for "a beat," but then assessing what I give them as "too slow" (or "It's not fast enough"). This is especially true with young trap enthusiasts. When I ask them for an example of what they would like to hear, they often play a sample beat that is slower than the one I originally created. What they really wanted was something "busier," which is a term we use for a lot of layers/elements added to the track, and they wanted a lot of rolls and double-time hi-hat patterns-- none of which would actually make the track any "faster" in any way.

16th, 32nd, and 64th-note hi-hat patterns are busier than 8th-note or quarter-note hi-hat patterns, but when they are all played at the same tempo, none of them make the actual tempo of the beat any faster. It's still "1,2,3,4" when all is said and done...

GJ
 
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Finding the right drums to fit the track is really important, sometimes you need to go through a hundred snares to find the right one, layering helps as well, you could also use drum breaks and layer you own drums with it

free drum kits are a ok place to start but if you can afford to buy a quality kit you'll get better sounds, also sampling drums one of the best ways to get good sounds
 
JL,

Do you mean Jay-Z? If so, see below.

I don't have a program on this computer to write the pattern out as musical notation, or have the time to make a fancy grid, so the major beats are 1, 2, 3, 4; where 2 & 4 are snare drum backbeats, and 1 and 3 are usually bass drum (in a normal "boom bap"), but on this pattern beat 3 is avoided every time (so it appears in parentheses like this), with syncopated kicks played all around it. "+" = "and," i.e. any 8th note between the 1,2,3,4 downbeats, and "e" and "a" are 16th notes ("e" coming directly after a major downbeat, "a" coming just before).

Counting the pattern as delineated above would give you a four measure repeating drum phrase like this:

1 2e+ (3)a 4 a1 a 2e+(3) ea 4a 1 2+ (3) ea 4a 1 a 2+(3) e+4+

The whole thing is very loose/_slightly_ swung, with half-open/"swishy" hi-hats playing a steady 8th note pattern over the top.

Other than a few drop-outs/breakdowns, I don't hear any real variation throughout the entire song; it's just a four-bar phrase, but the funky "e" and "a" syncopations make it sound so busy that we think there's a lot more happening than there really is.

Hope that helps...

GJ
 
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