Making Hip Hop Beats
Posted: Thursday, May 14, 2009
by Dale Rogers
Absolutely the most important part of making hip hop beats is the drum pattern. If you want to make beats you must learn how to program patterns correctly and make them interesting, memorable, and danceable.
When making hip hop beats you need to understand what the different drum parts are and what they do. you probably already know what the snare is - it is the most prominent beat in the pattern. the bass drum keeps the rhythm of the melody and bass line and the hi hats keep the timing and add syncopation. these parts are the basics of a live drum kit. everything other drum part is usually used to add accenting and a little more flavor.
To simplify it, the snare beat is beat you would intuitively clap along to the pattern on. As an example, think of "In Da Club" by 50 Cent. This song actually uses a "clap" sound on the snare part, so that is an easy illustration.
The bass drum beat on the same song accents and follows the synthesizer horn hits. Listen to the "horn" sounding part and notice how the bass drum always hits on those notes too. This is a general rule but it goes a long way in making your hip hop beats match your melody and bass lines.
Also in this song, he hi hats are replaced with what sound like more of a shaker, equally breaking up the pattern on eighth and quietly on sixteenth notes. The hi hats can be opened or closed and on certain beats, they can eve be dropped out on certain notes, and used in a very non-steady, syncopated way to completely change what the beat sounds like.
Instead of buying expensive music equipment you can get an inexpensive, powerful, simple to use program for making you own hip hop beats.
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