Fcukisthis? said:
Looks dope...thanks man...
But what are your personal tips for someone startin out...The type of I drumbeats I really feel are Just Blaze's erratic almost offbeat types and The Neptunes' spaced out bass-heavy drums.
Advice for the god?
Start off with the thread I posted up there... those are mostly BASIC drum beats. Actually, lets go in drum beats a bit more and explain what makes a Basic-generic hiphop beat.
Those are only guidelines AND it's my opinion, anyone can refute or be againt what I,m saying here, but it will probably help ya'll anyways. And I'm taling about fruityloops step sequencer... but I this could be used in any program...
When I talk about steps, its the buttons on the step sequencer. and i usually use 16 steps to make my drumbeats... at a BPM of around 85... but you could always change the speed to your liking... (BPM = Beats per minute... it's the speed of the beat)
You should, at 1st, concentrate on 3 "instruments".
-Kick
-Snare
-Hihat
Hihat
see picture below if you dont know what an hihat is (1st picture)
The hihat is what gives the tempo of the beat. Some MC's use that sound to know how fast they gotta spit on the beat (but not all of them do) It's the 2nd most important sound in the drumline (to me). Lowering the volume of the hihat will put emphasis on the 2 other sounds, raise it and you'll get a drum driven beat...
The way you put your hihat on is normally pretty simple... since it's used to give the tempo, you should just put it on every step
h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h
or on every two steps, starting with 1
h - h - h - h - h - h - h - h -
of course, you could always use the 2nd one and add some hihat hits between the one already there...
h h h - h - h h h - h - h h h -
there are a lot of possibilities there...
Another thing is that there are two kinds of hihat sounds Closed hihat and Opened hihat
The reason for those two sound is because, on a real drum, the hihat is really two cymbals that are closed togheter by the action of the foot... look at the illustration below to see what I mean. So most of the hits should be closed hihats. The opened hihats should be used on a different channel than the closed hihat (of course) and for accents only... like so
h - h - - - h - h - h - - - h -
- - - - o - - - - - - - o - - -
h h - - h - h h h - - - h h h -
- - o - - - - - - - o - - - - -
Snare
see picture below if you dont know what a snare is (3rd picture)
The snare is not REALLY important. Actually, what's important is the sound of the snare itself. If people clap their hands to your beat, they clap to the snare actually (but I heard that, in some countries, they clap to the kick...) It's also where most mc's rhyming words will be at...
So, as I said, it's the sound of the snare that's important. You can use different sounds, and they will give different vibes. Claps (handclap - HC...) are used in westcoast beats, club beats and some southern beats. You could also use rimshots, snaps (fingersnap), or a real snare drum sound...
I would say that most hiphop beats use a really simple snare line
- - - - s - - - - - - - s - - -
Again, you could add stuff in there, but not too much to start with. Snares line are normally REALLY simple.
Kick (aka DrumKick - aka Bass Drum)...
see picture below if you dont know what a kick is... (2nd picure)
normally, it's what give the BOOM of the beat. It's the most important sound of the drumbeat. Most Club beats would put emphasis on an heavy, bassy and loud kick. Hardcore beats would use a more dirty, gritty, but still bassy kick. RnB and slow Jams would use real kick sounds, with a softer feel to them...
On most drumbeats, the most important thing to think about is that you should always start your drumbeat with a kick. The rest is up to you. Of course, the way your gonna put your other kicks will determine the feel of the beat. But always remember to put that 1st kick on the 1st step
ex.
b - - - - - - - b - - - - - - -
Real simple. Dr Dre uses that kick all the time. Its what's called the Boom Bap (the bap being the snare, of course)
b - - - - - b - b - - - - - - -
or
b - - - - - b - - - - - - - - -
Again, really simple... still really used.
b - - - - - - b b - - - - - - -
Pretty close to the other one there, but the little difference here gives a whole other feel to the beat.
So really, what you should do is to put that 1st kick on the 1st step and experiment with the rest...
b - - - - - b - b - - b - - - b
That's it !
What would be missing is that you can add in there other percussions, play with effects and enveloppe, but start with composing good drumbeats before thinking about tweeking sounds...
1 thing at a time, that's the way to success.
Hope that helps
