Building a Drum Beat
Lesson 4 from: Music Production 101: Producing + Songwriting for BeginnersTomas George
Building a Drum Beat
Lesson 4 from: Music Production 101: Producing + Songwriting for BeginnersTomas George
Lessons
Introduction and What you're going to Learn
00:20 2Writing a Chord Progression
11:37 3Writing a Bass Part
10:19 4Building a Drum Beat
08:57 5Writing a Melody
17:15 6Arrangement - Part 1
14:23 7Arrangement - Part 2
19:06 8Vocal Demo Melodies
04:31Lesson Info
Building a Drum Beat
Hello, welcome to this lecture. We'll be going to be looking at programming in a drumbeat. So previously, we wrote a chord progression and a bassline. Let's just have a listen to this now. OK. Nice and simple. We have some movement from the bass and now we're going to actually program in a drum part. OK. You'll notice on here, we actually have the names of the different drums or you can just go along either with your midi keyboard and find the different drums or you can just hit the piano keys on the side or type in the mi the information to find the different drum parts. So with this, we're going to actually start off with the kick drum, which is down here. C one which is kick, normally the kick will be on C one but experiment round and find yourself a nice sounding kick. So you wanna find a kick sample or a drum kit that really fits with the song. So if you're making maybe a dance music song, find yourself an appropriate kick. If you're making more of a pop or rock song similar to th...
is, perhaps, find a more organic sounding kick, but it really depends on what you're after. So let's just zoom in, let's go down to see one the kick here. And I'm just gonna type in a really, really simple drum beat to start with. We can always go through an experiment and change the drum beat around later on. But for now I'm gonna keep it super simple. So this, I'm gonna have the kip on every beat. So we're in 44 here and in 44, we have four crotchets or four quarter notes in a bar. So I'm just going to add a kick drum every single beat and let's just play this back. There you go really simple kick on every beat. And now I'm going to add the snare on to the four. So one snare, three snare. So the two and the four will have a snare and a kick really, really simple way of doing this. Of course, we're gonna change this around later on. But for now, let's just have the snare on two and four. So normally the snare will be on ad one. You can also use a hand clap as well if you want, there's different types of snares but go through and find the right snare. But for this, I'm actually going to use a snare and a hand clap at the same time. So two and four, we have the snare and the clap. Let's play this back. OK? Very, very simple. And Now, in between this, we want some high hats who can have an open high hat or a close tie hat. So this one, we have two different types of closed high hats and open high hat. But for this, I'm just going to use a closed high hat and then an open high hat with this, I'm going to have the closed high hat on every eighth note and then an open high hat at the end just to add a bit of variation. And this one here just an open high hat. So this is just a really, really simple drum beat. We will change this later on, make it a bit more interesting. But for now, let's hear the super simple drum beat as you remember, kick on every beat snare on two and four and then high hats every eighth note. And the last high hat is an open high hat and this last high hat will actually be choked, which means you'll hear this open sound. But as soon as it loops round and you hear this closed high hat, you won't hear the open sound anymore. So let's just create a loop and then you'll hear the choking of this high hat. So now we're actually going to continue with the drumbeat. But the second time round, we're going to make it a little bit different. So what we can do is just select all this and then paste it. But this time we're gonna change it slightly. So what I'm going to do is move this kick drum and then actually add another kick drum, not on the beat just to make it sound a bit different. So let's just hear the second part. So we have a little bit more variation, a little bit more movements. We can even add another snare at the end. There we go a bit of a variation. So it's not just the same all the way through. I'm actually going to add the high hat again because we seem to have lost that while we're editing. So make sure you go through and just check that everything is in the right place. OK. So I'm going to copy over these two sections again. This time, I'm actually going to add a different fill on the fourth bar. So bar one, we have the simple drum beat. Bar two. We have the variation of this drum beat. Bar three. We have the simple drum beat again and bar four. I'm going to change this again just to make it even more interesting. You may have noticed before. When I added this open high hat, we heard a Tom sound. So we have a few different Tom sounds. We have this mid to now. Hi, Tom. Never. Hi Tom. So I'm actually going to use some high Toms to add a film. So just every eighth note, I'm gonna add some Toms and we're going to get rid of this open high hat. So I'm going to use a low tom here and then back to the high tom. So we have two different high toms, a low tom and I'm going to actually get rid of this now as well. And also when we finish this loop, I wanna have a crash a symbol. So we know it's the start of the loop. So I'm going to go back to the first loop this time instead of the high hat closed, I'm gonna add a symbol. So let's go up here and find a symbol. So we have a ride symbol and we have a crash. It's the crash that I really want. So let's go up to the crash. So people know it's the start of the loop. Let's actually hear bar four with this new Tom Tom Fill and then I'm going to turn on the loop and you'll hear the crash and it'll loop back to the first bar. Ok. Great. Now, what I'm going to do is just make this first and the third loop a little bit different. Now, I think it's just too simple and too boring. So I'm just going to add a kick drum, just move it around slightly and then I might add another open high hat around about here. Ok. So we've just got open high hat and I've added another kick drum just to add a bit more movement. I'm going to have this almost the same for bar three. Remember, extra kick drum and open high hat on beat three. So let's go to bar three and then this was a open high hat this time just going to change this a little bit. Move this kick here. Just so it's slightly different. So it sounds similar. The listener thinks it's almost the same, but there's a very slight variation just to make it sound more interesting. Cos if we have the same drums over and over again, it's gonna sound a bit boring and repetitive. However, if they're completely crazy and different, all of the time, the listener may get a bit confused because you do want consistency in your music as well. So this way, we have it a bit more interesting, but it also sounds like a consistent solid drum beat. So let's have a listen to this loop. Now, of all of the different parts. OK. Now, we can just go through and tweak some sounds around. I'm actually going to change this open high hat to maybe two Tom Sans instead just to make it a bit more interesting. And on bar three, I'm going to change this to Toms as well. Slightly different Tom drums. So it sounds a little different but the rhythms the same. OK. So I'm happy with this drumbeat. Now, it works with the song. It sounds consistent but it's not the same all the way through. I do recommend going through and experimenting you can use this drum beat, copy this drum beat if you want and then go through and change parts around. Make it sound a bit more interesting and try and make it sound unique. OK. So let's have a listen to this loop now. The drums, the chords and the bass part. Ok, great. So that's how you can quickly write a drumbeat. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video.
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