You might have heard great beats through popular songs, TV shows, movie themes, and games. Some might sound repetitive, while some make you move to the groove. Sometimes, you might think that they are easy to make, while others sound more complex. Is making beats hard? This article describes the art of beat making, how to make beats for beginners, and the equipment you need for making beats and other great sounds.
Is making beats hard?
The answer depends on how you start off as a beginner. When you begin to make beats, it might be best to start with basic software. Most people who want to make music are so excited that they purchase and use advanced software. What happens to them is that they find it difficult so they tend to drop it and give up entirely.
Making beats is easy if you start with simple patterns and basic software. With basic software, you can easily learn how to make beats step by step. The methods are easy to follow and at a much quicker pace. Eventually, you make your own simple beat that is attractive to the ears.
The same advice goes for choosing drum kits. As a beginner, making beats is easy with simple drum patterns and bass lines. To be able to achieve better sounding drum patterns, high quality drum kits are recommended. Once you are able to create drum patterns, complement them with simple bass lines. Experiment with key notes and other sounds to get used to the methods and procedures.
How to make beats?
When you are faced with drums, software, and computer, you might ask, “is beat making hard?” The actual beat making takes quite some time to master and get the hang of it. The following techniques will help you jumpstart your learning and help you ease the process or methods:
1. Understand the structure of a beat. Most beats are structured with claps, kicks, or snares on every other bar. Different structures and rules make up different genres of music. Knowing how to make an old fashion sound or a modern one will enable you to play around the structure of beats and come up with a wide variety of music.
2. Make use of bass lines. These are subtle sounds that can complement beats. Instead of hanging on the background, get your loops and easily make a bass line. Bass lines should supplement the original loop and should not compete with it.
3. When you are just starting, it doesn’t have to perfect or sound good right away. Discover how different sounds work together and what kind of sounds you can come up with. One effective technique to make beats easily is to feel and define the emotion you want to convey with your beats. Determine the general emotion where it can evolve.
4. Do not overcomplicate the structure of the beat. Make drum patterns simple, modest instrumental loops, and make other sounds work together without overpowering each other.
5. Experiment with different levels of sounds until you get the beat that you want. Once you achieve a satisfactory result, remember the track. Make sure that the beat is loud enough but do not overpower the main melody. Leave room for vocals and other rests.
Necessary Equipment
To make it easy, you need a good set equipment such as computer, beat making software, drums, keyboard, and digital audio workstation, among others. When choosing the equipment, always consider your objectives and how you would make beats.
Computer
Some prefer to use laptops because they want to make beats anywhere while others choose desktop computers because they are more powerful and have more storage space. The minimum requirement for computers is at least 8 GB of RAM, dual core processor, and large internal storage.
Beat making software
For making simple beats, aside from computer, you only need some good beat making software. These are programs that let you develop your beats using just a computer. Modern music today is loop based – this means that you make good amount of music loops and repeat them in different sequences.
Some software beat makers are DubTurbo, Dr. Drum, Reason, and FL Studio. Computers and beat making software are two basic components for making beats. For more complex beats and full songs, additional equipment is needed.
