Beat Production

Choosing a Digital Audio Workstation or DAW

So you want to make music, first thing you're going to have to do is choose a DAW or Digital Audio Workstation. Now the ones that I am most familiar with are Pro Tools, Fruity Loops, and Reason but there are a number of other quality programs out there to choose from like Logic(Mac only), Cakewalk, Cubase, Garageband (Mac only), and Ableton Live, or even a Audacity which is a free opensource program that you can pick up from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/. Some of these programs require a large amount of DSP and some are not compatible with certain processors so you will need to check with the manufacturer to determine if your computer is compatible, but not to worry most computers are do fill the requirements so you shouldn't have any trouble.

Sound Library

Now before you try your attempt at making a beat the next thing your going to have to think about is virtual instruments and the sound libraries that make them useful. If you are completely new to the MIDI music production world you might be saying to yourself "what is a virtual instrument and why doesn't it come with a sound library?" Well first off a virtual instrument is basically a program within a program like Pro Tools or Fruity Loops etc. that houses a library of sampled or synthesized sounds, this library of sounds will be controlled by you in terms of notes or triggers from a device called a MIDI controller, which usually will be either a drum machine or a shrunken down version of a piano keyboard. Some of the virtual instruments that I use are Sampletank, Rapture, Xpand!, and also Reason and Fruity Loops can be used as virtual instruments through a built in program called ReWire if you are using Pro Tools as you main DAW, other programs may have the same or similar feature, but as I said before I am mostly familiar with Pro Tools, Fruity Loops, and Reason as DAWs are concerned. Now a virtual instrument will most of the time come with a stock sound library but, more often then not the library is severely lacking in unique interesting samples and sound effects. So to remedy this there is a number of things you can do, you can buy sound libraries from a number of Internet based companies, find someone with a vast library and trade with the (which may be hard because you have nothing of value to trade), or you can do what I did which is use a peer to peer Internet sharing network to download a vast library of sound for free (which I don't do anymore and am not condoning because it is illegal, even though if you use one that is based outside the United States you wont get caught).

Structuring Your Song

When making a beat for hip hop music one things to consider before you start is song structure, where the verses, choruses, and bridge will be. I personally, when making a beat just start playing around on the drum machine or MIDI controller keyboard and structure the song later, but for the sake of the tutorial we will start at structure. Most of the popular music you hear on the radio uses verse-chorus song structure, you may or may not have an intro or an outro but, you will have a verse followed by a chorus. The number of verses and choruses you have is completely up to you the creator of the piece of music, having a bridge is also an artistic choice, but it is normally put before your last chorus. The bridge is an interlude between two different parts of the song creating a musical "bridge" between the two. It can also be in place of one of the later verses in the song. So the linear structure of a song would look a little something like this:

Intro-verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus-Outro

Or

Intro-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus-Outro

Tips and Tricks

Being that creating a good or halfway decent song is a matter of artistic ability I wont be telling you "HOW TO CREATE THE BEST GREATEST SONG EVER HEARD BY HUMAN EARS" I'll just be giving you a few tips and tricks that I've picked up along the way that may help you to be able to create a great song all by yourself.

Tip Trick #1 Creating a Fat Kick

So you've exhausted all of the quality kicks in you sound library or you just dissatisfied them in general, well one trick I figured out one day when I was having this same problem was to combine a number of kick samples together to create an all new sound. This trick is solely for use just with the kick either beef up any sound by combining sounds together to make something that sounds new and different. Add as many as you want or feel is necessary just as long as your meters don't peak out because in a digital audio workstation you have no extra head room so when the meters hit red there's no choice but to bring the volume down. Some of you that are a little more experience in producing will already have figured this out on your own so this particular trick wont be of use to you, but don't worry there'll be more.

Tip Trick #2 Using the Audio Suite Signal Generator to beef up you kick in Pro Tools or Sub-Kick Trick.(Instructional Video Below)

I know I already had a trick about improving your kick sound but this one is exclusive to Pro Tool at least as far as I know. First you'll open up you Pro Tools session, sample rate and bit rate are irrelevant as far as this trick goes. Create a mono audio track and a mono instrument track and the quick easy way to do this is to hit Shift+Ctrl+N (or Shift+Command+N for Mac) and when the track window comes up hold Ctrl (or Command) and press the up or down arrows to choose between the types of tracks. Now on the instrument track insert a virtual instrument that had drum sounds in it and the record a four bar loop or as large of a loop as you wish. When finished select one of the instrument tracks sends to be buss 1 or what ever buss you have free at the moment. After that click on the Audio Suite tab at the top of the Pro Tools window, scroll down until you hit other and from there click on Signal Generator. When it opens you will have the choice of altering the frequency, level, and type of sound wave that is generated. In frequency chose somewhere between 30-50Hz (50Hz may even be to high of a frequency for a good sub-kick, adjust the level to your liking, but you'll most likely not wont to change the type of sound wave it defaults to Sine wave. Preview your changes to make sure it's what you want, then select in the audio track the same numbers of bars you chose for you drum loop then hit process. You'll end up with audio from the signal generator on your audio track, next on the audio track you'll open up an Expander/Gate in one of it's inserts, you'll do this by clicking on an insert tab on the audio track move your cursor over Dynamics and then Expander/Gate. Now when the Expander/Gate plug-in window opens up toward the top right of the of the window you'll see a button that says 'no key input' click on that button and choose buss 1 or which ever buss you chose earlier for the instrument tracks send. Finally on the right of the Expander/Gate window there is a box called side-chain and in that box is a button with a key on it, click that button, now press play and you should hear your kick from you instrument track triggering the audio from the audio track giving you a beefier sub-bass style kick.

Tip Trick #3 Get the Warbling Synthesized T-Pain vocal using AutoTune 4.(Instructional vVdeo Below)

First and foremost I am NOT a fan of T-Pain, I am doing this tutorial only because I want to share information. Number one you'll need to have AutoTune 4 this technique doesn't work with these settings on AutoTune 5, after that the rest is simply all you have to do is bring up AutoTune in it's default settings and change the following parameters: Scale to major, Retune to 0, Tracking to 75, Rate to 0.1, Variation to 0, Onset Delay to 0, Onset Rate to 0, Pitch to 0, Amplitude to 30, and Format to 100. There you have it that is all you need, now you can sound just like T-Pain although why you would want to is a mystery to me, enjoy.