subject: How To Make Your Own Beats Easily On The Computer [print this page] How To Make Your Own Beats Easily On The Computer
There are two aspects to making your own beats. One is having the "musical idea", i.e., how your beat would sound. You'd normally have plenty of beats going around in your head, so this shouldn't be a problem.
Secondly, you need a software that'll input your "beat ideas" in some form, and will output the actual music file that you can show others. Such software include various synthesizers like Reason, FLStudio, GarageBand etc.
First, an overview of how these software work. They all have what we call a "sample." Samples are pre-recorded sounds of real instruments. When you enter music into these software, they arrange the appropriate samples according to your input. That's why the end-result music produced by these software appear to be played by real instruments. Show beats created by these software to your friends and they'd be scratching their heads, thinking how you could make such realistic music.
This also implies that the quality of your beats will depend on the quality of the samples. Too bad, many of the online software use MP3 samples, which are not at the highest quality. And that can make your final beat sequence sound not as good.
Even though there are different software for easily creating your own beats, they all use the same method of input. And that's what I'm going to explain.
What you normally have is some finite number of concurrent tracks. Each track is assigned an instrument. The total music is created by having all of these instruments play together.
The way to create the actual melody is by opening a virtual keyboard (piano). Here, the keyboard is located sideways, and there is a big empty 2-dimensional space for you to enter notes.
You enter notes by drawing bars in this space. The vertical position of the bars indicate the pitch of the note. The horizontal position indicates the time, or when the note is played relative to other notes. The length of the bar indicates the time for which the note is sustained.
So, you simply select your favorite drum kit. Open the keyboard editor, and place notes on the space provided. This way, you can create great beats easily.
Of course, what makes a beat sequence great comes under the purview of music theory. But you don't need to know any music theory to get started. Since you already hear a lot of rap or pop or any other genre, you may already have some great ideas for beats. Just play around with the software.
It works like this. You create a vague idea of a great music in the software. Then you start changing and optimizing parts you think could be better. And then you rinse and repeat until you're satisfied by the end result. Also, this whole process is a lot of fun.
