Make Beats - Continued

I got some sounds now what? Make some beats!

Once you get your sequencer going and got some sounds together its beat making time. How you do this will depend on what your using of courses when it comes to recording and programming this is a good method to follow.

1. Program some drums or get a sample drum loop going.
2 . Get a main melody or hook idea. This could be a melody you program or play if you have a keyboard. It could also be another sample or combination of samples.
3. Keep building your ideas making sure to put each idea on a separate track so you can sort trough them and mix them later.
4. Once your happy with your beat make a simple arrangement of it by muting or turning of certain parts off at certain parts of the beat to create things like breaks, intro and more.
5. Use your sequencers mixer functions to get an overall balanced sound of all the instruments in the entire track.
6 . Sell your beat to Jay-Z and become famous!

How long should my beat be?

Your main loop of your beat should be as long as you like. Many producers use loops that are 2,4, and 8 bars long and just repeat the loop muting certain parts to keep the track interesting. You can also add things to your main beat during different parts of your song to follow along the rapper or singers lyrics and flow. One thing you should keep in mind though is that hooks to most songs are 4 or 8 bars and most verses are 8, 16, 24 bars. Usually the more pop oriented a song the shorter the verses are. Example a Britney Spears or R. Kelly verse might be 8 bars and Jada Kiss or Mobb Deep verse might be 24. You are the one making the beat though so you can do what ever you want.

Using a keyboard or other midi controller with your sequencer.

At some point you’ll realize that programming beats with a mouse on your computer is not fun at all. This is when your equipment set up starts to grow. By adding a MIDI keyboard to your computer you can trigger the sounds in your computers sampler playback instrument or internal sound modules.

To do this you will need a few things:
MIDI Keybaord or controller.
MIDI Interface
The necessary wires to connect everything.

You can purchase a MIDI Interface and Midi Keyboard or controller separately or you can buy a device that has both combined. Some really good MIDI contoller keyboards to start out with are made by a company called:

M-Audio - http://www.m-audio.com

Many of their MIDI controller keyboard feature USB ready MIDI interfaces and are easy to install and setup. They also sell models that have USB sound cards built in aswell. As with any thing else you have to see what wht works best with the equipment you are using. AKAI MPC users do not need a MIDI interface, a MIDI keyboard can connect directly to the MPC.

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