Drum Patterns: Beat 002

Our second beat in our drum series designed to inspire, motivate and get ya creative juices flowing to create a dope drum track!.  Hope you enjoy!

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Make sure to check us out on twitter and check out our website for beats!

16 Bars – What does it really mean? All About Song Bars

We’ve all heard rappers say it and you probably heard this line:

“A-yo I spit these bars to make ya head shake”

-Drag-On |  Spit These Bars

What are bars?

When you listen to music you typically hear a repeating pattern. This pattern is repeated over and over and makes sense to you the listener; it establishes a framework. This is typically done with the drums. For example take a listen:

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That’s a basic drum pattern that will repeat over and over to help establish the beat. It goes kind of like:

boom boom bap, buh boom boom bap.

That pattern is repeated over and over. However each time that individual boom-bap pattern is played is called a metric cycle or a meter. These are also referred to as bars. The term refers to the act of drawing vertical line down the score after each measure.  The image below shows a typical music score and illustrates what the bar lines are and the bars (or measures):

The above image shows 3 bars, so that drum pattern would have been played three times. So play that drum pattern 16 times and you have 16 bars; or 16 of what has traditionally been called measures.

So looking back at our drum patter of: boom boom bap, buh boom boom bap:

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would fit into a score like such:

Taking it even further, let’s look at an actual rhyme from Wale off his More About Nothing mixtape (dope music if you haven’t already heard it).  On the track, The Soup he spits:

“Yeah, uh, where’s the love for the sixteen writers/

Who elevate the game when it was in need of a pilot?/

Who made a situation from what you see it’s a problem“

Each one of those lines represents a bar, so if we put it into musical notation on a score it would look like:

So there you have it, know you know what rappers mean when they talk about sixteen bars!

Drum Patterns: Beat 001

This is the first of a collection of drum patterns that you can use to get started making beats. As part of the Drum Patterns series, we will post an audio track of a drum pattern along with and image illustrating how it is sequenced. These drum patterns are here to help influence and get you stared making a banging beat.

Here’s the first pattern:

And here is what it sounds like:

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Hope you enjoy!

Get The Individual Instruments!

Rhudeisland Records now offers the stems (in addition to the mp3 file) for the beats in the Heavy Hittaz series! Now you can get that beat to fit your lyrics and talent as you should; no more being constrained to a predetermined layout.

What are stems?

All beats are made of several parts – typically the drums, the bass, and other instruments such as strings, pianos, organs, horns, etc. When you purchase a beat online all those parts are put together in one file (like an mp3 or wav file) and that makes up the beat. The stems are each individual part of that beat in a separate file such that when you play all the stems at the same time, they make up the beat.

Flexibilty

The beat in an mp3 file is laid out a certain way and that’s all you get. Stems give you the flexibility and control to allow you to determine all the different parts of the song and how they are laid out – the A, the B, the hook, the bridge, intro and outro. It gives you the power to decide what instruments play when and you can take out instruments at any point, or out the song altogether – something you cannot do when you get a single mp3. Don’t like the horns? Take them out! Love the beat but not feeling how the bridge was done – no problem, with stems you can edit it with ease and get it to your liking.

In addition, mp3s are compressed files – meaning they lose quality from the original track. Now, we offer high-quality mp3′s (320kbps – anything less is not high-quality) along with our stems (24 bit wav files) that allows you to create a clean, crisp, professional mix. After all, the goal is to get your music out there and get heard, if your music is sounding muddy or unprofessional, no one will listen.

An example of what you get

Say you had the following beat made up the the drums, bass, keys, strings, and synths:

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Not too bad, but what if you waned to take out the drums right before the keys kicked in for a nice effect; no problem:

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Or, let’s say you just wanted the hi-hats to play, and then the kicks to come in later, and then the snares to build up the beat:

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Or maybe you want to switch it up and drop the keys, lower the strings, and really make the Caribbean steel drums stand out, and add extra kicks at the end; easy:

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Instead of being constrained to just however the mp3 is laid out, you can edit it as you best see fit. This helps you as an artist create the best track possible for yourself.

So how do I edit the track?

The internet is a wonderful place and on the web you can find a number of free audio editors such as Audacity. Most macs nowadays come with GarageBand which is a phenomenal program. Check this list of free audio editors in case you already don’t have one.

Why don’t you just sell the beat?

We don’t just sell the single beat since our services are here to help you create a solid track. Well produced music is the result of the artist and producer creating a track to suit the artists’ needs. Now we would love to get in the studio with each and everyone of you, but since that is not possible, we help bridge that connection. Instead of saying “here is a beat, take it as is” we allow you the flexibility to change it up to match your lyrics or how you as an artist best see fit.

Adding A Nice Effect to Your Drums with Drops and Mutes

Nowadays most producers are using some sort of updated piece of technology to make their drums, whether it’s the top of the line MPC, Fruity Loops, or Logic, most producers plug in some kicks and snares and sequence their drums to create a drum track. This is great, but there’s more that can be done to give your drums a fresh feel and help ya track. One of the ways you can tighten up your drum track is by dropping the drums.

Dropping out the drums, or muting the drums helps give ya track more feel and mixes it up so it’s not the same drum loop over and over. Try using them right before the hook or bridge, or even when ya emcee spits his hottest line so it really stands out.

Here’s an example of what we are talking about…as the track plays listen to the drums, eventually they will be muted for a nice effect:

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Additionally, you can just mute most of the drums except one part, say for example the kicks. Here’s an example where the snares and hi-hats are muted, leaving only the kicks:

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Remember, just because you might have made a sick drum pattern, don’t short-change yourself and stop there. Add some variety and mix it up to create some nice effects. Dropping out the drums is just one of the many techniques you can do – we’ll be definately dropping more techniques in the future so stay checkin in…oh and if ya feeling the track, it’s called Street Envy and is a free download from our downloads page.

don’t forget to check out Rhudeisland Records for the hottest instrumentals that’ll get you heard!