Free Digital Sheet Music

Mastering the Four Main Elements of a Hip Hop Beat
by Sammy "JMZ" Jamz

Hip Hop Beats are built on four major building blocks: The Drum Pattern, The Bassline, The Supporting Instrumentation, and The Samples. Each one of these components can take a lifetime to master and must be understood completely before you start making your first beat. This article will break down the main components of a hip hop instrumental, tell you how they're made, and what you'll need to make them yourself. Let's dive in.

1. The Drum Pattern
This is obviously the most important part of a rap beat - the drums. The drums are the driving force of a hip hop beat - they're the loudest, the most prominent, and are generally what the listener will focus on after the rapper's voice. The drums are critical and can take almost as much time to write as the other elements combined.

The drum pattern can be written in several ways. You can input drums using a keyboard, drum pad or drum kit with electronic triggers. You can also input drums using a step sequencer or digital audio workstation. Any way you input your drums, you're going to be creating MIDI notes which then go on to trigger samples.

The samples used to create a beat are typically the kicks, snares, hats, shakers, cymbals, and percussion elements. These samples can live either in a sampler (for example an Akai S-3000), a synthesizer, or a drum machine (like a Roland TR-808 or the MPC). More and more recently, hip hop beats are being created completely inside of computer digital audio workstations like Logic, Cubase, or Fruity Loops.

2. The Bassline
To create a solid hip hop bassline, you'll need a set of bass samples in your sampler or a soft synth. A good place to start with bass sounds is with the old analog mono synthesizers or software virtual synthesizer modeling programs. A good hip hop bass sound has a thick, low rumble with some sub-bass underneath it. This is what gives hip hop beats their thump and is critical in the clubs.

3. The Supporting Instrumentation
The Supporting instruments are the pianos, guitars, horn stabs, string stabs, and synths that support the beat. They'll play along side the samples and the basses to create chords and musical elements in the beat. These sounds often create the signature sound in a beat - where would Dr. Dre be without his pianos?

4. The Samples
Last, but not least, is the samples. Traditionally, hip hop beats have been completely built around samples, but this is changing as software becomes more and more readily available. A good way to start is to take a full sample off of a record and chop it up into smaller sized samples - sometimes called "one-shots". You can then turn these completely original instrumentation that no one will be able to recognize. Much like the supporting instrumentation, samples can either make or break a beat.

Much like learning to swim, getting your beats right is all about mastering a few key strokes. Get your drums, your bassline, your instrumentation, and your samples down and you'll be rocking the clubs with your hip hop beat in no time.

For more detailed breakdown of how to how to create your own original beats, check out http://www.cuthiphopbeats.com