For those of you that would like to go over
a four-on-the-floor beat to set a simple foundational beat,
here's how you'll get started.
This is Ableton Live which is just a simple way for me to create a beat,
but you can obviously create this in any DAW.
You want to get an electronic kit up,
so I've selected and crafted a kit,
got my kick drum on the lower left,
[MUSIC] which has got a very sharp and [MUSIC] thump beat sounding field to it,
very electronic similar to the 808 drum machines.
In the bottom left that's where the [MUSIC] kicks live
usually on a 16 paddle layout here,
then our snares come next,
I've got a few to choose from,
[MUSIC] so I can combine them playing at the same time or not,
to make it sound a little different,
then the claps usually [MUSIC] come around here too,
laid out in the similar area here,
so kicks, snares, clap,
and then [MUSIC] rim shots,
then the hihat, closed hat,
and an open hat [NOISE] are usually near each other.
[MUSIC] On the pads around here are Toms,
[MUSIC] different sounding Toms,
they don't necessarily go together,
but that's where my Toms live,
and then percussion, [MUSIC] strange percussion sometimes synth chops or other effects,
[MUSIC] and then the ride or crash cymbal symbol is often on the top right.
This is a pretty typical layout for a drum kit in our sampler like this.
Now, that that's set,
I want to also point out that four-on-the-floor beat
is used in the genres of house music, techno, and trance,
and for house music and techno it's often anywhere from BPMs 120-124,
so I've got mine set at 122 right now and I've got my electronic kit,
so I'm ready to do a four-on-the-floor beat in that style.
I'm going to click here and I'm going to make a four bar loop.
It's just going to play four bars and continue to go around.
It's going to get a little repetitive so I can move
it out to an eight bar loop, 16 bar loop,
32 bar loop, and can continue to make it
interesting that way by changing up every four bars or every eight bars.
Right now, I'm going to start with four and
then I'm going to make a little drum fill at the end,
so as it loops around,
it will sound a little bit more interesting and less repetitive.
I'm going to fix that my grid here,
I'm going to put it on quarter notes,
because I'm going to start with my kick drum down here,
[MUSIC] and I could play this in,
but I'll just pencil it in so you can see what I'm doing,
[MUSIC] and I'm just going to put my kick drum all the way across.
Now, four-on-the-floor, kick drum every down beat.
[MUSIC] There it goes.
With this music, it helps to have the kick drums all at the same volume because
you want to study foundation there so you don't need it changing up in volume at all,
so it's very steady.
Now, [MUSIC] I can do my snares on the beats 2 and 4,
[MUSIC] I'm going to try both of them and see how they sound together,
and then I'm just going to duplicate [MUSIC] those two beats,
and 2 and 4 here.
I might mix something up here,
so we'll figure out what we're going to do at the end when it turns around.
But right now I'm going to have an empty or silent drum fill here [LAUGHTER] view well.
[MUSIC] Very simple straight forward,
[MUSIC] and the hihats need to be the timekeeper,
so we want to have the hihats playing eighth notes or sixteenth notes.
Set my grade to eighth notes,
and I'm going to fill it out the first bar here.
Now, it's going to be very robotic because these are all
on the grid and the volumes are all the same.
One way that I can remedy that is to adjust each of
the volumes so that they're [MUSIC] very different.
The first one is strong,
the second one I'm going to make weaker,
[MUSIC] the third one I might make even a little stronger,
and then the fourth one is weakest,
so I'm going to do that to [MUSIC] the first fours.
You can see the volume has changed and they're going back and forth here.
I'm going to then duplicate throughout,
and we'll hear the results of that.
[MUSIC] Now, the other thing is,
we don't own all closed hats,
the idea is that you would play closed hats and then open hats
sometimes to make it sound a little bit different each time.
I'm going to play aloud or note here at the turnaround,
the end of every four,
[MUSIC] I'm going to play the louder sample,
and let's try that.
[MUSIC]
That's a typical house speed.
Now, what we can do is try some fun things at the turnaround here,
so let's just try a few random things,
lets see what sounds we've got.
You could try a few different snares here,
maybe change the volume a little bit to build up,
so this is quieter,
moving up to a louder one.
[MUSIC] Let's change our grid to
the sixteenth notes and maybe get a few more, something like that.
Let's see what else we have,
[MUSIC] we can try some pitched sounds there,
we could [MUSIC] try some of these sounds and see what that sounds like.
[MUSIC] [LAUGHTER] Unexpected or kind of fun,
and then we can make this out into eight bars,
and then we can select all of this and duplicate it and
now I could do something like this where maybe,
[MUSIC] I have this be a little bit silent,
maybe I can have a crash here and see how that sounds,
now I have eight bars.
Let's go back to the beginning, [MUSIC]
and everything I could do is have more kick drums at the end here, [MUSIC]
and there you have a very basic four-on-the-floor drumbeat.