Today I'm going to show you the two drum patterns that you can use to create any song in any genre.
Whether you're producing techno, tech house, pop music, future bass, drum and bass, you're going
to be using one of these two drum patterns. The biggest difference is the tempo and the sounds
that you use. Now, if you watch to the end of the video, you'll also see lots of different
examples in lots of different genres of how this is used, and I guarantee that you'll have a greater
understanding of rhythm by the end of this video. If you're a new producer, you can download my free
starter pack, which has got samples, cheat sheets midi files - everything you need to get started
in music production. So, without further ado, let's hop into the DAW and get it done
So, the first of the two beats that you need to know is a four to the floor house beat. Now, before you think, well, I
don't produce house, this is used in techno, this is used in trance, this is used in pop music, but this
beats used in about 90 of dance music tracks. So, in music we work in beats and bars, and there are four
beats to every bar in almost all styles of modern music. So, that's the time signature we're going
to focus on today. So, for this 4-4 house beat that means there are four beats in every bar and each
beat is a quarter of a bar long: four over four. So, that just goes boom boom boom as you would expect.
And that's one bar, so let's just loop that so we've got four bars going. The next instrument
is a clap or a snare, and that happens on every other kick so that sounds like this.
Okay, the next two drums are from the same family, so there's an open hi-hat and a closed hi-hat,
which is sometimes replaced with a shaker or a tambourine, so we're going to look at
those examples too. But the open hat goes in between every kick like so.
And I'm sure you all recognize that beat, and don't worry I'm going to show you how
it's applicable to other genres as well. And the next hat is a closed
hat, which tends to be on every 16th. So, if a bar is broken up into 16 equal sections,
these closed hats will go on each of those sections.
Now, what we can do is also add some shuffle or groove to the beat to give it a bit more swing,
and in Ableton you do it this way: I tend to just use swing logic 1664,
drop that on the midi clip, and now you've got this swing.
So, it just gives it a shuffle swing feel. And if we commit that groove pattern
to our drums, like this, you can see it actually changes the timing very slightly to be off the grid,
which is what gives it that shuffle groove. Now around that main core, you've got a lot of leeway and a lot of creativity,
so you could use a clap and a snare, lay it up together, you could use two finger snaps left and right, like in tropical house,
and you can also build up little interesting bits of rhythm with other little percussive
elements, like tom drums, cowbells, or even synth shots to build interest into that groove.
And they usually take place on the 16th as well. So, i'm just going to put some random ones in here.
And with everything else in the track as well
You can hear you've got your house beat. So, if you were to increase the tempo of that,
to say 134, now you've suddenly got a trance beat.
And, yes, you might change out those sounds, so, as I said, you might use a snare instead of a clap
And today i'm using the EDM Tips creative toolkit
for the sounds, which you can get from below this video. Let's put a snare in place of the clap,
and you can hear how that's a trance beat already. Okay, before we move on to the second essential
drum beat that you have to know, I'm just going to show you how this can work in techno as well.
Techno tends not to have a snare on every other beat, so all you can do is take that
off, then you can replace the open hat with a ride symbol, which again covers a similar
frequency range, so it's interchangeable. We'll turn off the percussion sound, add some reverb,
change the kick and press play.
And, voila, there you have a techno beat. Now this beast is also used in pop and in tropical house
as well, so if we were to take this down to 110 and change some of those drum sounds, including
using two finger snaps instead of a clap panned left and right, with a little bit of reverb,
and there you have a perfect beat for tropical house.
Now, again, you'll notice how important sound selection is when it comes to getting the vibe
of your drum beat. You can use the same pattern for different genres and, as long as you choose
the right sounds, it's going to fit really well; if you choose the wrong sounds it's always going to
sound wrong. If you want more training on how to select the right sounds for your music you can
check out my free workshop, by clicking the link below this video and it's going to show you how.
Now, the second essential beat that you need to know as a producer is the kind of hip-hop
beat. I'm not really sure how else to put it but again it applies to so many genres and,
if tweaked slightly and different sounds chosen, it's going to fit well in things like future bass,
trap, hip-hop, even drum and bass. So, let me show you what I mean: the first thing to note is that
the hats, and the snares, and the claps are pretty much in the same place. Yes we'll have
to choose different sounds and change the tempo but that's fine, the main difference
is where the kicks land. So, if we take the kick here and before it was on every beat like this,
all we need to do is move that kick off the 4-4 grid.
Now, the beginning of each bar is most likely to start on the kick,
which would be the downbeat, but then by moving the second kick an amount of 16 to your taste
you can really switch up the vibe. And you can be a bit more creative than that again, as
long as that kicks hitting on 16th on or around that beat, you can come up with some cool stuff.
Something like that. Now, at the moment this kind of sounds like break beat because it's that tempo but
let me show you what happens if you slow it down and we create a future bass type groove.
And another thing to note is you can also play with some of the other elements
around those 16ths as well. So, maybe you don't want a 16th on every beat, maybe you want to take some
of them out like that to give it a bit more of a interesting groove and change the sounds a bit,
and there you have it the perfect for future bass that could easily be used
in different types of pop music as well. But what happens when we speed it up? Let's just
put that tempo up to 165 bpm, put in some of the old sounds that we had
before, maybe switch out the clap with the snare and then boom we've got drum and bass.
Now, as I said you can switch out some of those high hats that are hitting on every
16th for things like shakers or tambourines, and you can also layer up different sounds,
doing a similar thing on the same layers, so you might have a clap layered up with a snare, or you
might have a shaker lay it up with a closed hat. As long as you've got those two drum beats nailed
down, you can experiment and you can apply them to literally any genre of modern dance music
and pop music. If you've got a drum kit, these drum patterns are still applied in rock music as well.
These really are the fundamental two patterns that make up almost every
drum beat you'll hear in modern music. Let me know if you're enjoying this so far, guys, let
me know in the comments if you're going to use any of these drum patterns that you've seen so
far, and if i've missed anything do also let me know in the comments. Thanks for watching,
if you like this video subscribe to the channel and until next time. Cheers and happy producing!