Ed's Music Articles | Creating Rap Beats – An Overview

Creating Rap Beats – An Overview

With the constant development of new technologies musicians are finding it easier and easier to create rap beats. There is a plethora of beat creating software available which make it far easier to create your own unique loops than was ever previously possible. Despite the huge advances made in the field of beat creator software, many musicians still need a firm grasp of how beats are created and what features you should be looking for in software packages. This article aims to provide a basic overview to all musicians of what they need to know to start making their own rap beats.

Before we begin, readers should note that there are plenty of free rap beats available for musicians and producers to download from various websites. There are plenty of public domain tracks that are free for anyone to use without infringing on any copyright laws, whether you’re looking for rock or hip hop rap beats, I’m sure you can find something to meet your purposes over the net.

The right beat can make or break a song, if you’re beat is boring the song will be too. However, a great beat can make a great song, even if the lyrics aren’t up to scratch. Loops are hugely important in rap music; these passages are basically a set of bars which are continuously repeated until the end of a song. The great thing about many rap songs, for beginners anyway, is that they generally use the same loop over and over again throughout the one track. So how do we make a loop?

The first thing I would suggest you focus on when starting any loop are the hi hats, if you get these laid down you will have a great basis to fill out the rest of the loop. The hi hats dictate the speed and the number of beats in the track, beginners will want to keep these simple at first, if you decided later on that you want to complicate things a bit more you are free to do so.

After you’ve got your hi hats in place you will want to start adding the kicks and snare to the loop. The term kicks is used to refer to deep bass lines which really carry the tempo of the song,  these are a lot different to the snares, which are generally regarded as a song’s mid-level and high-level tones. All of the rap beats you create should start with these basic elements before any instruments or vocals are added over the track, this will ensure you know where the track is going and has a logical structure.

The most common mistake most beginners make when creating a rap beat is making the too complicated. A song with too many layers isn’t going to allow the listen to appreciate the character and depth of different parts of the song. By keeping a beat simple the listener’s experience is far better, even the most talented producers in the world create really simply beats, unique but simple none the less.

Right so now we’ve discussed the basics of creating rap beats we need to consider which software to use to create them on. As I mentioned before, there a huge variety of different beat making software out there, each with their own advantages and drawbacks. I’m not going to recommend one in particular, but there are a few features that the software you do use should have. Firstly, any program you purchase or download to produce your rap beats should have the ability to save them in mp3 format, this way you can actually listen to your finished tracks on a CD or IPOD. I would also recommend that you choose a software package which has a 16 track sequencer; this will allow you more freedom to edit and alter specific layers of the track (e.g. the vocals) without affecting the other instruments.

On a final note, many musicians don’t actually create many of the beats they use in their music themselves. You can find plenty of instrumental rap beats over the internet which are free for anyone to use. In fact, if you look hard enough you can find anything from hard rock to hip hop rap beats on some sites.

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