Start composing your own beats
YOU’LL NEED THIS FL STUDIO 20 www.image-line.com
CREATING MUSIC IS SOMETHING a bit out of the ordinary for us here at MaximumPC, although it certainly ties in with many aspects of the computing world. Particularly over the past couple of decades, digital production has become an integral part of making music. Without computers, it’s fair to say that music would certainly have evolved at a much slower rate.
Sure, the digital age has brought us some dreadful music—yes, we still have nightmares about the CrazyFrog theme tune—but computers have also made it easier than ever to produce a track of your own. No longer do you need to learn Debussy’s ClairdeLune on the piano with your eyes closed. Armed with a powerful PC, the right software, and a modicum of talent, anyone can learn how to compose digital music. So, then, how do you get started?
Research is key—know what you will need, how to approach it, what elements come together to produce a track, and how they piece together to make a well-rounded sound. Before you start, it’s a good idea to learn the basics of how music works. YouTube is a great place to start, with plenty of resources, including video tutorials and lessons on theories of music.
In our tutorial, we will learn how to make a basic drum beat, what goes into it, and how to develop it further. Fruity Loops is our tool of choice, a great digital audio workstation (DAW) for beginners that also has the scope to extend your work much further. –SAM LEWIS
1
READY TO GO
The first thing we are going to do is create a new workspace within Fruity Loops 20. In our previous tutorial, we worked our way around this application and got to grips with where things are, what the sections do, and an outline of how to piece sounds together. If you haven’t checked that out, it’s a good place to start familiarizing yourself with Fruity Loops 20 [ Image A].
>> Think of the beat in the song as the main foundation upon which the rest of the music sits. It communicates with the instruments, keeping everything organized and in sync. Many different instruments and sounds can be used to keep the rhythm of a song flowing. The most typical of course is the drumbeat, which we will be experimenting with within this tutorial.
>> First, we need to head to where our samples are stored, in the browser on the left-hand side of the screen. Of course, you can rearrange the program to suit your needs but typically, it sits there. Head into the Packs section to find the drum pack, as we will be using these to create a typical drum beat.
2
BANGING THE DRUM
A simple drum beat can consist of a kick, snare, hi-hat, and bass. Go through the packs, try them out, and pick the one you like from each of the types of drums by dragging them over to your channel rack. Once you are happy with your selection, we will take a look at how the channel rack works [ Image B].
>> By default, Fruity Loops 20 works on a 16-beat loop. Your instruments are numbered and named, and next to this you can add your beat along the dotted line. Simply click on a space and right-click to remove it. This is where we will be creating drumbeat patterns.
>> As you can see in our example, we’ve laid out a simple drumbeat using some instruments from the drum packs found in the browser. To listen to this loop, head to the top, where you will find the play button. Next to that, you should see that it has a little option for ‘PAT’ or ‘SONG’. Make sure ‘PAT’ is selected and hit the play button, and this will cycle through your loop. You can also drag out the channel rack to create longer patterns.
3
THE BEAT GOES ON
Once you’ve attempted to make your own drumbeat (or copied ours, if you prefer), this is now referred to as a pattern, specifically pattern 1. You should be able to see this pattern in your workspace and you can now paint it into the playlist [ Image C]. The playlist is the main area where you’ll piece patterns together to layer up a song.
>> When you click once in the playlist with your pattern selected, it will place that where you click. In our example, we made a quick change to our track and changed the tempo down to 120 beats per minute (BPM) from 130bpm. We then placed two examples of our pattern into the playlist next to each other. To listen to this, head over to the top again and select ‘SONG’ to listen to the playlist window.
4
SPICING THINGS UP
Now that we’ve created our basic drumbeat, we need to spice it up a bit in the playlist. To do this, we can build the sound up in stages. This can be done by splitting the pattern up into its individual parts and then gradually stitching them back together again.
>> To do this, find where it says ‘pattern 1’, right-click this then select the option ‘split by channel’ [ Image D]. In our example, we took the deep 707 kick and the snare first to create a simplified version of our beat. We layered these by clicking on the instrument and drawing it into the playlist.
>> After one pattern of four, we kept this going but introduced our pedal and acoustic kick. This creates a more detailed beat pattern that is used by layering.
>> This is only a simple beat but using these methods and tutorials gives you a basic understanding of how to piece together a song and how structuring works. FL Studio is an intuitive piece of software that lets you draw your creations out. It makes the process more enjoyable, so try to make as many drum patterns as you can with a limited amount of instruments [ Image E].
>> Challenge yourself to come up with creative alternatives and interesting new sounds. Music is all about experimentation. It takes time and practice to perfect a sound, so be patient with your work.