There are no rules when it comes to creating beats for rap and hip hop music. Create rap beats with the best of them with tips and information from an experienced and accredited rap producer in this free video. Expert: Frederick Burchell Bio: Frederi…

One question that I see all over the place is related to the rules of making hip hop beats. In this video, the speaker talks about the fact that in his opinion there are no rules. He says music comes from the heart. In many ways he is correct, but I wonder if the combination of some rules along with that will improve ones musicianship.
What do you think??? Please leave a comment!

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The first thing you should do is to try and decide exactly which style you would like to emulate. Sometimes this can be difficult, but the more focused you are the better chance you will have of not getting into a point of not knowing what you want to do. There are several choices for this including hip hop, rap and rnb.

Sometimes what can help is to think of an artist that you enjoy listening to within that style and study what they are doing. Never plagiarize though. Come up with your own stuff. Listen, learn, get a feel for the style.

Now we start to get into some musical points, which is probably the most important part of all of this. Every decent piece of music has to have a form. It doesn’t matter if it is a Beethoven symphony, a country western song, hip hop or rnb, they all have structure. There is usually an intro followed by a verse, a chorus, then a verse again, bridge and by the way, these can be changed around. Again, listen to your favorite musicians songs and see what they do paying attention to form and instrumentation.

The absolute simplest way to make a beat is to make an 8 bar loop and repeat it for the whole song. A more common thing to do is a four bar introduction, a sixteen bar verse, eight bar chorus, then another sixteen bar verse and finally another eight bar chorus. That’s it!

Now it is time to have a bit of fun. The basis for all your hip hop and rap beats should be the drums. They need to be very strong and present. Lay down one at a time the kick, snare and hi hat. After that, you can add some things such as symbols, tom toms and cow-bells. Make a strong beat.

The next part can be tricky because you need some keyboard skills. A melody is needed. You don’t have to be a conservatory trained musician, but learning some basic scales will be of great help. You can get some very basic online piano lessons that will help with this. Use a lead guitar sound, horns or some other instrument which will stand out. Make a four or eight bar melody.

One trick you can use to make your beat have a bit more size and personality is what is known as “layering the beat.” What this means is to take a part or pattern and add it in with another instrumental sound in various parts of your song. You can also help make the sound of the soung bigger by placing some of the instruments on the right, some on the left and some in the middle. This is called panning and can really add a three dimensional feel to the piece. Do not overlook this critical artistic tool.

Mixing it Up

Congratulations. You have made it and you want information on how to make your own beats and how to make rap beats in general. This is the place to not only find the tools and software you will need, but all sorts of information on recording files, working with midi, wav and mp3, plus the music biz in general. 

So we can get started now, but first, go on over and sign up for our free 5 day make your own beats e-course and newsletter. Definately worth doing. 

So Let’s talk… 

Have you ever dreamed of making your own music but thought it might be a little bit too difficult?  Well, it is not as difficult as you might think.  In fact, these days it is totally easy to make your own beats.  Maybe you’re an accomplished rapper and you want to put something together but don’t have the right music or the money to hire someone else to do it. 

Only a couple years back, making your own hip-hop beats usually meant taking several days of recording and professional studio using drum kits and hiring other musicians.  Those days are gone and with some of the very reasonably priced beat making software available today, you can accomplish the same thing in only a few hours.

In fact, you don’t even need a complicated mixers or dance recording devices.  If you have a PC in your house, then you can make your beats online.  Most of the newer programs out there run on the Internet so you don’t even have to download anything to your computer.  Most of these programs have a very large library of instrumental sounds of decent to high-quality. 

Well, you can make your own beats. They also come with a very decent video tutorials and the best part is their price.  You can pick up a membership to one of these programs for as little as $35.  All of them pretty much do the same thing, the difference being in the amount of instrument sounds that they provide.

One of the newer products out on the market is something called DubTurbo and looks pretty complete. You get a very large library of sounds as well as a pretty complete drum machine, sequencer as well as a nice little library of pre-made tracks, pretty good for such a low price, which is about 30 bucks as of this writing. One used to have to spend a lot more money to get something even close to this.

So get out there, pick up a program, and start to make your own beats either for your own enjoyment, or for sale.  You can do it in a ton of fun.