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House Beat
Hi, I've posted a beat below I'd like to use for a house track. It's 3 measures long. If you could tell me what you think, and how I could improve what I have. I have done some EQ, compression, and slight reverb on tamb and shaker. So I have a couple questions...
First, I like to produce my beat "tracks' in either 3 or 7 measures and then produce a couple 1 measure tracks. The other 1 measure tracks are fill-in type of thing to change the beat a bit -- not all the same. Others do this? Is that a good thing to do? Constant beat gets kind of boring...
Second question. I know you make what sounds good, but there are obviously some basic "standards" to follow. So I was wondering how many of you that produce house, use snares? They don't seem to be used quite as much. A lot of other percussion instruments such as cow-bells, congos/bongos, tamborines, etc... are used. Also, I've noticed that deep-house songs tend to use less percussion instruments, that true?
Anyway, thanks for your help.
CLICK ME
Edit: Sorry my DSL went down between 11pm and 4am CST.
that beat sounds very basic
you need atleast a snare or clap or something, and alot of more layers of hats etc to give it drive
alot of house producers just use finished loops though, lazy bastards, but atleast it sounds good
first off the constant beat is sort of necessary in some types of house and most trance music. well produced tracks tend to build up and shift the focus away from the constant beat which you kind of lose consciousness of after a while. particularly on the dance floor. gives many tunes a hypnotic feel. but fills are necessary at some point particularly as a precursor to a biiiig drop or relaunch.
ill do a couple of fills in a bit.
a typical house beat would go something like this
K---K---K---K---
--O---O---O---O-
-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H
----C-------C---
where K = kick drum
O = open hat
H = hihat (closed hat)
C = clap or snare
there are many many variations on this and its not as simple as plinking notes in a piano roll and thats that. first off you already have the kicks and open hats right but beyond that its fairly bare. the kick needs some pretty serious reworking. you dont get a sense of a thump and a tail. its more like a hollow BOCKing sound. you can make this kick better by layering other kicks on top of it and using EQ and compression. ideally you want a kick that has an initial thump. an OOOMPH. and then a sub bass tail off. many kick samples dont have all of these qualities so its necessary to use multiple kicks to fatten things up. also, without hearing the original kick i wouldnt know for sure but your kick doesnt sound like its got a compressor on it? could be just the original sample. you have to make sure that the threshold on the compressor is lower than the peak volume of the kick. otherwise the compressor does absolutely nothing. only way you can be sure is to use a spectrum analyser. find the peak of the kick, and set the threshold as an example about 2 to 3 db below that peak. then whack the gain up as high as you can until it clips. then lower it maybe 0.5 to 1db so you have a little headroom to play around with.
onto the open hats. the open hats you are using are fairly thin and lack the clang and sharp hiss of your average house tune. i would recommend using a more suitable sample first off. go get doru malaia's super percussion set. the link is around here somewhere and the demo pack is available for free. that has quite alot of good open and closed hats. for EQ to get a sharp hiss you might want make a boost around 8,000 hz to give it some air (but again consult the spectrum analyser cuz all hats reside in different frequencies. some are barely affected by a boost around 8,000. some hats have alot of presence around 8,000hz and a 1 to 2db boost around that frequency can make em sound really harsh and painful to the ear). i also tend to add a very subtle reverb to the open hat too just to lengthen the tail off. usually a bright reverb with a very short decay time (0.1ms or 0.2ms). dont overdo the reverb cuz it'll muddy things later on when you build up the rest of your percs.
closed hats. heres where things get a bit interesting. pick a short, sharp closed hat sample and instead of putting them at 1/8th intervals give them a little swing. what i do in the piano roll in fruity is change the grid snap to 1/4 step and move them 1 notch to the right. this gives it more of a rolling sound when you play the open hats and closed hats together. what i also do is add some shakers like this
SsSs--S-SsSs--S-
where S = shaker at normal velocity
s = shaker at lower velocity
if its EQed right it'll give it more or a rolling kind of sound.
claps and snares. you gotta EQ them differently but its fairly necessary to have these. you dont want the clap to cover up the kick too much so no part of your clap should be anywhere near as low as 500hz. shelve everything off below that frequency. depending on the effect you want you can add a reverb or a delay to create subtle snare rolls. i tend to use claps more than snares for house and trance. i also write freeform and hardcore though and thats pretty snare intensive (but thats hardcore for ya!)
fills. theres plenty of ways you can add variety to your beats but its very much possible to overdo drum fills. in some types of hard house and happy hardcore they definitely over do this
K---K---K---K-K-
this one less so
K---K---K---KKKK
another typically overdone fill is
K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K- KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK
in trance these days alot of producers seem to prefer more subtle ways of making percussive fills. some will drop the beat for a whole bar and stick a reversed crash sample down instead. add a deep reverb with a loooooong decay to draw it out for the bar then kick the bass drum back in.
I think more producers than you think use loops. It's not hard to make loops but it does take time. There are hundreds if not thousands of sample cds out there and new ones being released every week. If u got money u can buy them but for the poor saps like myself we gotta use single shots 
After all trance tunes all use some variation of a hi hat pattern. So even if you wanted to make loops from scratch the only thing that would make the loop not sound standard is to introduce small fx sounds, or percussive instruments like bongos, shakers, etc...
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Derivative first off the constant beat is sort of necessary in some types of house and most trance music. well produced tracks tend to build up and .... loooooong decay to draw it out for the bar then kick the bass drum back in. |
its not a good idea to use compressor presets because they are designed to work on instruments with specific frequencies in mind. ill bet the threshold on that preset is higher than the peak volume of your kick and hence is probably having no effect whatsoever. when its compressed properly it should have a noticeably thicker, louder sound. or at least you can make it louder than you could before without it clipping off.
its also not as simple as changing a few samples. you have to know what frequencies produce certain types of effect and where each instrument should sit roughly along a parametric EQ. you really need to know for example what too much sub frequency does to a kick drum. or too high a boost around 4,000hz does to most hihats. i can tell you roughly what'll happen with those 2 cuz it'll make the kick sound muddy and it'll make the hat sound like its being played through a telephone but ill not bullshit you - you get good at picking these details out by getting it wrong over and over and over again. ive botched hundreds of drum loops. im still botching a few right now actually 
also be aware that the more layers you add the more frequencies you are piling onto your track. if you dont know roughly where each instrument is sitting in frequency terms you will end up more often than not muddying the mix with each new layer. this is still happening to me cuz my EQing is far from perfect. you may find that each instrument retains a kind of clarity with just the kicks and open hats but add more layers - a pad a bassline and a synth lead and you'll begin to hear things getting muddy. hats becoming indistinct. bass and kick stacking up and clipping badly. that horrible telephone quality sound to your leads. and the whole mix wont be as loud as a pro tune because too many elements of the song reside in the same frequency band resulting in you having to lower the overall volume of the track to avoid clipping.
try building that loop again from the ground up with the knowledge you have now, maybe even try to add a few more percussive elements and post that. then we can give feedback until its absolutely rocking. trial and error is how i work :P
New version... please have a listen and let me know.
CLICK ME
layer
Fine as a starting/cueing beat.. introduce more elements as it progress'.
Nice swingy closed hat, a wide open 909 open hat and a nice sharp snare. Add another kick too on top (careful of destructive phasing)
And speed it up
heheh. i think you either might have set the compressor threshold too low or used too soft a compression or you've EQed it funny cuz now its lost its slap. you got the oomph bit though so you can build on that. if you browse through some kick samples you have, pick one that has a nice slapping sound to it. it doesnt matter so much about the thump and the tail. if you stack that kick drum on top of the one you have and change the levels a bit you should get some properties of both kick drums. if both kicks occupy alot of the same frequencies then they may clip. you can sometimes correct this (but not all the time) by reversing the polarity of one of the kicks. that'll cancel out some of the shared frequencies by putting 1 kick sample in anti phase with the other. you may also need to re EQ the kicks so they sit well together. i sometimes stack up as many as 6 to 8 kick drum samples or synth blips to get it right and alot of places i go wrong is in the EQing and the phasing.
that open hat (the one every off beat) is still far too tame. it has a soft mute kind of sound. i still think it would be preferable to change the sample altogether to something harder, crunchier. a wide open 909 hat is almost a trance cliche but i still use em - they sound great 
. then you fine tune it with EQ to get a bit of air. also, the hats line you've got is still a bit bare. you got the 8ths now so thats better and i can sort of hear a bit of swing in them but you need the layer of 16th hats to get that rolling sound. ill see if i can upload a loop i made on soundclick. you can fill up that loop by adding hihats at 16th intervals or as is commonly used, shakers. that should fill out the emptiness between downbeats. it also seems to make drum loops sound (relatively) faster.
EDIT: i boshed up a loop. you can find it here: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/9/katjunkiemusic.htm
i should update my page more. its sort of derelict.
Ok, version 3 and 3.1 (not for workgroups though).
The first is just an update to my two previous versions. The second one is same as the first but with congas. Remember, this is a 2-bar beat @ 120bpm -- and I'm going for a house beat.
Please listen and let me know what you think.
CLICK ME 1
CLICK ME 2
The kick is far too weak and the clap should be on the 2nd and 4th beat instead of the first and the second
yea you got the claps on the wrong beats plus they are too quiet in the mix. the kicks in the new loop are kind of weird. it sounds like they are cutting off or distorting or something cuz it just sounds like a short fuzz sound. what sequencer are you using? cuz the kicks that come with fruity are fairly good. the dance kicks are quite suitable for house although they are a bit sub heavy. reason drums are fairly decent out of the box. check out that doru malaia super percussions pack cuz that has quite alot of quality perc samples and good kick samples.
I would make the beat more up tempo, It sounds too slow. Say around 130 - 140.
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Derivative yea you got the claps on the wrong beats plus they are too quiet in the mix. the kicks in the new loop are kind of weird. it sounds like they are cutting off or distorting or something cuz it just sounds like a short fuzz sound. what sequencer are you using? cuz the kicks that come with fruity are fairly good. the dance kicks are quite suitable for house although they are a bit sub heavy. reason drums are fairly decent out of the box. check out that doru malaia super percussions pack cuz that has quite alot of quality perc samples and good kick samples. |
if you are gonna use congas you will probably want to use more than 1 pattern. as in, layer several different patterns over each other at different velocities and/or pitches. either put the claps on the 2nd or 4th beat or the snares. having both playing across all 4 beats sounds weird.
the thing with layering kicks. it sounds as if your kicks are now distorting. basically every sound you have got in that loop has a frequency range. the human ear can hear from about 20hz to about 20,000hz where 20hz is sub bass frequency and where 20,000hz is ultra high frequency. kick drums typically reside between 50hz and 1,500hz. the sub part of the kick is between 50hz and 150hz. most of the presence of the kick is typically around 500 to 800hz and the initial 'slap' is around 1,500hz.
now, this is where it gets a little more technical. if you put a kick drum that is mostly 500hz down and then stack another kick drum on top of it that also resides mostly around 500hz then the volume around that frequency doubles. when writing dance music you NEVER want to go above 0 dB because you will hear things distort beyond that point. you can use any dB meter to see if you are going over.
those 3 kicks you used seem to be clashing cuz they all occupy roughly the same frequencies.
there is a way you can get around this though. theres several actually. one is EQ. lets say your first kick is quite thumpy and you wanna keep that thump. leave it as it is. layer the second kick on top of it. you dont want that kick to have the thump part as well so add an EQ to an FX channel assigned to kick 2 and make a notch (about 2 or 3 dB) around 500hz. what that will do is to cut the volume of kick 2 around 500hz so it doesnt interfere with kick one. when you do this you should notice that you get a bit of both kicks and it doesnt cut off. you may also find that if you EQ it cleverly, you can make your kick sound louder than you could before. once you have your 3 kicks layered and not distorting (going over 0 dB) then you can add compression to some or all of them.
Ok ok, another new version. I ditched the other kicks and replaced it with one kick I think I have filtered and compressed decently, or not. What do you think?
CLICK ME
EDIT: For some reason the hi-fi version was taking a LONG time to clear so I've just uploaded it to where I have the others.
Heres a lil tribal type loop i just did....
http://www.frozen-web.com/samples/triballyyours.mp3
yea basically you want your kick a bit more like frosts which is cleaner, louder and prominent in the mix. i still think both of ya need more percs! more congas cuz it still sounds like its just a tapped rhythym with conga samples whereas you want a constant rhythym going with them. i ave some dnb songs with lots of congas, lots of snares, lots of hats. there is no silence in between beats. even slower tempo, percussion driven music uses percs to fill up all that empty silence between down beats. layo and bushwhacka! - love story has good use of congas getting into a nice flow.
Oh yea I know I need much much more. I'm just trying to get a very basic beat at a good state. I'd like to try to make one decent track 
instead of just fiddling around with everything. So I'm trying to start at the bottom and now continue until I got something half-way decent at each step...
version 4 of your drumloop is taking ages to clear...
Since it doesn't seem to update the last post when you edit a post, I'll just kind of re-post my last message that I edited...
Here's version 4 of my 2 measure basic house-beat loop.
CLICK ME
hmmm. you've but an open cymbal on each kick beat? thats what it sounds like. its covering up alot of your kick though. kick needs to be much louder (watch out for the cutoff). there also needs to be more of a bass punch. too much of it is mid/treble. the 8th hats and off hats need EQing because they are already sounding a bit murkey.
Version 5.
I previously had a cymbal "pedal" delayed from the kick. I've moved it to the off-beats and ditched the more rhythmic shaker and added a shaker that does straight 8th notes with the "off beats" of that accented. I've also removed the previous ohh and chh... They're there, but I removed them from this version. I can put them back in with the click of a button.
Since soundclick takes 9 years to validate my song, I'll just put it on my old server for now.
CLICK ME
Gotta jump in here...
Since I'm a househead let me jump in...
Think fundamentals even if they are cliche for the simple reason being if you can get your head around this portion you can get around the rest.
Get a decent set of samples from 808 or 909 drum sets. If you can't sample off of old house records.
You got the basic tips all done but now you have to adjust your ears to listening for the right sound and feel.
Bass Drum/Kick - Should be felt.
Hats/Cymbals/Ride - Should be surrounding you with an airy feeling.
Snare/Claps/Percs - Should fill in the gaps between the aural picture.
Frequency-wise the EQing should be divided into 3: Bass, Mid, Treble.
What you want in one element you don't want it to be prominent in another. So you'll filter out small portions of frequency so you don't have the clashing of frequencies.
BD: Low Frequencies
Hats : High Frequencies
Percs: Mid Frequencies...This can be broken down further.
Low-Mid, Mid, and Hi-Mid Frequencies - Play around with the freqs so you can accentuate the characteristic of the perc that your playing with. Your job is to make the person hear the choice of sound. The only time this changes is when you are layering sounds. When you layer sounds listen to the sound seperately so you can make sure that you only hear just that sound!
Ok the overall sound of the drum track with these tips should be as follows...
Four to the Floor...
Bass Drum on each beat
Snare and/or Clap on 2nd & 4th (or with variation)
Open Hat in between the beats
Closed Hats on the beat (or with variation)
Length can vary as far as 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 bars.
When including ethnic percussions work in a 2 bar form. But have variations of the percussions. Because the Drum track is your hangar of where your going to place the rest of your track.
Look in between the beats for you percuusions to be placed. Use more than 1 percussion. Think less is more. Also vary the levels of the hits. And try this put a multi-delay or a delay on the each single percussion track to give a simple line more depth and character.
Lastly you can change all this by adding little snippets of vocals or stabs or hits to accent your track.
Remember this you still have a bassline to throw in.
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