To make a beat, open a music program (a DAW), set a tempo, and program a repeating pattern of kick, snare and hi-hat. Then add a bass line and a short melody on top, and arrange the loop into an intro, a main section and an ending. A simple beat can be done in an hour, and the quickest way to get better is to study how real drum patterns are built, for example by splitting the drums of a song with the Drum Kit Splitter.
This guide walks through how to build beats from nothing, in the order most producers work.
A beat is the rhythmic backbone of a song: the drums and bass that give it a pulse you can nod to. In hip-hop and pop, "beat" often means the whole instrumental that a rapper or singer performs over. In a stricter sense it is just the drum pattern.
You do not need a keyboard or any music theory to start. You need a DAW, a pair of headphones and a small set of drum sounds.
- A DAW. This is the program you make music in. Many free ones exist, and every one can do the steps below.
- Drum sounds. A kick, a snare or clap, and a hi-hat. These are short audio files called one-shots, and they come in sample packs.
- Something to listen on. Headphones are fine. Check the beat on speakers or a phone too.
Tempo is the speed of the music, counted in beats per minute (BPM). Pick it before anything else, because everything lines up to it.
Rough ranges help. Hip-hop beats often sit in the 70 to 100 range. House music is usually around 120 to 130. Pop and dance tracks tend to sit between those. Many producers also write a half-time feel, where the snare lands less often, which makes a fast tempo feel relaxed.
If you are unsure, start at 90 and change it later.
Most beats use a bar of four counts. Think of the bar as sixteen small steps, which is how most drum grids are drawn.
- Kick. Put it on the first beat. Add one or two more hits in the bar to give it a bounce.
- Snare or clap. Put it on the second and fourth beats. This is the "crack" you clap along to.
- Hi-hat. Fill in steady ticks, for example on every eighth step. Leave a gap here and there so it breathes.
Play it back in a loop. If it feels stiff, nudge a few hi-hats off the grid or lower their volume on some steps. Small changes in volume make a pattern sound played by a person.
One good way to learn patterns is to hear how a drummer or producer built them, one piece at a time. A full song makes that hard, since everything plays together.
With Unmix Studio you can pull the drum kit out of a song and hear each part alone:
- Open the Drum Kit Splitter and sign in with Google. New accounts get 5 free credits, with no card needed.
- Upload a song (MP3, WAV, M4A or FLAC, up to 10 minutes) and press the big orange button. The price in credits shows on the button first.
- You get eight rows: Drums (full), Kick, Snare, Toms, Ride, Hi-hat, Crash and Residual. Switch each on or off, listen alone or together, and download the ones you want as MP3 files at 320 kbps.
Listen to the kick row and count where it lands. Then mute the hi-hat and hear how much groove it carries. If you only want the song without its drums, to rap or play over it, the Drum Remover gives you that. In our test, a 3 minute 22 second song went through it in 88 seconds.
The splitting runs in the cloud, so there is nothing to install. Fast hi-hat rolls and different kinds of cymbals can blur together, so treat the result as a guide to hear, not a perfect copy.
Bass locks with the kick. Where the kick hits, the bass often plays a note too, and it fills the space between kicks.
Start with one note, the root of the key you picked, and play it with the kick. Then move to a second note on the off beats. Keep the bass short and low. If kick and bass fight, shorten the bass notes a little so each kick is heard clearly.
Give the beat something to sing along to. A four-note melody or a two-chord loop is enough. Play it on a piano or synth sound, or sample a short piece of a recording.
If you can hum a tune but cannot play it, try Audio to MIDI. It is free, needs no sign-in, and runs in your browser, so your recording is not uploaded. Hum or sing into the mic, press Record, and it turns your tune into MIDI notes that you drag into the DAW and give any sound.
A loop of four or eight bars is not a beat tape yet. Arrange it so it changes.
- Intro. Start with just the melody, or drums with the kick missing.
- Main section. Everything plays.
- Break. Pull out the drums for a bar or two, then bring them back for impact.
- Ending. Strip things away one by one.
A common trick is to bring parts in every four or eight bars. That keeps the listener interested without writing new music.
Listen at a quiet volume. If you can still hear the kick, snare and melody clearly, the balance is close. Keep the kick and bass loudest, and keep the hi-hat in the background.
If you use a drum break or loop from a commercial song, it matters what you do with the result. Practicing with it privately is fine. Releasing it or posting it where you earn money generally needs permission from the rights holders. Royalty-free packs and your own recordings avoid that problem.
Install a DAW, set the tempo to about 90 BPM, and place a kick on beat one, a snare on beats two and four, and a steady hi-hat. Loop it and add one bass note. You will have a beat in less than an hour.
A computer, a DAW, headphones and some drum sounds. A MIDI keyboard helps, but you can click notes in with a mouse.
Split a song's drums into separate parts and listen to each one alone. The Drum Kit Splitter gives you Kick, Snare, Toms, Ride, Hi-hat and Crash rows. It costs 1 credit per minute of song, and the price shows on the button before you run it.
A loop is often four or eight bars. A full beat for a rapper or singer is usually around two to three minutes, with a few sections.
Only if you have cleared the sample with the rights holders. Splitting a song into stems does not change who owns it.