Ever want to come up with your own, original drum beats from scratch?  Rock, Rap, Jazz, Latin, whatever? If you can master the concepts about how modern drumming works, you can create any beat in any style. You can listne to any beat and take it apart and mash it up, or change it.  This is about making beats with any software you might own.  

• This is for guitarists who need tracks to practice with.
• This is for people new to the drums.
• This is for people who want to dissect a beat so they can make their own.

Make Your Own Beats Video

I’m going to chop this into small sections to make it easy for you (and Wordpress) to digest. I’ll start with the simple basics, so feel free to skip ahead.

Rock the Grid: How Drum Software Works. 

The bass drum, hi-hat, and snare drum are your core drums, 90% of the work will be done on these drums.

If you can’t read music, but are at least familiar with an instrument, you’re ahead of the game, but if you can’t play an instrument at all, don’t worry and listen up. Ok, I’ll start with the three basic components of most drum beats, bass drum, snare drum and hi-hat.  I’m also going to group the beats in groups of 4, the most common time signature (beat grouping).  So, we’ve got a grid like this:

Basic Grid

This grid is typical of the way most software represents drum notation.  Each number on top represents a beat, on the left side are your drums. Right now it’s empty, so lets put a hi hat on beats 1,2,3, and 4.

Hi hat part on grid

And it sounds as boring as it looks.

So, lets add the bass and snare drums. We’ll put the bass drum on beats 1 and 3, and the snare drum on beats 2 and 4.

Basic drum beat.

Ok, now you’ve got a basic beat, it’s pretty boring but usable.  In fact it’s very similar to the beginning of Back in Black by AC/DC.  This beat, simple as it is, is the cornerstone of all drum kit drumming, so lets take a look at what the basic elements are.  

1. It’s got a continuous moving hi-hat part playing on all 4 beats.  You could change that to a cowbell or tambourine or shaker, but whatever plays it, the part keeps moving.  
2. The next element is the snare part, it’s on the weaker beats of the measure, 2 and 4.  
3. Finally the bass drum, it’s on the stronger beats of the measure, 1 and 3, 1 being the strongest.

So to sum up:

• Hi-hat on all 4 beats
• Bass drum on 1 and 3
• Snare drum on 2 and 4

In part 2, we’ll take a look at dividing the beats into smaller parts and adding more movement and interest to the basic beat.

Go to part 2.