Beat Making and Drum Programming

Every hit song you have ever loved started with someone building a beat. Pharrell Williams built 'Happy' on a rolling groove. Billie Eilish's 'bad guy' opens with four bass drum notes. Even before any melody or words appear, the beat sets the heartbeat of the song. Today, free software lets anyone become a beat programmer — and in this lesson, that person is you.

By the end of this lesson you will be able to: - Name the four main drum sounds used in most beats and describe what each one does - Explain how a 16-step drum sequencer works - Describe the TR-808 drum machine and explain why it changed music history - Program a simple beat using the kick-snare-hi-hat pattern

Almost every modern beat uses four core sounds: Kick Drum (also called bass drum): The lowest, biggest boom. In most pop and hip-hop songs it hits on all four beats. You feel the kick in your chest at concerts. This is the heartbeat of the beat. Snare Drum: A sharp, cracking sound. It usually hits on beats 2 and 4 — called the backbeat. The snare is what makes you nod your head or clap along. Hi-Hat: A small cymbal squeezed shut by a foot pedal. A closed hi-hat sounds like 'tss tss tss.' An open hi-hat sounds like 'tshhhhh.' Hi-hats chop the beat into smaller pieces and keep things moving between the kick and snare. Clap: A sharp hand-clap sound, often layered right on top of the snare to make it hit harder. Many famous beats use both a snare AND a clap together on beats 2 and 4.

A drum machine is an electronic device or software that plays pre-programmed drum sounds in a repeating rhythmic pattern. The most famous drum machine in history is the Roland TR-808, released in 1980. The TR-808 was designed as a practice tool for musicians who could not afford a live drummer. It cost about $1,000 and was quickly considered a sales flop — it could not imitate a real drum kit convincingly. Musicians bought used ones cheap. Then hip-hop and electronic music producers discovered something: the TR-808's bass drum could be tuned to different pitches and sustained longer than a real kick drum. It did not sound like a drum at all — it sounded like something new. You can hear the TR-808 in Marvin Gaye's 'Sexual Healing' (1982), Run-DMC's 'Rock Box' (1984), Kanye West's entire '808s and Heartbreak' album (2008), and thousands of other songs. Music historians estimate it appears on more hit records than any other single instrument in history.

The most common way to program beats is with a step sequencer — a grid of 16 boxes (called steps) that represent one full bar of music in 4/4 time. Here is how to read it: - The 16 steps cover one measure divided into 16 equal pieces (sixteenth notes) - Each ROW of the grid is a different drum sound (kick, snare, hi-hat, clap) - Each COLUMN is a point in time - Click a box ON and that sound will play at that moment when the pattern loops The classic starter beat: - Kick: Steps 1, 5, 9, 13 (every beat) - Snare: Steps 5 and 13 (beats 2 and 4 only) - Hi-hat: Steps 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15 (every other step) That combination — kick every beat, snare on 2 and 4, hi-hat on eighth notes — is the foundation of most dance, pop, and electronic music. Once you hear it, you will notice it everywhere.