Beat Making 101.

Beat making has become simpler over time. to much a professional persons disagreement, the common person on the street can (with simple beat making tips) create a beat.

I even believe that you don't need any pro lessons to create because ultimately you allow the computer, your ear and your ideas to lead the way.

A computer is not a cop out either. A computer is a tool to allow you to put ideas down more easily than you could get by doing it yourself. But you still had to have an idea. To a point the computer levels the playing field and creates music where ideas have free reign rather than the person who had the better equipment.

When we get down to the bare bones, we can even find that beat making doesn't even have to be expensive. But that is where the problem lies for many people. Something free...there has to be something wrong with it?!

Free stuff is what is driving the Internet and services that are costly will not be in the future. Everything from dating to house listing are becoming free but are still professional- and used by professional people.

Beat creation is very much the same. There are plenty of costly beat software and there are plenty of free beat software programs.

The trick is this...and it is something that very few people do...actually find a piece of software and then get to know it, it is surprising how much you will create knowing the insides and out. But you first must like the software and that means not going after the hyped junk that is out there...stuff which affiliates promote to death only because they haven't used it.

With the links below you you find free and paid beat machines and tips, but ultimately they all have one thing in common: They are all based on the same thing...a step-wise program of beat making.

Step-wise was brought in and popularized by the TR808 drum machine. All basic drum beats have 16 points- 0-15, made up of 4 points per section. On each of those points you can place a sound. So in a typical dance tune you can place a kick drum on all four starting points...so, 0, 4, 8 and 12 and then your beat can repeat if you please.

All drum machines now are based upon that simple principle (which is easier to explain in a picture which the links show you how to do). The difference between each drum machine is their sounds and effects added. Again, most if not all have some sort of Virtual Instrument capability, in other words they can be plugged into your music maker of choice and then become tweaked again, in realtime or stepwise.

So if your drum machine is Virtual then if it hasn't got all of the effects then you can easily add then through your sequencer. So in effect, do you really need CPU heavy virtual machines?

Anyway, along to our drum beat making links:

DubTurbo. Free videos, created by me, in how I created simple beats with DubTurbo -another online/ offline music generator. Again, forget the "music workstation" and just go for the beat building, it's simpler and easier.

The Starter Beat Tutorial. Here you will find simple and easy tips to start your beat making. It is a basic tutorial explaining the very basics of beat building. You will be guided to download a free software program (no affiliate stuff) that is exceptionally basic but really good at explaining the point.

Starter Beat Making Tutorial PArt 2. The second part of the beat making tutorial. Here we will be using a tracker. A very simple but very powerful free music sequencer.

5 Beat Tips. My article explaining how to simply make your beats just that little bit better.

Online Beat Producing. A review and tutorial about Sonic Producer, an online music producer. However I found it to be pretty poor at making big tunes and was really only good at making loops.