Make a Beat in FL Studio: Programming Drum Patterns | Isaac Duarte | Skillshare
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Make a Beat in FL Studio: Programming Drum Patterns

teacher avatar Isaac Duarte, Creating music & helping music producers

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      1:32

    • 2.

      Getting Started

      1:20

    • 3.

      Build a Hi Hat Pattern

      12:23

    • 4.

      Add Snares and Accent Snares

      8:55

    • 5.

      Program the 808

      12:43

    • 6.

      Write the Kick Pattern

      8:37

    • 7.

      Add Percussion

      5:06

    • 8.

      Final Thoughts

      0:28

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About This Class

Since developing a passion for music production, Isaac Duarte, also known as IBEENART, has dedicated his career to helping aspiring music producers elevate their craft and change their lives with his music production tutorials. With over 40K followers on Instagram and 25K subscribers on YouTube, Isaac has crafted an online community of other producers looking to learn from him and his decade of experience in the music industry. You might’ve heard Isaac’s productions in video games or in mixed tapes, where he is known for his attention-grabbing, high-quality beats. 

This four-part series brings together everything Isaac has learned as a full-time digital music producer and taught as content creator in the music space. In this class, Isaac shares how to make a really good drum pattern, choose high quality sounds, find good rhythms, and add hi hat rolls to hot spots. 

With Isaac as your teacher, you’ll: 

  • Start the foundation of your your beat by creating your own hi-hat pattern
  • Explore classic snare sounds, snare rolls and claps, and accent snares
  • Create your own 808 and kick patterns
  • Develop movement and texture using percussion 

Plus, you’ll get access to Isaac’s final piece and the sounds and tools he used to put it together. 

Whether you already have a general understanding of producing with drums or you’re looking to get into more advanced techniques like finding the right pocket for your snares and hi hat patterns, this class will reveal how to get creative with your drum patterns and choose the right sounds for your productions. 

While you don’t specifically need FL studio experience to take this class, you do need an understanding of digital audio workstations (DAWs) to be able to follow along. You’ll also need a computer, your DAW of choice, and a pair of headphones. Over the ear, wired headphones are recommended but not required. If any of this class feels beyond your skill level, check out this introduction to DAWs and music production with Dom McLennon or start from the beginning of Isaac’s full Music Production Learning Path

Meet Your Teacher

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Isaac Duarte

Creating music & helping music producers

Teacher

Hey my name is Isaac Duarte, Formally known as "IBEENART", and I'm a music producer from Chicago, Illinois. I'm the owner of "www.the-soundgallery.com" and have gained over 20 million views as a content creator. With over a decade of experience in music production, I've been fortunate to turn my passion into a fulfilling career, traveling the world and participating in exciting musical projects, including mixtapes and video games. I look forward to sharing my expertise with you on Skillshare. Let's explore the world of music production together!

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Level: Intermediate

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: You don't have to have 10 years of experience in order to create a good trump pattern. Some of the people that you look up to, they don't make gold every time, and you have to be okay with that. As soon as you learn that, I promise your confidence is just going to continue to build and build. My name is Isaac Duarte, I'm from Chicago, Illinois. I'm a music producer. Probably seen me all over the Internet, probably heard a song from a mix tape that I've produced. Probably heard me on a video game track too. If you're nervous about taking this class, the best piece of advice I could give you is to dive in the water. Just like when you jump into a pool and it's cold and then you get used to it, you're going to get used to these things. Whether that's sound selection, finding the right pockets, where to put certain snare rolls or high hat rolls. Those are all the things that took me years to learn, and I'm going to teach you in today's class. The way that you're going to learn is by watching me break down a pattern, and explain the mind frame as well as the thinking behind it. I'm going to teach you guys the hot spots, the turnarounds, as well as how to get creative with your drums, and how you can find a nice balance between simplicity and complexity. I want to teach you what I've learned so that way you can apply to your tracks, and make something new. After completing this class, I want you to walk away with a new framework to always make new slappers. I'm excited you join this class. I can't wait to share all these gems with you, so let's get started. 2. Getting Started: Getting your drums to hit, honestly, it's not that big of a mystery. You could turn it all the way up, but if you have a bad pattern, does hard-hitting jams even matter? The more harder part that everybody gets stuck on is which rhythms to use, which sounds to use, and how will it complement the melody. That used to be one of my biggest issues, but after years of trial and error, I know how this goes a little bit more. That's exactly what you're going to be learning in this class. When you make it to the end of this class, you'll learn how to make better drum patterns, have better sound selection, and know which drums are perfect for that hard-hitting sound. I'm going to show you exactly how I create my drum patterns and you can follow along as well. I'm using FL Studio, but if you don't use FL Studio, if you check the Project and Resources tab, you can have access to all these middies, sounds, as well as this project file. Even if you use any other doll, you can still follow along. The project for this class is to create your own drum pattern and then upload it to Skillshare, and then I'll listen back and give you some feedback and pointers. I'm going to show you how to make a drum pattern that fits perfectly with Class 1's melody that we made. Now open your doll and let's get started. 3. Build a Hi Hat Pattern: The first thing that I'll start with is the hi-hats. The reason being is because they give me more direction on where I'm going to go. If I'm making R&B and I want something slow, I can have the hi-hat go like this. So that way it guides and goes with the melody and it's not too crazy because the person on the record is singing. If I plan on making rock music, I don't play drums, I don't know how to play drums, I can't get on those sticks. Just like a drummer, I have to emulate that. There's little intricacies that you can introduce to the hi-hats like hi-hat rolls, play with the panting, play with the velocity, all the things that I'm going to show you today. One thing that I like to do first is solo the melody, and solo the hi-hat. And I'll go through my browser, and I'll go through sound after sound until I find something that interests me. So I'll play it and then I'll go through my hi-hats. That one sounds cool, but not that great. Not for this one. That one sounds pretty good, but I'm going to go with this one. The reason why I picked this sound after going through a whole bunch of hi-hats is it sounded the best with the melody. It wasn't poking out too much, it sat just perfectly. So that's a good indicator that hey, this is the one to use. Even if I don't like it, if I changed some stuff around, I could always pitch it up, pitch it down, or just change the hi-hat. There's a ton of sounds that we have already in our computer, so don't feel pressured to commit to just one, try some stuff out. This is the initial pattern that I chose to commit to. Now how I got there, it's pretty simple. I'm going to duplicate this. So I have this second hi-hat. The first thing that I do is I right-click and then I fill each two steps. So it sounds like this. You've heard this in plenty songs. Very simple. Not Picasso yet. [LAUGHTER] So the first thing I'll do is I'll write click and hit piano roll. Now, this is the thing that I'm going to teach you, super basic concept. I'm going to color where the snares usually go. And I'm going to mute this. I'm going to turn the velocity all the way down so it's not hidden. Usually the snares go on the three. That is right here, right here, and right here. Let's just listen to the pattern with two step hi-hats. Notice where I'm hitting is exactly where the snares are. The reason being is because I use the snare as a reference for where the hi-hats sound best. They usually sound best right before or after the snare. I'm going to change the color to emphasize where the parts are. So this is before the snare, this is after the snare. These places right here are exactly where the hi-hat rolls are. If you look at the ghost notes, these in the gray, you'll notice that the hi hat rolls are in that range and they sound good because of that. There's not a lot of movement going on there. I'll listen back to it and I'll just think of a pattern just little by little. If you're wondering what was the hot keys that I used to create these hi-hat rolls? It's pretty simple. All you have to do is highlight it, hold Alt and A and this Arpeggio tab is going to open up. It's probably going to look like this. You don't want that. Switch the range to one and this time manipulation **** is where you can get either something super choppy or something just slight. It all depends on your personal taste. Don't feel afraid to add too many rolls because if it sounds good, and then you listen back and it's like okay, it sounds a little bit too much, then you could just take stuff away. I add a ton of rolls, and then I take stuff away little by little. So this one over here might not sound that great. So let's hear it back. Sounds way better now. I try not to add too many different types of rolls. If you notice, the rolls are pretty consistent throughout this whole pattern. If I go to this other pattern, the rolls are pretty consistent. Like this roll is the same as the roll over here. This roll is the same as over here, it's just extended. So don't feel the need to add triple hi-hats and then one fourth hi-hats and all the stuff at the same time. I tend to just only use two and if it calls for it I'll take something like this, and then I hold Alt, and then this little arrow that's going left and right, if you hold Alt you could stretch those rolls. So you could either go super long or you can go super short, which would give it a faster roll. So it'll sound like this. But really it's the same roll as this one and just stretch differently. If you follow this guideline, it'll sound good every time. Just do what feels right to you and then subtract until you're like, this doesn't sound like I need to take anything else away. Once you land there, you're golden. So let me show you how to give your hi-hats more character. So let's attack velocity first. You could trick people's ears into making the pattern sound a little bit more crazier just by messing with the velocity. So just like this roll right here, I have the velocity down. All I did was I took it from clicking here to clicking down here. Let me move this note, as opposed to this. I think this one just sounds better. It's just a little moment that's going to trick the ear. Now, the velocity over here, I have it going up like this, just by right clicking on my mouse, right clicking and holding and going up with it. So it transitions into this next section. It goes from this, to this. It feels like a roller coaster. Over here in this part, which is going to be the turnaround part, I have the most rolls because I know it's going to transition over. Now, when it comes to these other notes, you tell me if this sounds good. I'm going to have the whole hi-hat pattern hitting on the same note. That sounds good, but now let's move everything back. Now let's listen to the one that sounds way better. Sounds way better. The reason being is because along with the velocity, I messed with the pitch. Some of these rolls I brought up because it sounded good to me, it sounded good to my ear. And if you bring a note up and then you lower the velocity and you layer it on top of a note, it sounds really good. I have this layer right here. I have this layer right here. These bottom notes and this top one. It just gives it a little bit more emphasis on the rhythm. If you want to make your hi-hats a little bit more unique, we're going to introduce panning. Panning is super sick because when you do have those high hat rolls, you can make it feel like they're going left and right. Go to this left bar where says control and it's going to highlight. Click it and hit "Note Pan". Now, you can select a note and then just mess with the value at the bottom. We're going to go from left to right. This one I wanted to swirl like in between your ears. So we're going to do something like this. This one I want to go all the way like this to the left and this one I want to go all the way to the right. Then with this one, I want to do the same thing left, right. Let's move this middle note right here. These middle notes. Left. And this other one slightly, right. Now, let's listen to it. If you have headphones, you're going to hear it immediately. Notice my hands, left, right. It's going in between the ear. So if you don't want to do all of that and you want to randomize it, what you can do is hit Alt R and this randomizer is going to pop up. You could adjust the panning and the velocity here. So let's reset that. Let's adjust the panning just a little bit. All of the notes here are randomized and panned left and right, as well as the velocity. You can get creative with that if you don't want to spend tedious time adjusting it. Now it's your turn to create your own hi- hat pattern. Start with sound selection. Next, fill each two steps, and then add hi-hat rolls in the hot spots, and just get creative with it. Once you have your hi-hat rolls, play with the pitch, play with the panning, and play with the velocity. Get creative with it, and I can't wait to hear what you make. Up next is snares. 4. Add Snares and Accent Snares: Now we're in the snare and clap portion. I feel like this is a very important part because if you pick a weak snare, nobody's going to hear that. But if you pick a strong snare that's way too loud and overpowering, people are going to only notice the snare and nothing else because it's so loud and in their ear. You need to find a perfect balance. Now, you could use snares, claps. You could use snares as accents, you can do snare rolls. There's all sorts of things that you can do with snares and claps. In this beat, I have a pretty basic snare and clap, because you hear it in a lot of songs, and honestly it's a good go to. I feel like if I went with a very unorthodox snare or clap, you won't really be able to get the concept because sometimes with uniqueness comes its own lane and not every sound fits with a unique snare or unique clap. Sometimes you need those basic ones because they're proven and they sound really good. This is exactly how I choose my sounds. I listen to the beat with all the elements, and I go to my browser, to one of my drum kits off of my site, and then I just play. It doesn't really have that. This one sounds really good. Turns up. That's cool. Sounds good. Good. A lot of these sounds sound really good. But I could tell you there's some sounds that are tailored for certain beats and they're not tailored for other beats. If you use a very unique sound that doesn't fit, it's going to stick out like a sore thumb. Just like this sound. I feel like this sound would be perfect for something more introspective and maybe like ominous with sense and R&B chords. But if I use it on this bet, it's not going to sound that great because it sticks out like a sore thumb. The sound that I chose is the sound that's available in the Project and Resources tab. This is clap, and this is snare. You've heard it in a ton of songs, but they just work perfectly. Let's start with the clap. Usually the clap goes on the three. Just like I mentioned earlier with the hot spots for the hi-hat, this is exactly where the clap goes. Do you hear how the hi-hat rolls lead into the clap? It's like they're leading into it. So the clap is perfect. If you want to turn it up, you can turn up the volume, or you could use the slap ****. What I mean is the amp and boost ****. Well, it used to be the amp ****, now it's called the boost ****. You go to the channel sampler, you hit this light bulb, and then you boost again, so it sounds loud. If you go crazy with it, that's too much. So try to find a nice balance in between. Perfect. The reason why the clap and the snare is very constant is because a lot of songs, they have the same placement where the clap and the snare goes. For a lot of people that are listening to music, they already know that the clap is going to go here and here. If you want to get creative with it, you can do something like this. You can move this over here. It'll sound like this. Move it over here. There you go. If you listen to Ye, a lot of his songs have that type of clap pattern. Underground music in general, but that's a very unorthodox pattern. For today, we're just going to go super basic. Now that we have the clap and we have it sitting perfectly, we need something to give a little bit more flavor to it. This is where you hear an accent snare. If you don't know what accent snare is, you've heard it plenty of times, but it sounds like this. That in between the clap is a accent. Right here I have this basic snare. I love this snare because it's so basic and I've heard this back in what? 2005. That's how old this snare is, but it works every time. Right here in the piano roll is where I have the accents. I can do this. That's cool. But for this beat, I just decided to add it just one time and then add little accents here that transition it to the next part. If you listen to it. Then I introduce snare rolls like this. Just like the hi-hat rolls, same thing. Alt A to get the arpeggiator, and then you can adjust the velocity. Again, I mess with the velocities all the time because I just feel like it gives it just a little bit more flavor. I don't like hearing everything just total regular volume of velocity or just blaring. With these things like percussion, snare accents, like hi-hat rolls, I like to play with the velocity a lot. I also like to play with the panting. As you can see, I have the snares panting from left to right. Let me reset everything so you can hear it just regular. Now let's hear with the panting. It just gives it a little bit more flavor. A little bit more ear candy to me. Now, when it comes to snare roll placement, I don't like a lot of snare rolls that go , [NOISE] all of that stuff. You'll never see me add a snare at the beginning of the bar like this. Just doesn't sound that right to me. I usually reserve it for that last little turnaround. With the snare roll pattern or types, that's where you can get created with it. You can do something like this, or you can do something like this , and then change velocity. Or you could change the timing, 1/6, do something like this. Or you could change it to 1/3 step and get a different pattern. It all depends on the type of idea that you have. That's pretty much it for the placement of the snare rolls. Again, as I stated before, on the turnaround is where I like to put the snare rolls because it just sounds ear pleasing and it gives more resolution to the whole phrase of the pattern idea. Now it's your turn to create your own pattern with the clap and the snare. Start with good sound selection by playing the beat, and then playing your sounds and seeing what sticks out to you. Then place them in the familiar parts. Then get creative with the pattern. When it comes to the accent snares, they sound best on the turnaround. Create your own pattern, and I can't wait to hear what you make. Next up is my favorite part, the 808. 5. Program the 808: Now that we've set the foundation with our hi-hats and our claps and our accent snares, it's time for everybody's favorite part, the 808s. If you don't know what an 808 is, it's basically that, it's that sound that you hear coming out of the back of cars, that trunk rattle, that hard knock that you hear in a lot of songs today. There's different types of basses, classified as like 808s, sub-basses, guitar basses, 909s, and even a synth bass, which we used earlier. Now you might be asking yourself, how is he going to use a synth bass and 808 together, they're going to clash. Well, luckily for you, there's this thing called arrangement that I'll touch on later, but for now we're going to go into a different section where the 808 is the main thing. Now let me put these on. Now, when it comes to the 808s, there's all sorts of 808s, there's millions, people are putting packs out every day. There's no shortages of 808s ever. But there's two that are just, they're faithful every time. Just like the clap and the accent snare that I shared with you earlier, there's two types of 808s that I use pretty much all the time. I deviate from them a lot, but these are good go-tos and these sounds that I'm giving you in the Project and Resources tab are my personal favorites, so they're modified and they have that punch straight out the gate. The first bass is called the Zay 808. Sounds like this. This one is beefed up, and I use this like all the time. Anything you hear from me that uses that type of bass, it's this sound that I'm giving you guys. The second one is the old trustee Spinz 808. This one sounds like this and it just works. It sounds good and it sounds bouncy. Now, with both of those sounds, there's not a lot of processing on them. I could feel comfortable throwing distortion or any other type of creative effect on there. When it comes to finding the right 808, I'll loop up the melody and then I'll just go through one of my kits. I like that one. Now, while going through these sounds, these sounds are going to clash with the melody because they're not in key, but that's totally fine though. In today's case, I'm going to be using the old trusty Zay 808. Now that we have our sound, how do we come up with a pattern? Well, luckily this one is a lot easier because we already have the bass notes. The only thing you need to do is go to your bass where we created and just copy and paste. They're right here. Boom. This 808 has a tone. Just like the melody, you're going to have to transpose to that key as well. All you have to do is right click the note. I'm in A minor, which is all the white notes, which is A. Now if I press "Add to key", you're going to see that it's a C sharp. That's the actual key we're in. I just transposed it to where I could play any thing on the white notes, and it sounds good. Then unclick "Add to key" and then boom, you're in key. Let's listen to the melody with just these bass notes copied. That's a little too low. Let's go up a couple of octaves, so I'm going to hit Control up, the up direction, and go up to A6. Let's listen to it now. Now it sounds good, but the tone isn't there. That lowing is totally gone. Reason being is because it's up a couple octaves, so let's go down to A4. That's probably where it's going to sit the best. Now that we have the notes, we can get creative with the pattern. Now you don't want to go too crazy with the pattern, so the best thing you could do is just meet this and try to listen back and just beatbox a pattern. Even if you have to tap, that's good too. We're just getting the rhythm down. Listening. If you want to know a good indicator of what a good pattern is, it's one that you could easily memorize. Let me show you the pattern that I got. That sounds pretty good, it sounds pretty open. Now here's two tricks I'm going to show you with the 808s. Go over to the Envelope tab of the 808 and change the attack. Adjust the hold and then adjust the decay, sustain, and release. Bring all of those down. The only thing that should be all the way up is hold. Now it sounds like this. We don't want that, so hit "Control L" to connect all of them. Now you have a little bit more control of the 808. Let's say I want a long one, but I want a short one right here. [MUSIC] Now that I have a little bit more control over it, I can get a little bit more creative with the rhythm. If I want to be like [NOISE] as soon as I adjust it, it cuts off. That's just the way to give your sounds a little bit more bounce. Another way to give it a little bit more bounce is to introduce rolls to your 808s. Now, usually don't recommend doing a tunnel rolls with your 808s, so much like the accent snares, I try to introduce a little bit of rolls to transition into the next part. We're going to delete that. Boom. Copy paste, stop it at the end of the bar. Next, hold Control, select it, hit "Alt A". Alt A for rolls is your best friend. We're going to mess with this time now, so it's going from this to not that crazy, but something like this. Next you can do two things with this. You can either right-click and hold and drag the no velocity up. It sounds like this. The rolls give it like a fake reverse. If you heard Roddy Ricch's, The Box, it's the same effect. Another thing you could do, if you want it to be a little bit smoother, especially if you chop it into smaller bits, go up here to the wrench tool and go to LFO or you could hit "Alt O". Now you get a little bit more control over the notes and the velocity. If you want it to be a little bit more smoother, you can adjust these settings. You can adjust it to a square, a triangle. Usually, I keep it on sine and I keep it like this. That way it leads in smoothly. Then I bring it up just a little bit. It sounds like this. Let me just copy and paste the pattern over so you get more accurate representation. If you chopped it into super small bits, it'll sound like this. Same process, but you get a little bit more smoothness to it. [MUSIC] You hear that? I'm going to slow it just so you can hear it. It's a super sick effect and it tricks the listener into thinking like, man, this is reversed when really it's not. I like it how I had it before, so we're just going to do that. With these fake reverse rolls, you don't want to have it all the way up. You want to mess with the velocity and have at least under 75%. Subtlety with those is best. One thing that I have to let you know about is the balance between simplicity and complexity. From here to here, which is 1, 2, 3, three bars, simple pattern. Over here is where you can get a little bit more creative because it's a turnaround. Same concept, from 8-5 very simple. But over here, 8-9, that's where the complexity comes in and that's where the 808 rolls happen. You don't have the 808 rolls everywhere, but you have it in that last bar, so that way it's a good turnaround. I'm going to give you a visual representation for all my visual learners. Over here in the blue, this whole part, simple. Over here in the orange, complex, that's where you can get a little bit creative. Let's listen back and I'll add a little different pattern at the end. I followed the guideline. I did nothing in the blue, but in the orange section over here, in that range is where I introduced a couple of notes to introduce a little bit of creativity. Let's listen back to it. This isn't set in stone, it's not the end-all be-all. If you deviate from this, there's no wrong way to do it. This is just the way that I've learned to have nice transitions. If you hear any song on the radio, just keep an eye out for that. If you want to take it further, you can take the MP3 from any song, throw it into FL, sink it, and I promise you, in those little sections that I showed you, there's going to be 808 rolls or different patterns there. That's my process and I hope you like that because it took me a long time to learn, honestly. Now it's time to create your own 808 pattern. First, start off by finding a sound. If you can't find a sound that fits your beat, it's okay to go to the ones that work best. Next, set it to the key of your beat. Then copy the bass notes of that melody into a new pattern, into the 808. Then from there, listen back to the melody and beatbox or tap a simple rhythm. Lay that down. Now you have a foundation where you can get creative and introduce things like rolls, as well as adjust the ADSR settings within the 808. The next up is the kick. 6. Write the Kick Pattern: Now that we have the 808, one thing that we could introduce to give it a little bit more of a slap to it, is the kick. Now, some beats don't require kicks, but for this one, I really wanted that knock and that's exactly what I'm going to show you. Now this can introduce a problem depending on the 808 that you choose. Some 808s have a kick in them to give them a certain type of punch. When you introduce a kick on top of an 808 that has a kick, there could be some issues there, but there's a couple ways to solve that. You could either change the sound, adjust the attack, adjust the pitch, some people side chain, I personally don't, but that's an option. All these different ways are just different techniques to blend the kick and 808 together. I start off by finding a good sound because sound selection is 75 to 85% of the battle. If you handle that, you save yourself from a bunch of headaches. When it comes to a kick, I try not to overthink it, I try not to overdo it. I listen to the 808 and I just go through my kicks. I like that one. That one sounds pretty good. That one sounds pretty good. But I need something that really hits. Now with sound selection, you can't force another good sound to be with another good sound, they have to compliment each other. Case in point. If I use this sound which is usually for like reggaeton beats, it's not going to sound that great. I could use a different bass and it could sound great. But that on top of this 808, it'll be noticeable how bad it sounds together, so it's best to use something that complements rather than just using something for the sake of it because it's a kick. Just like all these kicks that I have here, some of them sound good, but I'm looking for one that fits together. With kicks, I leave it just as is, because if I find the right kick sample, everything else falls together perfectly. Luckily, I've given you two good kick samples. There's this one that I'm using today, and then there's this one. The same, but a little bit different. The great thing about these is if you change the pitch just up like two notes, they hit differently. This kick is usually the go to for a lot of people. If you listen to a lot of wonder girls beats or even Boy wonders, you'll hear this kick in a lot of their songs, so consider yourself part of a secret group that has this kick. I try not to go super crazy with the kick pattern because I already have an 808. All I have to do is find the spots that complement it the best. I'm going to mute this one and I'm going to copy my kick pattern over to my 808 channel, so that way you can see how they layer together. This is my kick pattern. If these MIDI notes are too small for you, what you can do is hold Shift and hit D, and then it'll snap to grid. If you have something larger, it'll snap to grid so that way you can grab them more effectively. Now as you can see at the bottom of the ghost notes, these are where my 808s are and this in the green is where my kicks are. Notice how I have some kicks where the 808s are not and then I have some kicks where the 808s are. It's because there's certain parts that I want to emphasize and if I have the pattern of the 808 going one way, but I have the kick doing something crazy like this like that's too much. I need to find a nice balance. Usually, since the 808 is the star of that frequency range, I want the kick to just pop out at certain times. I just messed around with it. There's really no right or wrong way, I just kept it to two bars. Think of the kick in the 808 as like a relationship, you can't see them all the time or else it gets boring. Sometimes you do want to see them all the time, but for other times it makes it way better when you miss them. With the kick, pretty simple, pretty straightforward. If I want, I can just copy paste this over and then add a little variation. When it comes to the pattern, you can copy and paste the pattern of the 808 to the kick but I like to take it individual, one by one, especially with the ghost notes because it gives me a reference so that way I know where the 808 is, so that way I can put the 808 there or avoid the 808. If you feel like the kick in the 808 aren't blending as much, you can go to the MIDI score of the 808, hit Control L to connect all of them and then you can adjust the ADSR settings like we mentioned earlier. But you can adjust just a tiny here, maybe like 2, 3% the attack, so that way when the 808 hits and the kick hits, they blend more together. Listen. Let's try with the other kick, because maybe that might sound really good too. If you want to turn up your kicks, you can just turn them up with the volume or the boost ****. These kicks are already boosted, so you won't have to do too much. All you have to do is raise the volume or maybe lower it to find the sweet spot. Let's try another pitch. Sounds pretty good, but I think I'm going to roll with the original kick that I used as well as the original pattern. When it comes to the different patterns for the kick, I try not to add too many different patterns. I only keep it at 2-4 to because if I start changing the kick pattern and all this other stuff, it's not that it's not going to sound good, it's just, it has like all these different rhythms happening. I only have the kick hitting when the 808 comes in at certain times. Outside of that, it's very simple. Now it's your turn to create your own catchy kick pattern to compliment your 808. First, start by playing your 808 and finding the kick that works the best. Again, if you can't find a kick, don't be afraid to go to the Project and Resources tab and use these sounds that I've given you. They work every time. Now once you have your kick that complements that 808, find an interesting pattern that's like two bars that's easily loopable, so that way it complements your 808 rather than fights against it. Again, don't be afraid to use the ghost notes of your 808 as a guide. It's all there for you. Next up is percussion. 7. Add Percussion: Now that we have the groove and we have the slap, we need a little bit more movement and this is where percussion is introduced. Anything could be percussion. If I tap these funko pops together, they make a sound. If I juggle my keys, that makes a sound and I could use that in a beat. Percussion has a wide range, that's why it's one of the most freeing things to use, because once you have the foundation, you can introduce little elements, little textures to give it that uniqueness and movement to it. Think of this as the more human element. Let me put these on. Now when it comes to sound selection, I'm listening to my pattern on loop. I'm just listening to the drum pattern. I'm not really listening to the other elements because with the percussion, this is where you could do way too much. Sometimes you don't even need percussion, sometimes you don't even need that many sounds. I mean, if we count them, I used 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 sounds. A lot of my beats don't require over 10 sounds. If you're going crazy and adding a whole bunch of percussion, you're just creating more problems with the rhythm. Because you're creating all these sub rhythms rather than finding the rhythms that compliment the main rhythm. The way that I search for a percussion is I go to my packs again and I play the drum pattern and just go through a whole bunch of sounds. I like that. There's a whole bunch of percussion sounds that I've made that are really unique and they work in a lot of beats. For example, this sound right here, it's called 007 Golden Gun because it reminds me of that video game. All it is, is actually a high hat, but it's tweaked a certain way and I made it into a percussion and rather than doing that whole process all over again, I just saved it as its own sound. Let's listen to this right now. Notice how it's not interrupting the groove of the high hat, the snare rolls, and the clap comes in, comes out very simple, very effective. If you want to look at it even further, as soon as I go to the piano roll, these notes right here follow the low notes that I pitched in the high hats. It complements that sound and it gives it just a little bit more texture, a little bit more uniqueness. The next sound that I added was this open hat. It's like my go to open hat that you guys now have. I love using open hats. I use them at every beat. I need to stop using them at every beat, but they're just really good to emphasize certain parts. I have it over here and over here, so let me play the whole thing. When you're playing the percussion, you should be able to point out the rhythm like this, because it flows together. If you're doing all of this, you're doing way too much, you need to stop. [LAUGHTER] If I play it in context with the kick and the 808, it sounds pretty good. Simple, effective, very easy to use. Now it's your turn to get creative with your percussion. Loop the drum pattern, and go through your sounds. Find the sound that peaks out to you. Once you have those unique sounds, try to find where they complements the rhythm of the other sounds. Don't go against the flow, go with the flow. That's a life lesson too, once you have that, you should be able to point it out where the percussion is, so that way you know what flows together. Create your pattern and I can't wait to hear what you made. 8. Final Thoughts: Congratulations, you made it to the end of this class. You now know how to make a great drum pattern. We touched on sound selection as well as finding good rhythms, and even learned a little bit of life advice. Now that we have a really good drum pattern, we need to arrange it to have a full track because we can't have it all in one eight bar loop. I can't wait to see you in the next class.