Make your Own Beat

Have you ever wondered how to make your own beat? If you are a fan of hip hop or rap music there's a good chance you have, I know I did!

It can be difficult to know where to start and to be honest when you I first looked into it I found it rather overwhelming. I did a bit of research to see how professional hip hop artists produce their beats and after finding out they use hardware which costs thousands of dollars.

I quickly decided I needed to find another route that would enable me start making music. I spoke to some of my friends and one of them had some experience using Cubase when he was at college. This sounded promising until he mentioned it cost a few hundred bucks and even after 3 semesters using it he still wasn't very good.

I was on a tight budget and the idea of spending months learning how to use complicated software didn't seem very appealing. I simply wanted a low cost hip hop beat maker which was easy to use.

So, I started trawling the internet and came across some online beat makers which offered a selection of samples and best of all (or so I thought at the time) they were free. I thought my prayers had been answered - how wrong I was!

Instead of bashing out great sounding tunes I was stuck trying to make something with a limited selection of low quality samples (I couldn't even upload my own) which took ages to load.

After a few hours of extremely frustrating work I decided that I had done the best I could with the tools available so I tried to export my track. It turns out to do this I would have to pay and even then it would only be in .mp3 format which really is not ideal for a master track.

I had almost given up the dream but then I stumbled upon a great hip hop beat maker which allowed me to upload my own samples and also export my track in broadcast quality .wav files.

One of the most important things about creating rap or hip hop beats is to make sure your track has rhythm. I have had no training in professional music production but years of listening to other peoples music has given me the ability to recognize when something sounds good. Chances are you will be the same. With a little bit af trial and error you be able to make your own beat in no time.

After only 10 minutes of playing around with the intuitive sequencer I had chosen a few samples from the vast array available and created my very first tune!

There really is no other feeling like it - my girlfriend actually thought I was playing one of my CD's - that just shows the difference in sound quality between .mp3 and .wav files.

Any way I hope this will save you days of wasted time and effort, there's nothing holding you back now.

Let your creative juices flow and make your own beat!