The pattern for my 808 is similar to the one in the verse, but with an increased velocity (120) because I couldn’t get the aggression that I wanted out of the 808 at lower velocities. I added a tiny bit of distortion to give it a bit of grittiness so when you hear it with the kick, they really bounce off each other. My main 808 is very aggressive, heavily, heavily compressed and I got a BitCrusher plug-in on there for some distortion. We’re going to bring in the 808s now and that’s when it gets interesting. It will give you good practice when you’re trying to make your own beat.
If you’re creating beats and you want that sound – try and learn how to make it.
Use songs to guide you when you’re creating rap beats as well. You’ll have to find your own pockets for these sounds. I also added two different open hi-hats – one is hissier than the other. These small elements in songs, when you join them all together it makes a massive difference and they give it that Drake-type beat feel that we are trying to create. Play hi-hats on their own and see if you can hear that. The snare rolls and hi-hat rolls have the same effect within the song.
Hi-hat rolls can come in really well to give the beat a kind of skip. The trick to getting a really shaky hi-hat is to alter the velocities to have a wave pattern so they have that nice swinging motion, as well as to spread them out and cut them up a bit.Īlso, add some drum reverbs to give the beat a punch. I added simple hi-hats that sound really good together. They don’t sound that interesting because of the snare rolls, but when you put all the drums together, they all come to life. I lowered the velocities of that snare so they don’t interfere with my original snare. The snare roll gives it that change up so at the end of every bar, you can hear the snare roll coming in. I used a simple kick pattern with the snare hitting on every second beat of the kick. I have a kick, a snare, and some snare rolls. We’ll look at the kicks and snares first. You may want to consider separating the original 808s from the ones in the chorus to keep it tidy and tight in the verse and chorus because you really want that kick and 808s to hit at the same time. I usually talk about drops in most of my other songs where I usually leave a gap and let something play on, but with this beat, the intro flows nicely into the chorus mainly because of the aggressive nature of the drums. There’s nothing really to it, just follow the backbone of the song – put the eerie darkness in that beat! Creating Drake Type Beat Drums I also added a lead at the end that continues with that darkness, that eerie feeling. Altogether these sounds should fit well together and make the song sound busy yet have that space for a rapper to shine. The riff I used was also climbing and metronomic.
For the melody, use a simple riff that has a clean arc, but dark at the same time.
They’re all playing the same melodies, they’re all playing the same notes – all I did was ‘copy and paste’ and played them on different synths. I added a little bit of lead as well at the end that continues with that kind of dark, eerie feeling. This is where the melody becomes like “Started from the Bottom”. I also used two more pad sounds (LB PLEASURE and ARpNothern Light) that have melodies. I used the ‘Cave Heart’ synth in massive a lot because it has so much reverb. I used the same notes for both pads, but ‘Beneath the Ice’ is more like a background noise compared to ‘Bell or Pad’, which is like an instrument. The ‘Bell or Pad’ pad I used is almost like a gothic bell, just to give that eerie feeling. I used different pads to fill the spaces. You don’t have to create intricate structures or chords or melodies -it’s all about little notes playing off each other. So it’s all about picking the right sounds and just using little notes. I’m going to talk about the processing layer and show you what kind of simple patterns are in there.Ī lot of these trap songs are not the easiest things to make because they have to be so simple yet so full. I used a really sobby 808 that sounds bland and boring without the rest of the mix, but you can hear the pumping factor of it and it’s pretty heavily processed. I created this beat from the 808s because I really like the way Noah Shebib and Mike Zombie created the pushing movement in the song. At the intro, have the 808 booming at the very start – it will be the backbone of the song.