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Season 2 ·

S2E12 – Making a Beat Vs. Knowing Your DAW

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It’s important to understand what your end result goal is with music.

We all want to make the beat. The beat is what is the most fun, it’s what people dance and sing to, and is what gets all the credit. But not everyone can make a beat!

You see, most people can learn the DAW, because that is easy to eventually understand. But making a beat is not able to be taught in the same way.

Making a beat comes from inspiration, ingenuity, and being original.

Not every beat is going to be the best, but once you make that special beat, is when it all will start taking off for you. It’s like you had your first taste, and you want more.

Again, that’s what my FL Studio training platform offers. It teaches you how to make a beat, it shows you many secrets and techniques, and will advance you fast! (You also learn how to use the DAW in my platform, but knowing the DAW is a given.. you must know your DAW, which anyone can learn, but not everyone can make a beat, and that’s what my business is.. teaching you how to make beats from scratch in FL Studio!)

Enjoy the episode, and don’t forget to visit the website https://itsGratuiTous.com !

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S2E12 – Making a Beat Vs. Knowing Your DAW

  1. Season two, episode 12, making a beat versus knowing your
  2. doll. These are two tremendously different things.
  3. Knowing your doll is just learning the music program.
  4. It's no different than learning how to use something like Photoshop or learning like
  5. a video editor. But if you've just learned your video editor, you know, you're not
  6. going to be making nice movies in terms of color grading and making that
  7. picture look the most professional it can look.
  8. And it's the same thing with making a beat.
  9. All right. You can learn the music program, you can learn how to use EQ, you can
  10. learn compression. But the question is, do you know how to make the beat?
  11. And that's what I always try to teach you guys is how to make the beat.
  12. How to again get away from watching videos, you know, whether it be my courses or
  13. whether it be YouTube videos, so that you can sit there, make your own music, make
  14. your own beats with your own chords, your own melodies, and create beautiful
  15. emotional music. Before we get into the episode, again, if you guys want to get my
  16. free book, it's called Five Keys to a Successful Beat.
  17. So simple it becomes creative.
  18. Just go to it's gratuitous.com forward slash five keys.
  19. So principle number one is stay inside your DAW and don't come out.
  20. I talked to you about this in the last episode, but you have to stay inside your
  21. music program. You have to spend a lot of time in there.
  22. Do not be going out and watching you know YouTube videos.
  23. You have to figure things out for yourself.
  24. And when you get stuck, then you can come out, search for your answer, whether it be
  25. article, video, whatever. Once you have your answer, get back in your music program.
  26. Okay. Principle number two is go directly to the source for your information.
  27. For whatever reason, we as humans we hate the help manual.
  28. Okay. FL Studio's help manual is amazing.
  29. It has hot spots, which means that you can click the images, and it's going to bring
  30. you to that section within the help manual when you click on an image.
  31. But going to the source for your information is always going to allow you to get the
  32. highest quality of information most of the time.
  33. You know, usually manuals are pretty good.
  34. Going to the manual is by far the best way to get your information.
  35. Listening to me or listening to someone else is not the manual.
  36. Okay. Principle number three. Your mouse is the easiest approach in
  37. FL Studio. Alright. So when I first started, I was using my mouse and my MIDI
  38. keyboard, and then I started getting into oh, I want to get some hands-on because
  39. that's what you see in the real studios, right?
  40. But when you're making beats inside of FL Studio, FL Studio doesn't really
  41. accelerate when it comes to hands-on.
  42. FL Studio accelerates with your mouse.
  43. It're gonna be able to work faster, you're
  44. gonna be able to really get it done with a mouse.
  45. So I'll get I'll tell you though, so you can map knobs and sliders in FL Studio, and
  46. I even went as far as to purchase Mackey control universal.
  47. You can look it up. Now they have a USB version.
  48. Back in the day it was only MIDI cables, but it's a motorized fader MIDI
  49. controller. So if you were to click a mixer insert, a fader and move it up and
  50. down with your mouse, it would move it on the controller because it's motorized.
  51. I still have it, it's really really cool.
  52. Maybe I'll bring it out one day just to show you guys.
  53. But what I'm saying is the easiest approach is the mouse.
  54. It's really easy to think, oh, I need hands on.
  55. Oh, I think it's gonna give me a better experience.
  56. I'm gonna enjoy music making more.
  57. No, in my opinion, you want high quality plugins.
  58. I talked to you about that in the last episode.
  59. So selecting the right plugins as a producer.
  60. I like Fab filter plugins. I don't have tons of plugins.
  61. I also don't have tons of sounds.
  62. if you guys check out my safe spots book, you guys will see that my drum kit folder,
  63. I think is only like four to six gigabytes of sounds.
  64. Again, that doesn't include my instruments like VSTs because those are always you
  65. know bigger. But for drum kits, one-shot drum samples, all right.
  66. So, you know, when you don't have tons of sounds, it allows your folder to be
  67. smaller, it allows your backups to be quicker.
  68. So you gotta think in terms of quality, variety, as well as workflow, and that's
  69. what I always try to teach you guys, okay.
  70. I'll just hop to principle number four.
  71. it's only fair if volume is fair.
  72. And so, what this means is that when we are using tools like EQ or compression, when
  73. we turn off and on the plugin or we switch between A and B, we want to try and get a
  74. fair volume comparison.. This is one of my golden pillars
  75. So, course is coming out soon called Five Golden Pillars of Music Production.
  76. And you want to be making sure that your volume is fair when you're using EQ and
  77. compression. If you're not, you really don't know if your settings are
  78. helping, you know, if they're actually benefiting or harming your music, and so you
  79. just make sure that the volume is the same when you turn it off and on.
  80. So on an EQ, let's just say you boost some highs.
  81. So now the volume is going to be louder when you turn it off and on.
  82. Many times these EQs and these compressors they have a master volume.
  83. So if you boost, then you might want to just turn down the master volume by like you
  84. know, one decibel or point five decibel, sometimes just like that.
  85. You don't have to spend tons of time here, but generally you want it to be a fair
  86. volume comparison. Now, again, I talked to you about fab filter plugins.
  87. So Pro Q3 has an auto gain compensation, which is really really awesome because
  88. you just enable it with a button, and if you boost or if you cut, it's helping
  89. compensate that volume for you automatically.
  90. So you're able to adjust your EQ and it's keeping the volume similar for you.
  91. I do find that I have to maybe adjust it by like 0.25 or 0.5 here and there for like
  92. the final. Do I like it more or after, especially in like the mastering stages?
  93. But as you're mixing your music, you know, if you want to like let's say go to 500
  94. hertz and like cut it by four decibels, five decibels, you just do it nice and
  95. quick, and it automatically adjusts that volume for you.
  96. So that's as you know, I tell you, it's one of my golden pillars of fair volume
  97. comparison, right?. A and B and fair volume comparison
  98. And when you get a tool like Fab Filter Pro Q3, it does it for you automatically.
  99. So it's just a workflow thing.
  100. You know, you can do this by manually doing it.
  101. I've done it for years that way, because Pro Q3 was not always out, and I don't
  102. think they had auto gain in Pro Q, because if you watch my courses, I was always
  103. using Pro Q, the first version, and after about I think five or six years, then I
  104. finally upgraded to Pro Q3. And if you want more information on what Fab filter
  105. plugins to buy, I have written an article on my website.
  106. You guys can just use the search bar, just maybe search Fab Filter, and it will
  107. bring you there. Okay, so there's more principles, there's more keys.
  108. I'm not gonna cover all of them in this episode, but again, if you want that free
  109. book, just download it at it's gratuitous.com forward slash five keys.
  110. The book is called Five Keys to a Successful Beat.
  111. So simple it becomes creative.
  112. I give you my seven chord principles of being a music producer and five keys to a
  113. successful beat, and we covered about four of them already.
  114. But this episode, I want to talk to you about making a beat versus knowing your
  115. DAW. Now, in the last episode, I talked to you about this original compositions,
  116. which is making your own melodies, right?
  117. With a MIDI keyboard, you can play your melodies.
  118. And I like using a MIDI keyboard because it helps us keep our velocities, keeps your
  119. music more natural. And the other way to make a B is sampling, all right.
  120. And to avoid any copyright issues, you can just sample your own music.
  121. And again, I have a course inside my platform for that.
  122. So sampling is when again, you have a loop, you chop it up, and you make a melody
  123. out of that loop. It's a very, very special way of making beats..
  124. It makes beats much different than original compositions
  125. So that's what I'm saying in terms of making a beat.
  126. Okay. Now, to make a beat, when we talk about genres, dance
  127. music, hip hop, pop, top 40. Now, if we break it down
  128. even further, so let's say we talk about dance again.
  129. Well, what kind of dance music are we making?
  130. Are we making like EDM? Are you making like tropical?
  131. Are we making, you know, so those are more current dance genres.
  132. But what I'm trying to say is each of these genres have their own special
  133. techniques. So I like to do dance music, hip hop, you know, top 40 kind of
  134. beats. But what I'm trying to say is to make the beat
  135. requires a lot of different knowledge, which is totally separate from knowing how to
  136. use your DAW. And so when you are brand new, you have to learn
  137. your DAW. You have to learn how to use this music program, and it's overwhelming.
  138. But once you learn how to use it, you'll you will figure out that every single music
  139. program, every DAW is essentially almost the same, especially nowadays.
  140. They've come a really, really far away.
  141. innovation really hasn't, you know, you know, we haven't seen anything really big
  142. come out from DAWs in the last like five, 10 years.
  143. Sure, there's improvements for workflow or maybe new features added, but audio
  144. for like the last like 50 years hasn't been essentially like the same, right?
  145. 16 bit, 44.1 was like CD. quality for years
  146. If you're talking about movies, you know it's 24 bit, 40, 48k, 48,000
  147. Hertz. It really hasn't gotten further than that.
  148. And then you talk about high sample rates, and it's like, okay, but our ears can
  149. only hear up to 20,000 hertz. So why are we working in 192?
  150. You know, so this comes down more into the science of audio and like the math of
  151. audio, which is it gets way too technical, which is good, it's good to know if you
  152. want to take it to that level.
  153. But if you are just wanting to make the beat, right, you want to keep it as simple
  154. as possible, especially when you're trying to learn.
  155. So you first have to learn your DAW, and anybody can learn your DAW.
  156. I gave you the example in the last episode that I could teach my dad how to use the
  157. DAW, but give him five years, 10 years, will he ever learn how to make the
  158. beat? Right? So when I'm speaking to you, I'm trying to teach you how to make the
  159. beat. So, first of all, we have to learn the music program, and I have courses on
  160. that. But the other courses, like such as like arrangement, the mixer, the mixer is
  161. where it really all happens. Sure, you can make your melodies and everything, but
  162. the mixer is where it really happens.
  163. You add your effects on, you adjust your your levels, you have to decide, you know,
  164. what is the main element in this track.
  165. So when it comes to making the beat, there is so many different like you know,
  166. little secrets, different little techniques that you have to learn, and especially
  167. pertaining to your genre that you want to create.
  168. Because if we talk about hip hop, hip hop, if you really really look at hip hop, a
  169. lot of the melodies and a lot of like the drum loops and the techniques, they're so
  170. simple that they become creative.
  171. And that's the reason why I I gave my free book there, The Five Keys to a Successful
  172. Beat. the subheading is so simple it becomes creative, and that's
  173. what I always feel about hip-hop.
  174. Okay, it's very, very simple, but it's so simple that it becomes creative, and that
  175. is what you want to learn as a beat maker.
  176. You want to learn the secrets, you want to learn the tricks, the techniques, so that
  177. when you're making the beat, you can use these back pocket tools.
  178. That you know, I always talk to you about these back pocket tools.
  179. You want to be learning all these different tricks so that if the beat is working or
  180. if it isn't working, you can keep trying these different tools at different times
  181. to make that beat work. Because not every single beat works, some beats are gonna
  182. just work right out of the gate.
  183. You know, you make your drum loop, you play your first melody, you add another
  184. melody, and you're just like, wow, this beat's going together so good, and it
  185. becomes special. But not every beat is special, not every beat is like the
  186. best. Some beats you gotta work at harder than others.
  187. But what I'm trying to say is anybody can learn the daw, anybody can learn the
  188. music program, but you want to get to the point where you can learn how to make a
  189. beat. And I always stress you want to be learning how to create your own beats, your
  190. own style, not what's currently in, not the trends, because the trends change, and
  191. what's gonna happen is the trends will change on you, and you as a producer are
  192. gonna have to learn the new skills.
  193. So, my advice to you is the different genres that you like and the ones that you've
  194. listened to growing up.. Try and find the secret techniques in those genres
  195. And what's going to happen is over time you're going to learn these techniques,
  196. they're going to become a part of your sound and your style, right?
  197. Because really we're we've all been influenced by the things that we've listened to
  198. or the things that we've watched as as children.
  199. And now we're at this stage where if you're making the music, like you are now
  200. creating it for other people to listen to, and so you know, you are becoming
  201. kind of like a role model, and it's important that when you are at this level of a
  202. role model that you are being a role model to people, all right?
  203. Because it gets serious like that, and it happens fast.
  204. So I'm gonna wrap up this episode here, but it's important for you to understand
  205. that anybody can learn your music program, okay.
  206. But here on this podcast and on my website, it's gratuitous.com.
  207. I'm trying to teach you how to make a beat.
  208. Now, again, my teaching approach applies to any genre, not so much
  209. trap because trap does work with a lot of like loops and stuff.
  210. I'm not I'm not into like audio recordings and loops unless it's like vocals.
  211. I'm mainly concerned with MIDI, right?
  212. We have our virtual instruments, we play our notes, we have our one shot drum
  213. samples, we make our drum loops from scratch.
  214. Then how can we process them further?
  215. Okay, so again, there's so much information inside my platform.
  216. There's 26 courses. For more information, you can go to it's gratuitous.com forward
  217. slash courses. Again, always feel free to reach out to me at high at its
  218. gratuitous.com. Visit the website, and I'll talk to you guys in the next
  219. episode.
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