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S2E21 – Drum Loops or Melody First

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Producers ask ALL the time..

“Should producers start with their drum loops first, or melodies first, when making a beat”.

My answer for you is TRY BOTH WAYS..

It will allow you to become an extremely versatile music producer, who is able to adapt to ANY SITUATION they are thrown into.

In addition to making drum loops, or programming melodies, beatmakers should definitely know how to sample as well.

Arrangement Chord Progression Chorus Drum Loops Melodies

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S2E21 – Drum Loops or Melody First

  1. Season two, episode 21 drum loops or melody
  2. first. Now, this is a question I actually get very very often.
  3. Should you start with your drum loops first or should you start with the melody
  4. first when it comes to making your beat?
  5. And that's what I will be talking about in this episode.
  6. And to quickly answer it for you, though, is you can do it either way, and each way
  7. will give you a different result.
  8. And it's important actually to try it both ways so that you can learn both ways.
  9. And again, you can become a really versatile producer.
  10. Again, I'll explain it a little bit more in this episode.
  11. So before we get into this episode, again, check out my free book.
  12. It's called Five Keys to a Successful Beat.
  13. You can go to it'sgratuitous.com forward slash five keys.
  14. It'll break down tons of valuable tips that I have learned from being a music
  15. producer. It's totally free. You just got to sign up with your name and email.
  16. Alright, so drum loops or melody first.
  17. Okay. So let's first talk about drum loops.
  18. Now I'll let you guys know that I have a training curriculum about creating your own
  19. drum loops from scratch, and I call it safe spots.
  20. Okay. Inside of Safe Spots, there's also some bonus curriculum, and I call it the
  21. organic tools. So if you're interested, the book is called Safe Spots, Create
  22. Amazing Drum Loops by Riley Weller, or you can search by gratuitous.
  23. Okay, so when we create drum loops, I am talking about using one shot drum
  24. samples. Okay. we are not using pre made drum loops or loops or anything like that.
  25. If you are using loops, yes, it's okay to slice them up and and you know, if you
  26. want to sample with them, that is still finding like your own sound and doing your
  27. own thing. But if you're just using that drum loop, you're clicking and dragging it
  28. in and you're just using it. I really think that you are cheating yourself because
  29. you are better than that. I really think that you can. learn to make your own drum
  30. loops, and you're gonna enjoy making music because that's what it's all about, okay
  31. So when you go to make a drum loop first, the first thing that you want to think
  32. about is tempo, right? How fast is your track?
  33. If you're making a dance track, well, yeah, it's gonna be a little faster.
  34. If it's a hip hop track, it's gonna be a little slower.
  35. And to give you some numbers, so let's say a dance track is like 140 beats per
  36. minute, or sometimes 128 beats per minute is quite a popular beats per minute BPM.
  37. or sometimes I even put it down to like 115, or you know, I usually try to put that
  38. tempo to where the beat sounds best, all right.
  39. one thing also to share with you guys is don't be afraid to nudge your tempo up one
  40. or two once the beat is nearing completion, because I'm telling you, sometimes just
  41. that one or two beats per minute up or down can really help just solidify the beat.
  42. Don't get stuck, all right? Like in a sense of like don't think don't go back and
  43. forth forever trying to change tempo.
  44. You want to set a tempo. I'm just saying that like if you're kind of stuck, tempo is
  45. something that you can play around with as a what I call an organic tool, which I'll
  46. quickly talk about as we go with these drum loops.
  47. So when you start with your drum loop, the easiest way to start is with your kick
  48. and your clap, right? That's what I always tell you guys.
  49. You put your kick on the one, you put your clap on the two and the four, and then
  50. you can start building your drum loop off of that.
  51. It's the easiest way to get going.
  52. Once you build your drum loop, and I usually would build this drum loop with you
  53. know however many drums and claps, and I layer my claps and snares, have percussion
  54. elements, high hats, open hats.
  55. If you want symbols or different percussion elements, whatever you want.
  56. I usually try to get this drum loop essentially almost sounding full by itself..
  57. All right If someone were to listen to the drum loop, it's almost kind of like, oh
  58. yeah, that's kind of a cool little beat.
  59. Now it's time for the melodies.
  60. Okay. So if you're gonna start with the drum loop first, that is the process.
  61. I kind of get my drum loop made with the one-shot drum samples.
  62. If you are looking for high quality drum samples, I suggest the exclusive audio drum
  63. bundle trio. It's on my website at special pricing.
  64. That's the deal I have with exclusive audio.
  65. I use these drums all throughout my courses and books and stuff, so you'll get the
  66. best learning experience. So I make the drum loop, I make sure it's pretty full
  67. sounding, all right, by itself.
  68. Then the melodies come in. Now, when it comes to melodies, you know how many
  69. melodies should you have? And again, that always comes down to once your chorus
  70. comes in, does your track sound full?
  71. All right, that's the biggest thing I'm looking for.
  72. Again, there's two ways we could be making that chorus, right?
  73. So again, we're we made our drum loop.
  74. Now we add our melodies in. I try to add enough melodies in to the chorus sounding
  75. full. Now, again, like I said, there's two ways you can make this chorus.
  76. I don't want to go too much into it in this episode, but one way is to just keep
  77. adding instruments on top of each other so that they all complement each other.
  78. Okay, that's the easiest way. And the reason I like that way the best is because
  79. when you go to arrange your song, you can just add and remove instruments, all
  80. right. You know that every single melody and essentially all the sounds are all
  81. going together because all the sounds are playing at the chorus.
  82. Then when you break apart the song in the verse, right?
  83. You can you can kind of mix and match.
  84. And for example, like if you listen to a lot of my beats, I usually try to make
  85. verse one typically different than like verse two, different than verse three.
  86. And that's because I'm mixing and matching my instruments, but they're all going
  87. together so that when the chorus comes in, they can all flow.
  88. Now, the second way to create a chorus is to actually change up the chord
  89. progression. And that's the reason why that's really tricky, is because not only do
  90. you have to change up the chord progression on one of the melodies, that means that
  91. like all your melodies now have to change.
  92. You can keep the same drum loop because your drums are just your drums, right?
  93. You know, they don't really have like yes, they have pitch, and people talk about
  94. tuning your drums and stuff. I I have honestly like never tuned my drums in my whole
  95. life of making beats. I know that's something that people do when it comes to their
  96. drums, they try to get everything you know in pitch and stuff, but I usually find
  97. that you take just a really good solid drum sample and it just works, right?
  98. But you can tune your drums if you want to get that technical, and that's where a
  99. song takes way longer to make because now you are trying to essentially create like
  100. two different songs, even though it's the same song, but it's like now you have two
  101. different progressions. So the easiest way is a beat maker.
  102. So let's say we start with our drum loop first, our drum loop sounding full.
  103. We start adding in our instruments.
  104. I personally am looking for a full chorus so that let's say we we were in the verse
  105. and it hits the chorus. Does it sound full and complete?
  106. Because again, it's always a little tricky if you don't have vocals.
  107. If you have vocals, you don't need as many instruments because the human voice is
  108. just so powerful by itself, right?
  109. Like we listen to the singing, we listen to the words, and it's more emotional.
  110. If you don't have a vocal, you're gonna have to add probably a couple more
  111. instruments, and it's hard to know when that beat is complete and when it's full.
  112. But let's say you have a complete beat, so that is the easiest way to build the
  113. chorus. Or again, you can change up the chord progression, which is getting a little
  114. bit more technical and tricky because now you have to actually change up all your
  115. other instruments for that chorus.
  116. Then when it goes to the verse, you go back to the original chord progression.
  117. Okay. So that's the drum loop side of things.
  118. Now on the melody side of things, this is a little bit different.
  119. Now you are starting with your melodies, right?
  120. So, for example, I like to always play on a real piano.
  121. There's something about a real piano that I just find that I can create catchier
  122. melodies. And typically, how I used to make my beats a lot is I used to wake up in
  123. the morning, I would go on the real piano, I'd play my melodies.
  124. As soon as I found something really, really catchy, I'd be like, okay, that's that's
  125. the beat I'm working on today.
  126. And then I'd go downstairs and then I'd build a drum loop over top of that catchy
  127. melody. And then, you know, then you start adding your melodies on top of it.
  128. And then again, that same theory of there's only two ways to kind of create the
  129. chorus. And I usually always just keep stacking my instruments on top of each other.
  130. It's the easiest way because then you can mix and match throughout your track and
  131. you can start flowing so fast as a producer, right?
  132. So essentially there is no right or wrong way, but I do suggest that you guys
  133. try to start with your drum loop first and also try to start with your melodies
  134. first. If you're always doing it the same way, mix it up.
  135. Try it. Okay. Today, try with drum loops first.
  136. Tomorrow, try with melodies first.
  137. what this is gonna do is it's just gonna force you to learn how to make things work
  138. no matter what situation you're in.
  139. All right, it's gonna make you really versatile.
  140. One last thing I will talk about is try different genres.
  141. I always find that a lot of people in you know, in life, not just in like the music
  142. industry, people are afraid to try different things from what's popular or what's
  143. in. So for me, if you again, if you check out my beat tapes, I have tons of beat
  144. tapes. It's beat tapes by gratuitous, they're on Spotify or wherever you stream
  145. music. I have nine beat tapes out there, right?
  146. They're dance tracks, hip hop tracks, emotional tracks.
  147. It's all about having fun with music, enjoying music, and really like what kind of
  148. music do you like and enjoy? When I was, you know, a child, I listened to so much
  149. music. My mom would always have different music on in the house.
  150. It'd always be like, you know, dancing.
  151. I was never like I only listen to one genre.
  152. When I listen to music, I love listening to tons of different styles of music.
  153. And so I hope that kind of reflects that, you know, in my beats, that that's why I'm
  154. not always doing dance tracks.
  155. So that's why I'm not always doing like hip hop kind of tracks.
  156. Now I understand from a sales point of view in the music industry that with
  157. someone's searching, they want a hip hop beat.
  158. Yeah, well, like that's kind of how it works.
  159. Like, we as humans, we have to categorize certain things into a
  160. category. And it's kind of annoying because for me, it's like I I honestly don't
  161. know what category to put my music in sometimes if I'm uploading it.
  162. It's just like, well, where do I put my music?
  163. And that's the hardest thing of you know, quote unquote being found or being, you
  164. know, well known is like people this is a kind of a joke I made with my mom.
  165. It's like, let's say somebody makes polka music, all right?
  166. They make polka music, you know.
  167. You know, like if they're gonna venture out and say, Oh, yeah, we made a hip-hop
  168. track, it's like no one's gonna find their hip-hop track.
  169. Because if they know that person's name, they know that person for polka, right?
  170. And and so all I'm trying to say is like I get it, I get it from a from a sales
  171. point of view, but from a creative music production point of view, if that is how
  172. you are approaching it and you know, making beats, eventually things are gonna get
  173. dry and boring for you. You want things to be fun, you wanna enjoy it, and
  174. honestly, so like I said, start with your drum loop today, try making a beat with a
  175. drum loop tomorrow, try with a melody tomorrow, and then the next day, try a hip-hop
  176. track. The next day, try a dance track.
  177. And dance tracks are a little more simple sometimes because for the most part, when
  178. it comes to the drum loop, it's just a kick drum on one, two, three, four, right?
  179. Hip-hop tracks, try them because it's really gonna stretch your skills for
  180. drum loops because hip-hop, that's the reason why I called my free book, The Five
  181. Keys to a Successful Beat. I called it so simple, it becomes creative.
  182. If you listen to hip hop tracks, they are some of the most catchy, some of the most
  183. simple kind of beats, but they're some of the most catchy beats.
  184. And it's and again, I'll repeat it, it's because it's so simple.
  185. But the thing is, you go to try to recreate a hip-hop track, and it's actually
  186. really hard because it's so simple that it was creative, right?
  187. And so that is the goal of making catchy beats, is it's the simple, you know, they
  188. all go together. And if you can learn to create hip-hop drum loops, and then so for
  189. example, if you really like to create dance music.
  190. If that's your thing, I still suggest try to make a hip-hop drum loop.
  191. Like put that BPM to like 94 beats per minute.
  192. Try a drum loop and then try to create just a little melody.
  193. All right, it's really gonna stretch your skills as a music producer to really enjoy
  194. what you're doing. and that's all I got for you guys..
  195. Okay So again, check out that free book, The Five Keys to a Successful Beat.
  196. So simple it becomes creative.
  197. Just go to it'sgratuitous.com forward slash five keys.
  198. And one last thing I'll ask from you guys.
  199. if you do listen to this podcast, wherever you listen to it, if you can leave a
  200. review, all that stuff really, really helps.
  201. So thank you so much for listening, and I'll talk to you in the next episode.
  202. Be sure to visit the website it'sgratuitous.com and check out my FL Studio training
  203. platform.
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