Since I started producing beats I have always trying to find what factors distinguish an okay beat with a killer banger. I become obsessed with making my Hip Hop drums sound better. But…What’s the key?. During the first months, I thought the key was to come up with the best musical arrangement ever. After that, I convinced myself the most important thing was to add more and more instruments. Maybe my beats weren’t good enough because I needed to buy more plugins, more synthesizers, more samplers… I was wrong the whole time.
So…What’s the key to making great Hip-Hop / Trap Beats? THE GROOVE!
The groove is that factor with makes people ‘break their necks’ dancing to the music. Something so easy at first sight but sometimes so complex to achieve. The groove of our beat also allows the rapper or the singer to flow much better on the beat.
Do you want to know how to improve drastically your beats’ groove? Keep reading these 5 tips!
1. Take your time to choose the samples
A big rookie mistake is picking whatever you find first. “This sounds okay, I will fix it later during the mix” “I will change it with EQ” Wrong!. Take your time until you find the sound you have in your head. This way you will be off with a good start and end up saving time.
2. Try ‘playing’ instead of programming your Hip Hop Drums
You don’t have to be the next John Bonham to play your drums with the keyboard or pads. If you don’t have any MIDI controller I encourage you to get one. You can find pretty cheap ones and they will allow you to play whatever you need. Furthermore, you don’t have to play the whole drum set at the same time!. If you are a beginner is completely fine to play it by layers, first the snare, after the kick, hi-hats etc. And don’t worry if you have to edit manually or quantize something later, that’s okay. The point here is to try to achieve that human groove, that little imperfections humans make when they are actually playing. Over time, you will find that playing your Hip-Hop drums will turn out in a more natural result.
3. Don’t over quantize
Remember Hip-Hop is about flowing on the beat. Traditionally, beatmakers have always used sampled drum breaks played by soul, jazz or rock drummers to transport that groove and ‘imperfect’ tempo to their beats. It just sounds pleasant to our ears. We don’t want grooves and rhythms that sound robotic and completely fixed to the grid. It is perfectly fine to correct excessive off-grid notes but be careful quantizing everything 100%.
If you are confused about terms like ‘Quantize’, ‘Gride’, ‘Velocity’ etc, I encourage you to check this website MIDIWORLD. There you can find the theory behind these terms to understand how MIDI works.
4.Layering your samples
This will helps us when it comes to creating a richer and more appealing sound. For instance, you can ‘double’ your snare sample at certain points to create a subtle variation. You can do the same with the different drum elements in your beat, hi-hat, crashes etc. Change, alter, modify or layer your samples along the track. This will be unappreciated by the listener at the first moment but it will definitely make your beat more catchy. In order to layer several samples to create one unique sound, you will need to EQ and filter each layer properly.
If you want to learn how to use EQ while you are mixing or producing check this post.
5. Change the ‘Velocity’
The velocity factor is a MIDI value between 0 and 127. We assign velocity to each note to determine the force which the sample is played. This will give you an idea about what happens if you keep a fixed Velocity value along with the whole song. All the hits will sound with the same intensity, and therefore, robotic and boring. Think about a real drummer playing, can he hit the snare every time with the same strength?. When you are programming a default velocity value will be set for all the MIDI notes. Try changing them over time, assigning higher Velocity values to empathize or lower values to create a softer contrast.
Conclusion
Adding groove to our Hip Hop drums is about humanizing them. The better grooves and hits of the Hip Hop history probably come from sampled drum breaks. Drum breaks played by great drummers with a groove that makes us shake our necks and hit the floor to the tempo. Remember, the groove is the key to achieve a banger beat.
