How to Make Rap Beats - The Freestyle Mania

If you have been wondering how to make rap beats that will have the listeners breaking the dance floor and grooving at the beats, then here is the recipe.

Recipe #1 - Tweak Your Timing

The common time for rap music is 4/4 but you can try other time signatures. You just need to strike a balance that will sound fantastic and can only be done by experimenting with it. Some new rap songs that I heard recently had this unconventional timing of 2/4, 3/4, 6/8 and even 7/8. Just try something new and the feedback from your audience will tell.

Recipe #2 - Beats and Lyrics need to be in harmony

Lyric first or beat first? This is a subjective question and can be liken to the never ending debate of chicken first or egg first. Well, it doesn't matter here. What is important is both the beats and lyrics must go hand in hand, meaning that the beats shall portray the emotion as in the lyric.

Recipe #3 - You need to identify a beat or drum pattern.

You must identify a drum pattern as the main pattern to maintain the rhythm. There will be many pieces in your drum kit but the first piece to work with is the bass drum. Let me give you an example; in a 4 beat pattern, the bass drum would normally be on the 1st and 3rd beats.

Recipe #4 - Adding the next piece to your drum pattern

Now you are going to add the next piece of drum kit into your drum pattern. Taking back the above example, you can use the snare drum in the 2nd and 4th beat in your drum pattern and form the basic beat. You can of course use other instruments other than the snare drum. Test and tweak to find a sound that compliment to your main pattern.

Recipe #5 - Spice up your beats

Okay, we are at the final step here and could be the most interesting part of beat making. This is where you should let your creativity take charge. You are going to add other instrumentals to your basic drum pattern that you have just made in Recipe #3 & 4. You can add anything that you like but, let your audience be the jury.

The 5 Recipes might seem to be a lot of work but if you are using a good beat maker like Sonic Producer, you won't feel that complicated. All it takes is "click, click, click and save" to have your sickening rap beats ready to rock!

Click Here to see the beat maker in action and pay attention to the sound quality it produces from the sample beats.