The Evolution of Beat Making
In recent decades the creative process of beat making has progressed, allowing producers and musicians to compose intricate beats without the requirements of practical technique on drum kits or other instruments. While in the past it was necessary to play and engineer a recording of a drum track, the beat making of today allows producers to focus on subtle mixing techniques of existing samples and loops. In fact it’s quite possible to piece together a track that would be impossible to play with traditional drum kit hardware, for example several kick drum samples could contribute to a complex pattern impossible to execute with two feet on bass drum pedals.
But it’s not all about complex arrangements of notes; the change in feel resulting from subtly shifting a simple track digitally forward or backward in time may be the perfect way to get a beat to sit “in the pocket.” Just slightly delaying a snare drum track may result in a desirable feel that is laid back or behind the beat. And doubling tom fills, panning each track left and right while separating them slightly in time can give the effect of a larger presence in the mix.
In past years, part of the engineering process involved meticulous attention to the tuning of drums and placement of microphones. This almost always meant that the recording facility had an adequate sound isolation booth or room so ambient noise of the neighborhood or other units in the building didn’t find its way into a mix. Now a producer who’s into beat making with samples may not need to use a microphone in the entire production process at all.
Even without recording the original drum strokes or kick drum pedal performances, there is still much that can be done to alter the individual sounds to fit a particular beat. The sounds may be part of a sample library that offers variations of tunings or locations of where the cymbal or drum head was struck. If not, many production software programs offer the ability to change the pitch of audio files, including drum sounds. There is also the possibility of stretching a sound in time for a desired effect, as well as playing it backwards, which is a technique that has been around since reel to reel tape recorders, but is now much more quickly achieved in the digital world. And of course there is a large palette of digital plug-in effects to apply to the tracks.
Whether a track is conceived with the old school techniques of setting up a drum kit in a state-of-the-art recording studio or booting up a favorite audio production software suite on a home computer, beat making continues to be a fascinating and financially rewarding creative pursuit for generations of producers.