Mar 21, 2020 Rated 4.3 star on Google Play, it’s a good alternative for GarageBand. It provides the following sounds categories and loop samples: Bass, Guitar, Trap & Future Bass One Shot, Trap Loops, Hip Hop, Metal Guitar Loops, Metal Guitar One Shot, Drum & Bass, Kick, Clap, Piano, Piano Loops and a song maker to compose music. Garageband For PC Beats: The garageband for windows is one of the best methods to create your own music. It also showcases your creativity and personal style. The garageband beats show you all kinds of beats you can select such as Hard Trap Beat, Hip-Hop, Rap Beat and many more. Blend is the collaboration network for music creators. Share in-progress projects and discover tutorials, plugins and sample packs from other producers.
In this tutorial today, I’m going to show you how I would make a very simple trap beat in Garageband.
I should probably start out with a few disclaimers to protect myself from getting eviscerated in the comments.
Truthfully, I can’t show you how to make the best trap beat around and also score you a #1 hit on the Billboard 100, because I’ve done neither of those things, but I can get you started down the right path.
Moreover, I’m not an expert on Trap Music. From an outsider looking in, all I can do is show you how I would make a Trap Beat if I was going to create one – stamped with my individual style – for a client.
What This Tutorial Will Include
For this tutorial, I created a track and called it “Gunshots.”
I’ll explain the simple music theory behind the melodies, including chords, key signatures, scales, and modes. I’ll assume that you know almost nothing about music theory.
I should also add that it’s not necessary at all to learn music theory if you want to create cool songs and melodies. As I mentioned before, it’s mostly just a way of communicating efficiently with other musicians.
In fact, when I wrote this song, I had no idea what scales or modes I was using. I just created a simple chord progression, and then messed around until I found something that sounded cool.
Lets Begin
Characteristics Of Trap Music
There are a few qualities of trap music which many people have grown accustomed to. I’m going to outline just a few of those things right now.
Obviously, there are other thematic principles and characteristics related to the lyrics and culture, but we’re talking about the musical aspects only for the sake of this tutorial.
Here are some of the most stand-out features of trap music:
The snare on every third beat.
Roland TR-808 (Boutique 808s) plays a key role
Uses the Trap drum-kit which has its very own sound.
Double or Triple Time hi-hats.
In many cases, a dark-vibe
Usually created with a Minor Key signature or Aeolian Mode.
Tracks are typically between 100 and 175 Beats Per Minute but usually hovers around 145 – according to DJ Johnny Terror.
Often incorporates the use of flutes
Often uses chants/sirens/other miscellaneous sounds.
Without further ado…
Here’s the beat that I’ll show you how I made.
The actual process
Obviously, the first thing you want to do is create a new project in Garageband.
You could use the Hip-Hop template, but that would give you sounds and drum-kits that are more basic Hip-Hop, like Boom Bap, rather than a Trap beat.
1) Load the ‘Trap Door” drum-kit.
The first important step is to load up the Trap Door drum kit – found in the Electronic Drum Kit category near the very bottom.
I chose this as the first step, because the drum-kit commonly used by Trap producers is the most easily recognized characteristic.
Of course, there are other aspects to the style, but for the most part, that drum kit is going to make the listener think, “Oh, this sounds like a trap beat.”
Bonus tip: (There is also a great Trap Set that comes with the Drum Pro plug-in that I wrote about in this article here. You can find the Drum Pro plug-in at VST4Free.com)
2) Make the First Melody
I usually start with the melody afterward, and then I make the rhythm section because I guess I would say that I’m more of a melody rather than a rhythm-focused kind of a guy.
In this particular track, I wrote a melody using a simple C Minor chord, C-Eb, G, using the Classic Clean guitar setting, which you can find in the category, “Guitar,” in the Software Instruments tracks.
Now, you don’t have to make a beat using a minor key signature or minor chord progression, but a minor key signature is pretty common.
Thinking of Post-Malone’s Trap-influenced “Rockstar,” in particular, that track has a strong minor tonality.
It’s easily one of the most minor pop hits I’ve heard in a while, and it doesn’t have a switch to a Major Key signature at any point in the song.
If that isn’t Trap enough for you, Dave East and 2 Chainz’s track, “Can’t Ignore.”
That song is in D Minor and it really emphasizes the tonal center (the dominant note of the song, the note on which the rest of the track revolves) throughout the entire track by coming back to the D note repeatedly with both the piano and the 808s.
In the image you can see below, you can check out the simple chord on which the entire song (my song) is based, C Minor.
When I first began messing around with the MIDI keyboard, the C minor chord was my go-to chord. I literally just played around with that chord, C Eb, and G.
There are 12 notes in standard Western notation, C, Db, D, Eb, E, F, (F# or Gb), G, Ab, A, B, and Bb. Some of these notes have different ways of describing them, for instance, Gb can actually be F#.
Anyway, chords are known as triads, because there are literally 3 notes in it, hence the use of the “tri” prefix. Putting that to good use, a C Major chord means it’s the Root, the Third, and the Fifth.
Essentially, you just pick the root, in this case, C, and then the 3rd, E, and then G is the 5th because it’s literally the 5th note from C.
See:
C(1), D(2), E(3), F(4), G(5).
If you want to make the chord a minor, you use a flat on the third, which makes it a minor third. Now, it’s C, Eb, G = a C minor chord.
There are literally three notes in the entire chord progression in my song, “Gunshots.”
Assuming you’re an absolute beginner, you can play around with that chord to get a handle on the sound.
If you wanted to change it to a minor sound, you would just raise the Eb to instead, an E, which looks like this on the keyboard.
The great thing about this is that you can actually move these chords around all over the keyboard.
Additionally, once you’ve learned a couple of different shapes, you can create entirely different sounds just by modifying the formula a little bit.
3) Additional Melodies To Fill Things Out
After I’ve built the foundation of a melody, which is usually some kind of chord or chord progression I love, I move on to filling out the melody with other instruments.
In this case, I used two Steinway Grand Pianos for additional melodies.
You’ll notice that adding another melodic line to a simple chord like that is already enough for a melody. Building a cool sounding melody really doesn’t have to be rocket science.
After making a simple C Minor chord as my melody, I used a Steinway Grand Piano and fooled around until I found something else that sounded cool, which just happened to be a C, but a much higher C note (2 Octaves higher).
Once I established a nice 3-note melody over top of the simple C Minor chord, I basically just messed around on the Steinway Grand Piano until I created something good, while keeping in mind the notes I used in the chord as a basis for the rest of the song.
In the case of this track, I played through a C Minor scale over top of a C Minor chord.
C, D, Eb, F, G, Ab, Bb.
However, the C Minor scale had a raised ‘A’ – a raised sixth degree of the scale, Which means that it’s actually the C Dorian mode, the Bb Major scale with its tonal center on the C, over top of the C Minor Chord.
If you took a chance and listened to the song I created, you’ll notice it has that jazzy sound, courtesy of the Dorian mode.
b) On the C Minor scale, I used a 12-Stage Phaser which you can set up in the plug-ins down in the smart controls. I set it to 71% feedback.
The picture below shows the Piano Roll for the Piano melody as well, not the three-note melody, or the Chord Progression, but the arpeggio that plays in the background.
4) Hi-Hats, Cymbals, and Shakers
Creating the hi-hats is probably the easiest part, due to the fact they’re so mathematical and precise in trap music.
For instance, you could easily just create each hi-hat exactly on the grid-line, or every other grid-line, and it’ll sound decent.
In this track, in particular, there is a hi-hat on every other grid-line. You’ll quickly pick up on how the hi-hats work in trap music. Also, you’ll see the two notes that are at a different level, those are the cymbals.
In other words, the hi-hats are on the eighth note, and the cymbal is every fourth beat.
Once you’ve grasped this, you can start adding more hi-hat notes to make them sound far more sophisticated.
For example, rather than having a hi-hat on every other grid line, you could have one short part where there is a hi-hat on every single line, and then it goes back to just every other-grid line, which means that it’ll have that machine gun sound.
It’s hard to explain, but producers do it quite a lot in Trap music. The hi-hats are kind of like the way Metallica plays the main guitar riff of “Battery,” off of Master Of Puppets.
5) Creating the Kick and Snare
When creating the kick and snare, for me, it’s honestly as simple as making a beat the same way you would tap on your desk along to a song, or play the mock drums while in class like I always did in high school.
By that, I mean that most people can think of a beat right away just by banging on a table. It’s pretty intuitive and comes naturally to most people.
First things first, make sure your Trap Door kit is loaded up.
b) Have the octave set at ‘C1’ so you’re actually playing notes
c) The ‘A’ key on your keyboard is the Kick, and the ‘S’ key, is the snare. Just fool around with those two keys until you’ve created a cool kick and snare combination, hit the “Record” button, and then record it.
After you’ve created the rhythm section, you can go back manually and push the notes over closer to the grid-line.
There’s a much better way of doing this called the Quantizer function, however, it will change every note by a certain degree through automation.
I use it sometimes, but not always.
The truth is that the quantizer function can make everything sound a bit mechanical because everything is just a bit too perfect, or alternatively, the automation will make the beats not fall in line the way you wanted.
Assuming you want to use it, I’ll briefly explain to you how to use it here:
How to Use the Quantizer Function
By using the Quantize function, you can actually have Garageband fix all of the imperfections for you. The Quantize function is in the Piano Roll in the bottom section of the Smart Controls.
Click on the drop-down menu that has “Time Quantize” over top of it, and set it to 16th notes or 8th notes, depending on just how much work you want Garageband to do for you.
What this does, is it brings all of your MIDI notes exactly on the grid-line, that way everything sounds synchronized.
6) Creating the Bass with 808s/Deep Sub Bass Synth
In Garageband, you basically have a couple of different options for writing a bass-line using stock plug-ins and software instruments. We have Boutique 808s as well as the Deep Sub Bass synthesizer.
I’ll typically create one bass-line with an instrument and then copy and paste it into another software instrument track, just to see which one sounds better, the Deep Sub Bass, or the Boutique 808.
Remember above when I said that we used a C Minor chord for the main foundation of the song?
That will come in handy later on when I’m writing the bass-line. For instance, I’ll usually test out the notes of the chord on the bass-line, just to see how it sounds.
So, in this case, I’ll play the root note, C, as the primary bass-line to see what that sounds like, and then I’ll mess around with the notes of the chord, (C, Eb, and G) until I’ve found something that sounds cool.
You can see from the picture below that the bass-line isn’t overly complicated.
The notes of C Minor are thus: C, Eb, F, G, Ab, Bb, C, D. Playing any one of those notes with your bass-line over a C Minor chord will work and sound alright.
Of course, you don’t have to JUST use those notes. It’s just a basic guidelineso you have an idea of what can be played.
b) Lining up the Kick and Bass
Once you’ve played about the bass-instrument, and crafted something you’re into, make sure to line up some of those notes with the Kick drum, to make sure you get that hard bass sound that people love to blast in their cars.
Explained in another way, you want to make your bass-line notes, or at least some of them, start on the same grid-line as the kick.
The reason for this is that it combines the attack of the kick with the bass-line and literally makes the track pump and bang.
7) EQ, Compression, Mastering, and Finally Uploading The Track
After you’ve made yourself a simple trap beat, following the guideline I laid out for you above, it’s time to mix and master everything. Like a lot of things in life, people love to over complicate things.
I’m not sure if it’s a type of procrastination or what, but personally, I’ve found that the less I mess around in this phase the better. Then again, I’m not a mixing master, so maybe there’s something I’m missing. A
a) First thing I normally do, I head over to the master volume output meter and I set to +0 dB.
I’ve heard people say this level doesn’t matter, but I’ve found that when I have it cranked when I put it through the mixing and mastering process afterward, my mix ends up distorted, so I always make sure to turn it down.
b) Next thing I do, is I listen closely to the track together. I don’t listen to each track individually, I listen to everything as one song, as one unit. Turning up and down each VU metre as I see fit.
Bonus Tip: The Mixing and Mastering phase will likely make your hi-hats “hiss” too much, especially if you’ve increased the hi-end of your mix.So keep in mind that you want to turn down the loud drum parts a bit more than others.
c) Start playing the song, and pay close to attention to the colour of each individual track’s VU meter. At no point, ever, should the Green bar turn into Red.
You want the VU meters to hover in the green for most of the song, but during the loudest parts, the meter can go into the yellow.
d) EQ the Deep Sub Bass/Boutique 808 as well as the Kick. For the bass line, I’ll always drop the high frequencies because there’s no reason for them to be there.
*To access the EQ for individual Track Regions, double-click on the Track Region, and typically, there will be two options, “Control,” and “EQ.”
You can see from the image below, that I’ve given a little boost at 145 hz, and 35 hz, usually by around +3.5-4.0 dB.
There’s no reason to go too far ahead of +4 dB because you’ll end up just messing up your mix. However, if you think increasing the frequency by +15dB somewhere sounds good, give it a whirl, and tell me how it turns out.
e) Where you boosted the sound of the kick, subtract from the bass, to make room for that hard kick sound. This part isn’t that necessary for a beginner, so I won’t go into much detail.
f) Add a bit of distortion on the Boutique 808/Deep Sub Bass to make it sound a bit dirty.
To find distortion, just go into the plug-ins and find it in the drop-down menu. You can see it in the image I posted below:
The key to using distortion is to not use it too much. It’s kind of like a spice, like cayenne pepper.
You can see from the image below, that I have the Distortion set at +1.5 dB, and then the Output is turned down to -6.0dB.
The output is turned down because distortion makes the bass so much louder.
Basically, I just turned down the distortion to the point where the volume doesn’t change, but the gritty sound as a consequence of the distortion has stayed the same.
Now that you’ve adjusted everything to your liking, it’s time to Export the track to your Desktop.
8) Export As An AIFF File
To do this, click on the Tab in the top toolbar that says, “Share.”
Then, go down where it says, “Export Song To Hardrive.”
Make sure you choose the option, AIFF.
Export it to your desktop, that way you have a much easier time finding it.
9) Open A New File – Drag And Drop AIFF File Back Into Garageband
Once you’ve dragged and dropped the file back into Garageband, you can start adjusting the EQ, Compressor, Multipressor, and so on and so forth.
For the sake of this tutorial, I’m only going to show you what adjustments I made to my track, before finally exporting it into iTunes.
There are literally tons of things you can do during this phase, and all of it is far beyond the scope of this brief tutorial. For that reason, I’ll just show you the three things that I did in this phase, and then we’ll call it a day.
Once you start the mastering process, you’ll notice that you have the options, “Track,” or “Master.”
You want to click on the button that says, “Master.”
Once the plug-ins show up, start modifying from there.
a) Compressor
Usually, I compress the file first using the Compressor plug-in down in the smart controls.
In the past, I almost always used the Platinum Analog Tape preset, and it worked great, however, as I learned a lot more about the compressor, I decided to start using my own settings.
I set it to the settings below for “Gunshots.” Ignore the name of the preset.
You can read more about how the compressor works in this article here.
b) EQ
As I’ve mentioned many other times before, less EQ is usually more.
There’s no reason to mess around with it too much, otherwise, you’ll just end up throwing something out of whack, and while it’ll sound good in the moment, it won’t later in your car.
I’ll usually drop the low-end a bit first, and then the high-end a bit, boost the mid-lows by 3-4 dB and then bring up the highs from 1000khz to 10,000khz by about +2dB.
I find that EQ adds a bit of brightness to the music, which I really enjoy.
You can check out the picture below to see for yourself.
c) Limiter
Go back into your plug-ins and then bring up a limiter.
No reason to get too sophisticated with this plug-in, just turn the gain up by around +1.5dB and turn down the output level to -0.5dB.
d) Finale
Give your final track a listen, and then go into the tool bar and click, “Share,” and share it to your iTunes or SoundCloud after filling out all of the information.
Uploading your music to iTunes first is usually the way to go, because then you get a quick judgment on the final product through an alternative platform, rather than just through Garageband.
Important Things to Consider
1) Make sure you’ve gone into the Garageband Preferences, into the Advanced Settings, and then uncheck the box, “Export At Full Volume.”
If this option is turned on, it’ll bring the total volume significantly down, to the point where it’s practically no good, because your music will be so much quieter than the competition.
2) Another disclaimer I have for people, just for the sake of avoiding confusion, is that I actually don’t use much music theory when I’m composing something.
Music theory is just a way of analyzing what you’ve created and then communicating that with other musicians, artists, and producers.
I may use basic theory, like understanding what the chords are in a key signature, but for the most part, I actually don’t use too much theoretical stuff. I just mess around until I’ve created something.
I could’ve gone into detail of the exact musical technical terminology to describe this stuff, but it wouldn’t be a beginner’s tutorial, so I tried to keep it as easy as possible.
Regardless, if you want to learn more about theory, I suggest checking out Mark Sarnecki’s book which I wrote about here.
Conclusion
Anyway, I really hoped this helped you out. I’ll be releasing a video to go along with the rest of the content sometime soon. I know having a video would be immensely helpful.
In this tutorial today, I’m going to show you how to make a quick hip-hop beat in Garageband.
Will it be the most sophisticated beat in the world?
No, it will not, because, I’m not the greatest producer, and all I can do is show you how I do things. Hopefully, you can learn something from me.
Assuming you’re an absolute beginner, this tutorial should save you a fair amount of time in terms of avoiding common mistakes, like not turning off the Auto-Normalize function in Garageband’s preferences.
This is my way of making a hip-hop beat using my own unique individual style. It may not be your style of music, but maybe it’ll help you understand how people go about making songs.
Before we begin, I’ll give a brief explanation of what I consider to be hip-hop as well as some of its parameters.
Features Of Hip-Hop
Hip-hop, like metal, rock, and many other genres, has a ton of sub-genres and dynamic differences between each other.
Therefore, in my opinion, there’s no point in saying that it has to sound a certain way – because it doesn’t.
In the past, there were many beats that had kind of a major/happy sound and there are many minor sounding beats of varying stylistic characters such as jazz, soul, funk, country, and even rock.
Moreover, hip-hop utilizes a ton of soul and funk samples from the 1960s and 1970s like James Brown, Funkadelic, Parlament, and so on and so forth.
Perhaps my favorite example is Kanye West’s song, “Touch The Sky,” created by Lupe Fiasco, which uses Curtis Mayfield’s legendary soul tune, “Move On Up.”
The great part of hip-hop, like rock music, is that it’s versatile, so as long as you have a melody and a rhythm section, a rapper can probably spit bars over it.
*Before continuing, make sure you’ve downloaded all of the available sounds. To do that, just go into the Garageband Preferences, and go to “Sound Library,” and then choose the option, “Download All Available Sounds.”
Without further ado…
How To Make A Hip-Hop Song In Garageband
The first thing that you want to do is open up Garageband.
1) Open up Garageband.
2) Select the hip-hop template.
The first thing that shows up is the Trap Door template, and the drummer’s name apparently is Dez. Personally, I hate the sound of the Trap Door pre-sets, so I avoid it at all costs.
It can be doctored to sound good, in my opinion, by decreasing the complexity of the fills and also choosing the “Simple” setting by dragging the little yellow ball to the left, or changing the actual kit of the pre-set.
Around half of the instruments that Garageband gives you sound good, with the “Steinway Grand Piano,” Deep Sub Bass,” “Vox Box Lead,” and the “String Ensemble” being the most important and useful.
The “Arctic Noise Lead” is definitely a popular choice as well.
3) Go ahead and choose the “Flute” option under “Vintage Mellotron,” the “Jazz Organ,” the “Scream Lead” from the synthesizer section, as well as the “String Movements” from the Soundscapes option.
Also, choose the “Beat Machine” drum-kit under the Electronic Drum Kit section.
4) First Melody (Chord Progression) – (Jazz Organ)
For this particular track, “Spaceship Underwater,” the very first thing is that I made the chord progression with the “Jazz Organ,” which is just a C Minor with an added 9th and an Eb Major with an added 9th.
You can give the final track a listen here:
Cmin9 = C, Eb, G, D
Ebadd9 = Eb, G, Bb, F
Both of these chords belong to the Key of G Minor.
Here are all of the chords of G Minor (relative minor of Bb Major):
i – G Minor – G-B-D iiº – A Diminished – A-C-Eb III+ – Bb Major – Bb-D-F iv – C Minor – C-Eb-G v – D Minor – D-F-A VI – Eb Major – Eb-G-Bb VII – F Major – F-A-C
In case you haven’t seen the scale degrees before and how they look, know that the lower-case roman numerals., “i,” mean Minor, and the upper-case numerals, “V,” mean Major.
***If you want to learn more about theory, I suggest going over to MusicTheory.net, or pick up Mark Sarnecki’s book on theory, which you read about on my recommended products page (It’s #15 on the list).
The “+” means augmented and the “º” means diminished.
If these words are scary don’t worry about it. Just pay attention to the letters of the chord, “GBD.”
Check out the diagram I created of the “Musical Typing” below if you’re totally unfamiliar of where the notes of the Piano lie.
When I build beats, I pretty much always start with the melody and then I build the drums, bass, and everything else afterward.
5) Second Melody – (Screamlead Synth)
Because I know that I’m in the Key of G Minor, there are certain notes available to me that will sound “correct.” They are the following:
G, A, Bb, C, D, Eb, F.
The relative Major of G Minor is actually Bb Major, which means they are the same notes, just played in a different order and having a different root note or tonal center.
Here is the Bb Major scale:
Bb, C, D, Eb, F, G, A
asically, after I built the chord progression, I loaded up an instrument that sounded cool and started playing around with it on my MIDI Keyboard.
I usually start with an Ehru, Piano, or another instrument with a sound I love. The reasoning for this, as an artist, is for the inspiration.
In this case, I chose the Screamlead instrument, which you’ll find in the Lead subcategory within the Synthesizer section.
Here’s an image of how the second most important melody of the song looks in the MIDI work-space:
Tip: Always use instruments, plug-ins, arpeggiators, and other tools that inspire you to play.
That’s what being a musician is all about, frankly. It’s the same thing with playing the guitar or another instrument. You have to buy a piece of equipment that actually inspires you to play.
After I built the second melody using the “Screamlead” instrument, I went into the Software Instrument’s settings and messed around with it until it actually sounded cool.
At first, as I said before, it was the Pipu, but I couldn’t use that because I already made a track using it recently and I didn’t want to get too repetitive.
I turned it into a Screamlead, and then adjusted the settings of it.
In the image below, you can see all of the different settings for it, including, Glide, Sub, Shape, Depth, Harmonic, Overdrive, Delay, as well as a bit of Reverb.
The part I changed the most was the “Glide” option as well as the “Shape.” That’s what gave it the sound that is completely different from the stock version of it.
Another big change I made was with the “Harmonic” option. I turned that bad boy all the way down.
5) Third Filler Melody – (Delicate Bells)
For the third melody, I simply used it as a filler, a way of filling out the rest of the track and adding a little bit of “Body” or character to the sound.
I used Delicate Bells, and I copy and pasted the track from the Screamlead and dropped it into the Delicate Bells track.
It was a one-two process, and I turned it down fairly significant so as not to take too much attention away from the rest of the more important instruments.
I also EQ’d it a little bit as well. For this section, I implemented a Low-Pass, so in other words, I eliminated all of the highest frequencies. This EQ setting looks like this:
6) Fourth Melody (Flute)
Perhaps the most important melody of this song was the flute, rather than the initial chord progression and melody.
The flute is the part that repeats through the entirety of the song, and I loved the way it sounds. I think it was a nice touch.
The funny part about it is the fact it’s simply three notes but played at two different octaves. It’s easily the LEAST sophisticated part of the entire track.
It goes to show that sophistication is not necessary at all, in fact, this plays into improvisation as a musician as well. It’s easy to get caught up in all of these incredibly convoluted details, but frankly, there’s simply no need.
A good question to ask yourself is: does this make the music sound good? Does this contribute to the entirety of the song?
Moving on to arguably the most important part of a hip-hop song: the drums and the Boutique 808 pattern.
I think, perhaps, a crucial detail to add here is the fact that the drums and boutiques are actually the most important part for music producers but not for the listener.
Listeners don’t care about EQing the snare as you do, they just want to hear a great melody and beat.
7) Drums (Kick, Snare and Hi-Hats)
Obviously, music producers have different ways of going about this. Many actually “draw” their music, by adding individual notes and so on and so forth in the “Piano Roll.”
To begin drawing in the Piano Roll, double-click (right-click) in the workspace and select the option, “Create Empty MIDI Region.” This will make a file in which you can start dropping notes.
Truth be told, I don’t do this.
I find this kind of thing to be, actually, annoying and not that fun.
I played guitar for my entire life before I started using a DAW, so I’m all about playing from the heart and improvising on the spot.
What I do, is I open up the Musical Typing (Garageband’s keyboard – Command + K), and I just start jamming on the Kick and Snare, trying to come up with a pattern that I’ve never used before but also sounds very good.
Usually, the Kick and Snare is loaded at the C3 level on Garageband’s Musical Typing, so I just hammer on the “C” and “D” note, or as it says on the actual laptop Keyboard, the letters “A” and “S.”
If you’re using a MIDI-Keyboard, it’ll likely be the very first C and D on the left-side of the Keyboard.
After I’ve built a cool sounding Kick and Snare pattern, I usually begin adding the other details.
8) Shaker
I’ve been actually using the Shaker function quite a bit lately. I feel like it’s a nice touch to the sound.
And for the most part, I either add the hi-hats on every single beat, or I add it about half-a-beat after the Snare Drum. I think it sounds cool.
I use the shaker – and this is a great thing to keep in mind for producing all kinds of drum-centric music – to keep the beat at a more consistent pace.
Many producers use the Kick, Snare, or the Hi-Hat as a way to keep time.
For me, using the Shaker is good for that, because it’s not too intrusive or obstructing. In other words, it doesn’t take too much attention away from other sounds, instruments, and melodies.
A snare or kick can be quite aggressive.
9) Bass
This is arguably the most important part of hip-hop production, and frankly, I’m not the greatest at it, so you may want to check out another person’s tutorial to figure out how to make great Boutique 808s and bass-lines.
As I explained in this article about Boutique 808s, there are many different ways of drawing/playing bass-lines, as well as EQ-tactics and methods for making it sound good.
Make sure to check out the article at the above link to see what I’m talking about.
For the sake of this tutorial, however, I’ll outline what I did for “Spaceship Under Water.”
The first thing that I do when I build a bass-line is I usually think about the chord progression and melody, that way I can draw a bassline that is actually on-key.
Many producers struggle with building a bass-line that’s on-key due to the limitations of the human ear. It’s pretty hard to hear the lowest frequencies, so a good way of getting around it is the following:
Tip: Try making a bass-line with the Bass turned up 1 or 2 octaves, that way you can find out if the bass is truly in the proper key signature.
Another thing that you can do is treat the bass as if it’s a melody of its own, and create maybe a piano melody, but then change the software instrument track into the Deep Sub Bass synth or the Boutique 808s.
Moving on…
I typically outline the notes of the chord in order to create the bassline. For example, I know that in this track there are two primary chords that lie as the song’s foundation: Cmin9 and Ebadd9.
These two chords, as I mentioned above, belong to the key of G Minor, where these are the following notes of the scale, G, A, Bb, C, D, Eb, and F.
Cmin9 = C, Eb, G, D
Ebadd9 = Eb, G, Bb, F
If I’m going to make a bassline, I would focus on the C note and the Eb note, just as a starter to see how that sounds. C and Eb are the root notes of the aforementioned chords.
After that, I’d play around with the G Minor scale, whose notes I listed above, and I’d see if I could make something out of that. However, usually I crave a little more out of the bassline, and most other people do as well.
Most people would argue that the main purpose of the bassline, whether it’s Boutique 808 or a bass guitar, is to hold the rhythm down of the song, so to speak.
It’s a way of solidifying the groove and flow of the track. It’s like strengthening its backbone.
Without bass, the song wouldn’t have the same “fullness” about it. It would sound likely more empty and hollow. Those lower frequencies really complete and warm-up the song.
In this case, I was struggling to come up with a bass-line that fulfilled that role, so I ended up just outlining the notes of the chords and keeping it very simple.
Sometimes, simplicity is where it’s at.
The final thing to note is the fact I copy and pasted the notes of the Kick Drum into the Deep Sub Bass track, that way I had a reference point for when the Kick and Snare hits.
As I wrote about in my Boutique article, if you want your bassline to hit hard, which is arguably the most coveted aspect of hip-hop production, then it’s essential that you line your kick drum with the Boutique 808s or Deep Sub Bass Synthesizer.
You can check out the image below of the Deep Sub Bass to see how I did that:
11) Volume Control
One last final thing to note before we get into the next section: I did a volume fade at the beginning of the song for the flute section.
In order to do that, you hit the ‘A’ button on the track for “Automation.”
You’ll notice right away that the yellow automation lines will pop up.
By clicking on the line, you’ll drop automation points and then you can drag the line around according to how you want to adjust the volume.
Check out the picture below to see what I did for that particular track.
Moving on to the Exporting, Mixing, and then Mastering stage…
12) Export As AIFF
Now that the song is pretty much completed, we can move on to the easiest stage: the “exporting stage.”
For this part, make sure that absolutely none of your tracks are clipping (going into the red), otherwise, it’ll sound terrible later on.
As a general rule, you want your volume tracks to be going into the yellow only during the loudest parts of the song. It’s cool if the tracks ride in the green the entire time.
Also, turn down the Master Volume to +0.0. I haven’t heard anyone say this matters at all, but for me, it absolutely does.
Make sure the Master Volume is at zero, otherwise, your track won’t mix and master properly.
Make sure there are no plug-ins running on your master track as well.
To do that, go down into the Smart Controls and click on the button that says. “Master,” among the other two options, “Track,” and “Compare.”
You’ll see the list of the plug-ins, and make sure they’re all turned off.
It’s ok if you have plug-ins running on the individual tracks, but you don’t want any on the master channel, from what I’ve been told anyway.
At this stage, your track is nearly ready for export. Listen to the whole thing and make sure all of the instruments sound good, and exactly as you want them to.
Keep in mind, when you go to master the track, some of the other sounds may sound accentuated. For that reason, I typically turn down the sound of the hi-hats, shakers, and other high-frequency instruments.
Explained in another way, If you plan on using compression and an EQ boost, some of the higher frequency instruments, such as the hi-hat or cymbals, tend to make that hissing sound.
For that reason, consider turning the volume down on the individual tracks.
a) Click on the option, “Share,” in Garageband’s Toolbar at the top
b) and then click the option, “Export to Disk,” from there,
c) hit the AIFF check-box,
d) name your track
e) and then export it on to your desktop that way you can simply drag and drop it into the DAW.
From this stage, we can actually drag and drop the AIFF file right back into the DAW among all of the other software instrument tracks.
f) Hit the “Solo” button on the track that looks like a pair of headphones to isolate the song.
The reason for this is that we’ll check and see that our track isn’t clipping it all, and we give it a general test to see what it’s going to sound like after we add a compressor, channel EQ, and so on and so forth.
Now that we can see there’s nothing wrong with the track and it isn’t too loud, we’ll move on to the mixing stage.
g) Start a new project.
11) Mixing.
I’m by no means an expert mixing engineer, so just keep that in mind, but for this stage, I actually don’t do a lot to it.
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I usually add a Channel EQ, a compressor or Multipressor, and then maybe a Limiter as well just in case.
a) Channel EQ
As you can see by the image below, I cut the lowest and highest frequencies, dropped the 205hz frequency by -3.5 dB, and then gave the song a bit of a boost by 3dB or so starting from the range of 500hz to 10,000 kHz.
I also gave it a small boost to around 35hz.
b) Multipressor
For the multipressor, I just used the “Final Hip Hop Compressor” pre-set which dropped the gain by around -3.6dB.
I really like the way the multipressor sounds. I find it gives the track quite a bit of punchiness.
*In the YouTube version of this song, I used a compressor instead of a multipressor, but on my SoundCloud, I used the multipressor version.
c) Limiter
As I wrote in my article about limiting, the limiter acts as a compressor with an extremely high ratio, or in other words, it’s a “brick wall” in which no frequencies can pass through.
Using the limiter, we’ll boost the overall volume of the track by +3.0dB, and then we’ll set the output level at -0.2dB.
The gain is best increased by just 1, 2, or 3 dB because then we’re not pushing it too hard.
Regarding the Output Level knob, technically, the point past 0dB is the point of distortion according to what I’ve read.
If we have it set at -0.2dB, then we don’t have to worry about the song exceeding that point and thus, creating distortion.
Because of the way the limiter works, a lot of people like to use it as a volume-increaser at the end of the mixing process.
However, it’s much better thought of as a tool that we can use to ensure no undesirable sounds are heard in the mix.
12) Final Step
Ensure the volume of the track is consistent with other music you’ve created.
If you have an album on your phone and you hook it into a Bluetooth speaker at someone’s house, you want the tracks to be the same volume as each other.
That way, you won’t have to continuously come back and turn the volume up.
For this point, I would try and match the volume of, not other artists on YouTube or SoundCloud, but your favorite artists and their professionally mixed and mastered hit singles.
If you’re going to try and make a song, you might as well get used to trying to match the amplitude (volume) of their music.
I usually choose the volume to be around +1.6dB on the Master Volume channel. In between +1.6 and +2.0 dB, depending on whether I’ve used a compressor a multipressor.
13) Export
Now, if you want to export your music, thankfully, Garageband comes with a convenient “Share” function on the top toolbar that allows you to easily export music to either SoundCloud, iTunes, or YouTube.
Before doing this, however, make sure you do this one last thing if you haven’t already.
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a) Go into the Garageband Preferences.
b) Click on Advanced.
c) See where it says, “Auto Normalize – Export Projects At Full Volume?”
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Make sure this box is unchecked, otherwise, Garageband will export your music at a level that is far too quiet, and the competition will just outshine you like crazy.
Moving on…
With that said, try to avoid making your tracks too loud.
I’m not an expert on this topic, so take notice of this warning, but some people say that making your tracks super loud is a part of what’s called the “Loudness War.”
It’s up to you whether or not you want to engage in this. If you’re curious to read more about it, I recommend this article here.
Some people might argue that an artist/audio engineer has to do whatever they can to get noticed, and that includes exporting music at too high of a volume.
Others will hate you for making your music so loud.
It’s up to you as to whether you want to annoy other producers and audio engineers. I guess you have to ask yourself though, “am I making music for myself, other people, or other producers?”
Anyway, I hope this tutorial was helpful to you. As I said before, I’m not a Billboard-topping artist, so I can’t tell you how to make the illest beat you’ve ever heard. I can only show you how I make them.