Learn About Sean "LiveWire" Smith

Whenever you make a beat, you don't make it and then leave it alone and go to the next one. You keep working on it, tweaking it, and messing around with it. Then you move on to your next beat, but even then you should always go back to your old beats and refine them a bit. I mean, even your oldest beats of your oldest beats can inspire your newest beats. And a change you make on a new beat may seem like a good idea on an old one, or vice versa.

Now, rather than moving further into beat-making, I'm going to stay hear and just expand on the kicks and snares. Firstly, a kick is hard, but is it hard enough? To make it louder, you would just turn up the volume or just amplify it. But that only makes it louder, not harder. To make it harder, you have to use a technique I call layering. Layering is when you play two or more of the same sound or two or more different sounds at the same time. There are a few ways to layer sounds. One of them is to make more than one channel with the same sound (or a different sound, your choice) and set them up to play at the same time. Another way is to set up and echo delay in your program, however yours does it, and set the delay time between the echos to zero. This will cause all of he echos to play at once, strengthening the sound. This can also be done with snares, but I have a different way to deal with snares.

For me, I don't prefer strong snares. Now, its always possible to make a beat that needs a strong snare and if thats your beat, then go ahead and make a strong snare. However, this technique may still come in handy. I'm not sure what most people call this technique, but I call it offset layering. This is when you, first of all, layer the sounds the exact same way as in regular layering. For offset layering, it is recommended that you only use two sounds or one echo. You, then, set it up so one sound, or one echo, plays very shortly after the other. By very shortly, I mean less that one step. Maybe a tenth of a step, more or less. This can make your snare sound a bit more sharp, or whatever you like to call it. I had once heard someone call this technique a Neptunes style, but considering their "new style" in rock music, I don't think it can be called their style anymore.

Now I'm going to move into additions to this drum beat. One addition that I, myself, am very fond of in beats is bass. I match my bass with my kicks to give a harder feel to the kicks. This, my friend, is done with cross-sample layering. That is basically layering, but using different sounds. Because you are using a separate sound, you cannot use the echo layering technique, but rather the separate sound technique. So, place a bass sound into the beat. Before you go any further, find out how your program can stop a sound from running into itself. FruityLoops has an option called "Cut itself". This option stops the bass from being too loud by playing over top of itself, which can be a nuisance. With that done, layer the bass over the kicks. If your bass is too soft, don't worry too much. There's a lot to using bass appropriately. One way to use it well is to make it deeper, either by choosing deeper notes or by selecting a center note for the original sound at a higher point on the piano. The first choice seems to be a choice of many thus far though, so I guess I'll recommend its use.

BASS	X - - X  - - X -  - - X -  - - X -
KICK	X - - X  - - X -  - - X -  - - X -
SNARE	- - - -  X - - -  - - - -  X - - -

Now, for hats and shakers. What's a hat? This is producer lingo right here, and it doesn't go on your head. On a drum set, its what you may know as a cymbal. But, a hat is whats said when you hit a cymbal very lightly. Hats can be used to compliment a beat very well. A shaker is, well, a shaker, Most people associate it with spanish music, but its basically something hollow with beans, small balls, or something so that when you shake it, it makes a sound. One place most of you may easily recognize it will be in the background of "In Da Club". Now, the way that hats and shakers are used are basically the same. They are used in every other step normally, but can be used in every step. However, shakers sound better on every other step. It's almost amazing how much a simple addition of hats can do to a beat. You'll just have to listen for yourselves. So, go get a hat or shaker.

BASS	X - - X  - - X -  - - X -  - - X -
KICK	X - - X  - - X -  - - X -  - - X -
SNARE	- - - -  X - - -  - - - -  X - - -
HAT	X - X -  X - X -  X - X -  X - X -

I'm not sure about you, but that sounds a lot better to me. Please note that hats can be varied, from this pattern, but should not BE your beat. As a matter of fact, you should drop the volume to make it softer. Shakers are naturally soft, but don't be scared to drop the volume. Volume balance is important, but that's a different issue. For now, its not much to worry about.