Rap Beat Making Programs - How To Make Beats On Your Computer

The shift has been made, my fellow beat makers. There are many rap beat making programs on the market now that will let you produce your own beats directly from your computer. You don't have to rely on pricey musical equipment to make your own beats anymore. 

These rap beat making programs are virtual replicas of old school drum machines, and many will allow you to do more than you ever could with just a drum machine. These new programs have sound banks, timelines, arpeggiation, mixing capabilities and many more useful features. If you are new to making beats you may find that it is easier to begin using this music software than actually buying and learn to program beats on physical music equipment. 

Here are a few basic pointers to get you started no matter what software you use to make your own beats. 

1. The Controls

The main controls will be just like you use on a stereo - record, play fast forward, rewind, pause, and stop. These may even be synched up to your keyboard so you don't have to only use a mouse as your input source. Pretty self explanatory. 

2. The Timeline

Just like a song on an mp3 player, the beat you create will flow from left to right as it progresses. The program will have a timeline that the track follows. It will be marked with timekeeping lines that will be reference points for you to use. You will literally plug your beats or notes in to slots on this timeline where you want them to be played.

3. The Tracks

This where each sound gets its space in the timeline. The tracks will be listed on the left hand side, from top to bottom. Each track will most likely play one sound. For instance, the snare and hi hats will each have their own tracks and will have different beats located in different parts of the timeline. 

4. The Sound Bank

The sound bank is where you choose from a library of instruments or drum sounds and assign each one you want to use to its own track. A good beat making program will have hundreds (if not thousands) of sounds for you to choose from. Different snares, basses, hi hats, claps, effects and instruments should be available to you to use in your track. 

5. The Tempo

This is how fast or slow the beat of the song will be. There will be a way for you to control how fast the song is going. You may want an uptempo groove or a lazy slow beat, so you will be able to either manually type in  a number or use up and down arrows to change the tempo. 

The tempo function will be synched up with the timeline, and will most likely also let you decide what time signature your beat will be played in. If this doesn't make sense to you yet you can experiment with the time signature later until you understand the different "swings" that certain time signatures have. 

6. Mixing

There will sliders or knobs just like on mixing boards that let you control the volume, how loud each part should be. If the bass drum sound is not loud enough you can use these controls to pump it up a little more. 

There will also knobs that "pan" from left to right, which let you adjust which speaker certain sounds are heard more in. If you only want to organ sound to be heard in the left speaker you will turn the "pan" knob all the way to the left. 

7. Effects

Most good beat making programs will allows you to assign effects to different tracks to add a little something interesting and different. Delay will add some repeating echo, while reverb will make the instrument sound as if it was recorded in a hallway or concert hall. Distortion can be used to "dirty" up he sound, and chorus will double the sound. There is no clear cut rule to using effects, and they can make really add character and style to the expression of your tracks.