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In today's video, I'm going to be showing you guys the basics of creating a trap drum pattern, as well as some advanced techniques that you guys can use to really make your beats stand out.
Learn how to create trap drum patterns in FL Studio with basic and advanced techniques to make your beats stand out.
Key Takeaways
- Start trap drum patterns with a simple kick and snare framework.
- Use the piano roll for detailed drum programming and loop extension.
- Leave space in high hats to avoid clutter and enhance beat clarity.
- Quantize kicks selectively to maintain groove while keeping rhythm tight.
- Add variation to high hats with velocity, pitch, and pan randomization.
Summary
- Introduction to creating trap drum patterns using FL Studio's piano roll.
- Basic drum pattern framework: kick on the first beat, snare on the second and fourth beats.
- Using snap to grid and copy functions to extend loops efficiently.
- High hat programming techniques including quarter beat fills and leaving space for clarity.
- Tips for open high hats placement before snares or at bar ends.
- Advanced kick programming with off-grid placement and quantization techniques.
- Selecting the right key for 808 basslines by ear using a synth for reference.
- Playing 808s slightly off-grid to allow kick impact and bass clarity.
- Using velocity, pitch, and pan randomization to add variation and liveliness to high hats.
- Adding fast high hat rolls and varied pacing for dynamic trap beats.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
So I'm going to be using the beat that you guys heard in the intro to show you guys how to build your own trap drum pattern.
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So if you guys want to follow along, I've included a free download link to the drums from this beat in the description box below.
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I think it might help if you guys join me step by step in going through these techniques with me, before we get started, please do like and subscribe.
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All right, let's get started.
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So I have my main loop here already programmed.
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So now it's time to start building the drum pattern for this beat.
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I really recommend using the piano roll for all your drum programming.
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The piano roll lets you be a little bit more detailed and intricate with your techniques.
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So I'd recommend really getting comfortable with using the piano roll.
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That includes everything from the melodies to the drums.
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I use it for everything basically.
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So in pretty much every single beat, I start off with putting the kick.
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On the first beat and the snare on the second and fourth.
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The reason why is because pretty much every single hip hop beat has this as its general framework.
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And so it's a good idea to start here.
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So let's select snap to grid up here.
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Select beat.
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This changes the view of the piano roll, so now you can see the timing of the song in beats rather than steps.
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So we'll put a kick on the one.
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And we'll put a snare on the two and the four.
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Now let's quickly copy this over to extend this to be as long as your sample that you're working with.
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The way you do this is highlight everything here.
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And just click control B.
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So now I'll do the same with the kick.
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So now we have a four bar loop ready.
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Now it's time to start adding in the high hats.
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In trap beats, the typical high hat pattern is to fill in every quarter beat.
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So we'll change the snap to grid to quarter beat here.
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Select the paint tool.
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And just draw everything in.
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If you want your beat to feel a little bit more open, it might be a good idea to delete every other high hat.
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Now this is something that's important to keep in mind if you plan on doing a lot of elaborate techniques with your drums.
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It might be a good idea to leave a little bit more space with your high hats.
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This will help the beat not feel cluttered later down the road.
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Another quick tip is you can quickly fill in your high hats by going to the channel rack.
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Right clicking the instrument and selecting whichever option you want here.
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So you can fill each two step, four step and eight.
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Since I want to clear out a little bit more room, I'm going to choose fill each two step.
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And now lastly, it's time for the open high hats.
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I typically find it's good to use them right before a snare or at the end of the bar.
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Again, this is not a rule by any means, feel free to experiment.
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It's just something that I like to do.
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Again, I would recommend also using these sparingly, especially if we're going to get crazy with the high hats like we're going to be doing later on in this video.
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It's good not to have too many things going on at once.
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All right, so now we have the groundwork done for this beat.
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Now it's time to start adding and building around the framework that we've created.
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I usually like to start with the kicks.
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Our kicks are going to really help guide our 808 placement later on down the road.
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So getting this right is pretty important.
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What I like to do is program the kicks as it's playing.
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I really don't like clicking it in just because it won't be as easy to get a good feel for the rhythm.
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Again, there's no right or wrong way of doing this.
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One quick tip as well, I took the snap to grid off.
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So now the kicks don't land right on beat as you can see.
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Some of my kicks were a bit too far off the grid for my liking and sounded a little bit too messy for me.
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So what you can do is quick quantize by pressing control and Q.
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So this gets everything back onto the grid.
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So the timing is perfect.
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But instead, what I like to do is pressing Alt Q and adjusting the start time.
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This lets you control how close to the grid you want to quantize.
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So you can keep a little bit of that sloppiness in your beat.
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Also, adjusting the sensitivity dictates how close the snapping is going to be.
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Now I'll manually go in and maybe just delete a few of these kicks that start on each measure.
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So this kick here is a little bit sloppy and off to me.
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So I'm going to do is move it.
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I'll click snap to grid, select none.
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So this lets me be a little bit more specific in where I want to move it.
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All right, so now let's add in the 808s.
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I'm just going to keep it simple for now.
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I don't want to get too crazy with the 808s.
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Later on in the video, I'll be showing you guys a few of the advanced techniques with the 808s.
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But first, we got to start off by finding the right key of the sample.
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So there's a few ways of going about doing this.
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I find for me, I just personally like to do this by ear.
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This may seem a little bit overwhelming or difficult if you're just starting out.
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But I'll show you a quick technique that will make it a lot easier for you.
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So I'm going to do is just load up any old synth.
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For example, let's just use citrus here.
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Now I'll play the loop of the sample and play different keys until I hear the right one that fits in.
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So playing through all the keys, I just want to figure out which few keys sound like they fit in.
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It sounded to me like F, F sharp and A sharp fit the best.
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So now we'll go back to the 808 and play these keys and just try to figure out what works best here.
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So sounds like A sharp works best here.
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I'm going to end up using those other notes for fills and switch ups later on.
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But for now, let's just keep it basic.
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As you can see, I tend to play the 808s a little bit off the grid here.
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I find this helps since it lets the initial impact of the kick cut through and the bass frequencies from the 808s just won't get in the way if I do this technique.
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So now to keep the bass line from getting monotonous, I'm going to switch up a few of these notes.
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And replace them with the other notes that we found that also fit well.
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Again, I recommend not getting too crazy with the bass line.
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If the idea is that we're going to have an artist on top of this, we just want to make sure they have enough room to do what they want to do and not interfere with crazy, wacky bass lines.
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So in this regard, it's just best to keep things simple.
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All right, so now the basics of the drum pattern is done.
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Now we can move on to some of the advanced techniques that I like to do.
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So let's start with the high hats.
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There are a few techniques that I like to use in order to create some variation in the high hats.
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As you can see here, all of the high hats I have programmed are all at the same velocity here.
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So if I hit Alt R here, it's going to bring up the randomizer.
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This is going to help bring some quick variations to your patterns.
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Firstly, let's make sure that the pattern is deselected because if it's on, you can see things just get crazy.
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So let's turn that off.
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So what I want to do is introduce some randomness to the velocity levels here.
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So if I go to the velocity knob and start changing it, you can see the velocities.
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Which in this case means the volume starts to change.
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This will just help add some variation to the beat.
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And make it feel a little bit more live.
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I also like to do the same thing, but be a little bit more subtle with the pitch and the pan.
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Again, this just helps add a little bit more variation and liveliness to the high hats.
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So another thing you can do is change the pacing of the high hats.
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So you can just start adding in different notes here and there.
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This will help make things a little bit more interesting as well.
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I like to get a little bit more drastic as well at certain points of the beat and introduce really, really fast high hats.
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So the way to do this is first click control L.
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For quick legato.
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This extends all of your notes.
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So the pattern is filled now.
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Now select the area where you want the fast paced high hats to be and select Alt U.
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So for example, let's select this.
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Click Alt U.
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And what this does is it brings up the chopper.
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Now you can control with this dial how drastic you want the effect to be.
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So let's keep it here.
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So next up, you can also add triplet high hats.
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This is pretty popular in trap beats.
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So the way to do this is click snap to grid up here.
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And change it to one third beat.
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What this will do is take every single beat and change it to one third instead of one quarter.
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And then you just go in and fill them in as you please.
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Another technique that I like to do is change the pitch of the high hats.
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What this does is just creates a little bit more of a melodic feel, so your beat doesn't feel as stiff or monotone.
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Again, just another way to create some cool variation in your beat.
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So you just select whatever high hats that you want to move around.
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And then click shift down.
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So we'll do that for a few other spots in the beat as well.
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What I'll also do is change this section to triplets as well.
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And I'll create another fast paced high hat section back here.
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I'm also going to play around with the velocity in this section and have it ramp up just so it's not as intrusive to the ear.
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And maybe I'll get rid of one of the high hats here just to create some more space.
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So you can use these exact same techniques with the kicks and the snares as well.
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But since the kicks and the snares are just so much more prevalent in the mix, I would advise not to get as crazy with those.
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Again, we want to make sure we don't completely muddle up the beat and just make it too overwhelming.
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So all I'm going to do is just create a triplet kick at the end of this bar here.
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And I'll add in some snares here and there.
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And I'll just leave it at that.
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I don't want to get too crazy with the snares and the kicks.
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So another thing that I like to do is add in a high hat alternative.
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And I'll play that at an octave lower than the original.
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But what I'll do with this is I'll play it completely off beat.
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As you can see, these high hats that I just played in are just pretty much completely off beat.
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But it still works.
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The reason why this works and doesn't end up sounding like a complete mess is because the other normal high hats that we have prior are actually quantized and on the grid perfectly.
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Those high hats provide a really tight pacing for the rest of the beat.
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And so if I go in and add sloppy high hats like this, it doesn't sound as off, it doesn't sound as bad.
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Because the other high hats give us context that helps us guide our sense of rhythm with the beat.
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So I'll do the exact same thing with the snares or rims that I've added here.
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I use a different sort of lighter texture and I'll just add these here and there throughout the beat just to add a little bit more variation once again.
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All right, now for the 808s.
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So what I'm going to do is just add some slides.
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The way to do that is just opening up the pattern and clicking the slide button up here.
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This lets you draw in a slide.
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Again, I just don't want to get too wacky and out there with this tool.
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Subtlety is the key here.
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So I'm just going to add a slide up here.
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And I'll add another one over here.
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To make sure that I have it exactly where I want, I'll go to snap to grid and click none.
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And just extend it for as long as I need it.
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That's a little bit better.
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Now what I'm going to do is add in a stutter effect.
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What I mean by that is this.
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Now some people will just use really rapid high hats.
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But I find this technique that I'm about to show you here works just a little bit better.
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So what I do is I take a snare or a clap.
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I'll truncate it so only the middle portion is going to play.
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What this does is it just helps get rid of the harsh transit in the beginning.
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And makes it a little bit more gentle on the ears.
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Again, just feel free to experiment here.
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Now what I do is I'll take an EQ and I'll remove the mids and the lows.
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Just so I'm left with the highs here.
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So it ends up sounding like a bit of a high hat.
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But it has a little bit more density and presence to it.
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So now once again, I'll go in, figure out where I want this to play.
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Use the exact same technique as before where I'll just hit Alt U.
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I'll chop it up pretty fine here.
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And there you go.
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You got a stutter effect.
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And there you guys have it, some basic and advanced techniques for trap drum patterns.
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Please leave a like, comment and subscribe.
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Let me know what you guys want to see from me next.
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See you next Tuesday.
Topics:trap drum patternFL Studio tutorialtrap beat makingpiano roll programming808 basslinekick and snare patternhigh hat techniquesquantization FL Studiobeat making tipsmusic production
