In this tutorial, we will chop up a drum break in classic hip-hop style, use a sampled bass and use an organ VST for some chords over the top.
When this tutorial was made, MU.LAB was called LUNA, so the screenshots will look a bit different.
LUNA - The best freeware DAW software. Probably. A freeware alternative to Cubase, SONAR, Logic etc.
Audacity - This program is great for recording audio, as well as editing audio files. A free alternative to Sound Forge or Adobe Audition.
Grizzly - Free drum machine VST plugin like Battery or Guru.
NuBi LE - Nice Hammond-style organ VST.
HighLife - Sampler VST.
Kjaerhus Classic Series - Great series of VST effects, we'll be using the compressor, chorus and delay.
Create a folder called VST in your Program Files directory (e.g. C:/Program Files/VST) and unzip the VSTs to there.
There are two types of VSTs: Instruments and effects. Basically, you'd load up a VST instrument plugin into a program like LUNA and make a MIDI sequence for it to play. VSTs are usually in a kind of synthesiser style, meaning that you can change all of the knobs, dials etc. to change the sound. For example, on the NuBi LE VST we will be using, you can actually move the drawbars like on a real organ. This means that with some good VST plugins, you can get all of the sounds and flexibility of synthesisers, samplers and other instruments, right there on your computer. VST effects are put on audio tracks or VST instrument tracks. Another great thing about VSTs is that there are heaps of good quality free ones floating around the internet. For a huge range of free VSTs, check out KVR Audio
Let's start
First, let's start with the drums. A popular method for making beats, especially in hip-hop production, is by taking a drum solo (a "break"), chopping up the individual sounds and making a beat from the chopped up samples. For this, we will use Audacity to chop up the break sample and LUNA with the Grizzly VST to make the beat.
Download break.wav by right-clicking on it and clicking "Save Link As". (kind of stolen from Computer Music, great magazine, comes with an upgraded version of LUNA in every issue called CMusic). Open Audacity and open the drum break sample that you just downloaded.
Play the file in Audacity by pressing the green play button.
We will want to to take the first kick drum from this sample. To do this we will need to select it. Click near the end of the kick drum sound, and hold the mouse button as you move it left to make your selection cover the whole of the kick drum.
Click File and Export Selection As WAV. Name the file kick.wav.
Next, we will want the hi-hat sound, which comes straight after the first kick. This hit, being between two other sounds, will be a bit trickier to select. Drag a rough selection around the hi-hat and press the Fit selection in window button.
From this view, it should be easy enough to make an accurate selection. Once you have selected the hi-hat, click File and Export Selection As WAV just like you did last time. Name this file hihat.wav
Once you have done that, click the Fit project to window button to show the whole break sample.
In this tutorial, I'll make four drum samples from the break sample. You can see which ones I'm using from the screenshot and what file names I'm saving them as. Go ahead and save the other two samples, which are snare.wav and kick2.wav.
Close Audacity and open LUNA. Agree to the software user license agreement. LUNA will ask you which ASIO drivers you want to use. If you don't have any ASIO drivers, or don't have any that work, try using ASIO4ALL. If you have a MIDI controller, you can select it from the MIDI setup prompt, but if not, just press OK. Select your VST folder when prompted.
Click File then New Session.
LUNA works with "racks". In each rack, you can have a VST instrument, as well as VST effects. You can also change the volume of a rack.
Double click on Rack A and rename it Beat.
Click on the first of those rounded rectangles to the right of the volume slider.
Click on Synths and then Grizzly.
Double click on Grizzly in the rack.
The Grizzly VST has 8 drum pads, each with volume, panning, filters, pitch etc. Load up kick.wav into pad 1 by clicking on the folder icon.
Now load up kick2.wav to pad 2, snare.wav to pad 3 and hihat.wav to pad 4. Press the load button on pad 5, and open the drumatic-808 folder from the default Grizzly sample folder. Select bassdrum.wav. We will layer this with the kick drum to beef up the beat a bit. Try changing the volume of kick.wav and kick2.wav to 80.0 and snare.wav to 85.0 (you might want to experiement with the volumes and panning later).
Close Grizzly when you have finished.
Click on the rack slot under Grizzly.
Click on Effects then Classic Compressor.
Many VST instruments and effects come with preset options. Right click on Classic Compressor and click on Choose Program.
Select Drums from the list and click OK.
You can change the compression settings by double clicking on Classic Compressor, which you may like to do once you have finished making your drum beat. Putting compression on drums can make them sound fuller without making them louder. For more information on compression (as well as other effects), download Computer Music magazines free PDF on compression.
Let's create the beat sequence. Move your mouse over to the start of the first bar of the first track. The cursor should look like a pencil. Drag a box the length of the first bar.
Select Sequence Part.
Click once on the new sequence you have created.
In the target selection menu, select Beat.
Right click on the sequence, select Sequence and click on Rename. Rename it to Beat1.
Double click on the Beat1 sequence. Click both + zoom buttons twice each.
Vertically scroll down to C1. You can copy the beat that I have made, or make your own.
To test out your beat, click on the loop button.
Click on the play button to play the sequence, click it again to stop and click the rewind button to take you back to the start of the sequence.
Double click on the tempo (currently at 120). Change it to 100 (anywhere from 90 to 100 should be fine).
When you're making your beat, you might make some mistakes. To fix things up, hover over a note in the sequence and the pencil icon will change to an arrow. With the arrow you can change the note position as well as select and delete it with the delete key on your keyboard.
Press enter to exit out of the sequence editor.
You will now see Beat1 in bar 1. Click on it once to select it, then press Ctrl+C on your keyboard to copy it.
Click at the start of bar 2.
Press Ctrl+V on your keyboard to paste it at bar 2. Select these two by dragging a selection box over them, copy them and paste them at the start of bar 3.
You can repeat this process to make your beat cover 8 bars.
Copying and pasting sequences like this will mean that if you change any Beat1 sequence part, it will change all of them. If you want to be able to freely change a copied sequence part without affecting the others, right click and select Part then Duplicate Sequence. I'll do this later in the tutorial.
Yeahh boyy! You've got the beat down. Now, you're going to need some bass. Load up HighLife in Rack 2 and change the rack's name to Bass (in the same way that you loaded and renamed Grizzly). Make a new sequence and call it Bass and assign the Bass rack to the Bass sequence. Make the sequence like mine. To make notes longer than the grid, click and drag the pencil.
HighLife is a sampler, meaing you can load audio samples into it, and add effects, filters, envelopes etc. You can then play the sample(s) like an instrument.
Right click and "Save Link As" on BassC.wav. This is the bass sample we will load in HighLife.
Double click on HighLife. Click File and Open Sample(s). Select BassC.wav.
Press play and listen to the new bass line. Let's be honest, this bass sound doesn't sound very good yet. Open HighLife, and click on LP in the Filter section and change the cutoff frequency. This will take out the higher frequencies from the sample. Now take down the volume of the bass rack. That's better!
Do the whole "loading up a synth" routine with the organ VST, NuBiLE. Make this one go for two bars. Copy the notes in the screenshot below. Double click on NuBiLE and try changing some settings, or right click on it and go Choose Program to see some preset patches. Copy this two bar riff four times to fill up the eight bar beat. You may also want to decrease the rack volume, as well as put a Classic Chorus to make the organ sound a lot fuller, not to mention awesomer.
It's sounding pretty good now, all it needs is some cool sample. A sample can be loaded into LUNA as an audio part, however you may as well use HighLife for small samples. Download this sample of Duffman saying "Oh Yeah!", ohyeah.wav. Before loading it into HighLife, open it in Audacity and take out the noise at the start by selecting it and pressing delete on your keyboard.
Make a new HighLife rack and load that sample into HighLife. Make a new sequence at bar 3, make one long note at C3 and make a copy of the part at bar 7. Put a Classic Delay onto the rack. Oh yeah!
Delete the first two instances of Beat1. Make a new two bar sequence in it's place and name it Beat Intro. Copy the sequence in the picture.
See those vertical lines under the notes? They are the note velocities. Change every second hi-hat to a slightly lower velocity to add some variation.
Depending on the VST, the velocity can affect the sound in different ways. Some VSTs might have a "hard" sound with high velocities and a "soft" sound for lower velocities (like a piano for example). However, velocity usually just affects the volume of the note with most VSTs.
Now let's add some variation to the beat by doing that cool thing where you take out the drums for a couple of beats.
Right click on the Beat1 sequence at bar 6 and click Part then Duplicate Sequence. You can then rename this Beat2.
Double click on it and take out the first three drum hits.
You should now have a short, but pretty cool, beat. Go File and Save Session as to save the LUNA file, and go Mixdown to Audiofile to save the session as a WAV, which can then be saved as an MP3 in Audacity with the LAME encoder. You may also want to make your beat longer and spit over it in Audacity (don't literally spit on it, that would be kind of weird, and you might hurt its feelings. Spit means rap, by the way).
Well done, you've made a beat completely free!. If you'd like to learn more about home studios and computer music, you must check out TweakHeadz.com, it's a great website. For some great free guides to audio effects and recording tips, check out Computer Music's free PDFs for beginners as well as their free tutorial PDFs. For heaps of free VST instruments and effects, check out KVR Audio. If you want to learn some music theory, then you should definately check out The Ravenspiral Guide To Music Theory.