Male 1: After we added the kick, snare, clap,
open hat, and closed hat, we can add a
lot more energy to our beat by using synthesized
toms. Here I have 808 toms, which would fit
with all the other 808 sounds. I'm gonna syncopate
the toms with the kick. Meaning that the kicks
and the toms mostly don't play together on the
same 16th note. Now, experimentation is key here. You can
try to place your toms where you think sounds good.
You can use only one tom or a few toms for
variation in tone and pitch. Remember also to adjust velocities
to taste. So let's start. I'm gonna right click on the
grid and change it to a 16th note. And let's
start by placing a low tom on the second 16th note
of the first beat. Let's bring up the velocity slightly so
we can listen to it. And let's see how it sounds.
Let's add another one. Maybe this time the mid tom, on
the second 16th note of the second beat. So now we have.
Excellent. Gives us that syncopated feeling. Let's continue
by adding another Mid Tom on the second eighth note
of the third beat, and another Low Tom on the second 16th note of the fourth beat.
Excellent. Now let's add a couple more. I'm gonna
add another Mid Tom on the second eighth note
of the second bar. Another Mid Tom on the
second eighth of the third beat of the second bar.
And another Low Tom on the last eighth note
of the second bow. And listen to how the
kick and the thumb are played in syncopation together
by alternating who is playing it at any given moment.
Lets take all the toms, let's highlight them. And
Cmd+D, let's highlight also the low toms, and Cmd+D.
Nice. Let's take away the final tom, just for,
to make room for our snare roll. Next, let's
add the clavier. To place the clavier, you can
try to draw in a 16th note pattern and then
take a few notes until you hear something you
like. In Ableton Live, you can also use the Pencil
tool to do it faster. On Ableton Live 9,
you only have to hit B. Excellent. Let's listen to
it right now.
So that's a lot of clavier sounds. Let's take away a few clavier.
Maybe two from here, two from here, one from here, maybe another two.
Maybe take away two from here, and let's
try something like this. Lets listen to the first two bars.
Excellent. Let's delete the third and fourth bars so
we can copy our first two bars to the third
and fourth bar. And let's make some variation, maybe by
adding another clavier here and taking away this one. Excellent.
A very nice beat. To finalize that beat, I'm going to add some swing to it. All
major does offer some form of a groove engine
that will take your notes and transform their timing
to add an interesting groove, like swing and shuffle.
In Ableton Live, I'm going to click on the
Hot Swap button next to the groove. It's gonna
take me to the groove library of Ableton Live.
Let's take down this section of the screen, by dragging it down. And I'm gonna
go to the Hip Hop category, and I'm gonna double-click on the groove called loosely
flow. We're gonna see it's added a groove to our MIDI clip, and now
I can leave Hot swap mode. And now we have the groove applied to our MIDI clip.
If we compare the two, let's listen to it. Without the groove.
And with
We can sense a stronger feeling of bouncy
energy to our beat, which will complement greatly
on the dance floor. Feel free to experiment
with different types of grooves. And maybe even
make your own grooves by right-clicking on the
grid, turning it off and adjusting the timing
of the notes very slightly as well as
velocities. Let's turn the grid back on. So,
now we've placed our kick, snare, clap,
closed and open hats, tom sounds, and extra
percussion, in our case the clavier. We also
added a groove. We finalized our juke beat.