How do you make your beats?

[djshire]

Logic ES2.

[gtg605]

At the risk of being seen as a troll I dare this:
I use my fingers. I load drum sounds and play them with my fingers on the keyboard.Is that weird?
I like to have full control of my sounds, and I usually edit each drum sound to my liking and add effects etc. to every single sound.
With my layered drumsounds I create loops and grooves for further use manually.

Are people just using pre-recorded loops?
Just asking, because I didn't think so.
I always play drumtracks live with my fingers on the keyboard, pattern by pattern.Then edit individual notes if neccesary.

But maybe thats not the case normally?

Interesting if not. ( Aren't you afraid to sound like everybody else? )

Best regards.

Mik

[illkind]

+1 on Maschine...recently picked one up and it revolutionized my workflow with beat making. Love it.

[quayquay17]

I use one shots for my drums.

When I don't have musical inspiration I do sound design. I use cheapo/free VA synths to make zips, zaps, blonks and baps. I use my mic to record thwacks, pings, and clacks, I layer, effect, and EQ, then save it all to my audio drive.

Then say i'm working on a song and need a nice loud snare:
samples > homemade > drums > snares > big > thwack.wav

Other times I use one shots from sample packs, organized similarly, and sometimes I layer or mix and match.
Then I drop the sample into ableton's drum rack, sometimes add a delay, reverb, or saturator, throw a compressor on the bus, and leave the rest for mixing.


Korg nanopad + ableton's drum rack + samples.

[Moe Shinola]

Either Orion's Drumrack or Session Drummer 3 in Sonar with Groove Monkee MIDI loops. Orion's Sampler is good for slicing a loop and then triggering the slices manually w/ the keyboard at whatever tempo you want. ArcDev H4xx0r is awesome for moving the start and end points of loop slices around, reversing them, whatever, then pitching one slice an octave down. You can play this slice manually on your keyboard with the other slices and make some real trippy beats.

[risome]

I drop one shot drum samples straight in Lives arrangement page eq each one ,layer slide around with grid off till i get a good feel and beat happening

[synthgeek]

I use a combination of synthesized sounds, one-shot samples, and (manipulated) loops. Not really sure what I'd say for genre - definitely electronic, and I guess my drums especially tend to be industrial and d&b influenced... lots of found-sound & sampled and/or synthesized noise percussion, sampled loops/breaks, fx on everything, etc.

Synthesized sounds can come from any synth really, but some of my favorite dedicated drum synths are Drumular, the Ironhead: Spawn bundle, Drumatic, and xoxos' stuff.

Samples likewise come from all over - commercial samples, hardware drum machines, stuff from around the house which I bang on, my drummer friend, layered synth/sample stuff, etc. One-shots usually get loaded into Shortcircuit, I don't really use a dedicated drum sampler/beat machine. Nothing against them, my money's just gone elsewhere, and I don't feel like it's something I need.

I often use LiveSlice for loop manipulation, though I'm just as likely to import a sample directly to a Reaper track & chop by hand. I generally use LiveSlice when I want only some single hits out of a loop or if I want to completely rearrange things, and go for the regular track import for "normal" d&b-style breakbeat chopping & manipulation.

Programming is done via piano roll when possible. Not having a pad controller, I use a keyboard when I want to play stuff in. I'm seriously considering getting a pad controller of some kind though, we'll see. I'd really love an actual electronic kit, but I don't have the room.

I tend to work in passes, starting off with say, a 4-bar loop - copy a few times, work in some details (more layers, accents, fills, etc.), move to next section and repeat. I'll go back & forth between the drums & other parts of the track as I build different sections, and then go back a few times once the entire basic arrangement is settled & fill in more details. I also do a lot of track bouncing at different times during the process for further audio tweakery.

[sjm]

At the risk of being seen as a troll I dare this:
I use my fingers. I load drum sounds and play them with my fingers on the keyboard.Is that weird?

I sometimes do that, but I'm not very good at it. I had a friend who was a wiz at playing drums on the keyboard. There are videos on youtube of some people who are fantastic at drumming this way (or using an MPC).

I don't think it's weird, just not as easy as programming them directly for most people.

[jacqueslacouth]

gone

[BDeep]

I mostly make tech(house)-y music, I use some one shot samples (sometimes edited/mangled in an editor) which I load into Minispillage2, and maybe layer with them with a synthesized drum sound. The rest comes from Drumspillage.

I program the beats directly into Logic parts, I feel I have more control over the composition this way (although sequencers integrated in drummachines should provide the same level of control - it's just a matter of workflow).
I sometimes use a Korg Nanokey to tap in some parts.

I'm seriously tempted by AAS Chromaphone by the way, for more natural and tuned percussion...

[whitecloud]

Since my music is all over the map and I am mainly a Guitarist that happens to love synths I will do either one of the two below.
1.EZ Player Pro into SSD 3.5. If you start using the tracks available in the
arrangement window and not just using the midi files in the browser, you can really make things more interesting. This approach would be for natural sounding drums
2.Akai MPD32-Geist. This way is relatively new for me, but I have to say I
really enjoy the process. With my recent purchases of both Soft and Hardware
synths and buying Geist, my guitars aren't getting played as much lately......

[Waker]

BFD 2 with the cheap Roland HD1 if I want "real" drums.

Maschine/battery/Kontakt for one shots.

Stylus rmx is my loop player of choice.

[Harry_HH]

I really don't make beats, I really am generally happy with off the shelf drum loops or preset patterns in my various software packages. I might use a couple of variations within a song if supplied, however, I am far more focussed on melody and hopefully finding the hook for a song. The beats just hold the song together for me and help keep in time. I like BFD Eco, iDrum, EZ Drummer and uTonic.

This is absolutely what I believed majority of (at least so called home studio producers) us do - I include to "making beats" also drum samples/loops, ready-made midi pattern libraries etc.
What I originally wanted to know was 1) what are the MAIN working flows and methods for creating drum-rhytm track, 2) what tools/libraries you use, latest trends etc - all this connected to the genre you are working with.

So far I've seen interesting comments in the thread, although statistically as said I believe that majory of us (=KVR users) uses mainly "ready-made" samples/midi files + drum modules/plugins (I wonder if I'm right or wrong but this is my hypothesis). But despite these ready-made things, what's make the difference, is HOW these presets and modules are used, connected together, tailored and refined. (Of course e.g. real drummists are a different thing but very seldom the home studios can have a luxury of a drum boot/drummist.)

The end result is what counts - two person using same tools (plugins, samples,midi files, sequencers, synths) can get totally diifferent quality. The core of the state or art is combination of creative use of different tools, technical skills and - pure work, i.e. time spend with the rhytm track.

Harry

[Acid Mitch]

I use TR-909 and MPC60. I'm mostly making house/techno/acid.

[BASSDRIVE]

Mainly one shots and a few vst synths. I use FL Studio to sequence.