So confused- how to make a beat?

If I remember correctly one of my first posts here was just like yours.

Just dooiit!

You need time to find out your own way of doing certain things.
You need time to learn how to make things sound good. I mean for instance how to apply the right amount of compression and reverb to make your snare sound nice and tight.
It also takes time to develop a good ear to recognise a good sample and what kind of stuff sound good together.

You can only get that experience by just making beats. Analyse every beat you make. What sounds, good, and what not? Why? Make a lot of beats. Try different styles and experiment.

I think the most important part is getting your chops right, I still have problems with this. That is honestly why I often go a more unorthodox route haha. But if you can chop sections so that they will sound right with your timing correct, which I have really only been able to do once or twice, you are golden. I usually loop a whole phrase, which is considerably easier, or I make much smaller chops that can be manipulated more freely. There are endless answers to this question, each person will have a different answer, It all depends on what how you like beats to sound and what makes sense to you. Stop looking at how everyone else does it, and start playing around with it more that will help you more than anything.

I re-studied the video and this guy does have a quite simple style of making beats, but he is just very good at it. Getting the simple things right is most of the time harder than the more complex things.

To begin with, his drums are tight. The sounds of his drums (takes skill and experience to make it sound good) and the patterns/ grooves (also takes skill and experience) are on point.

Then he has chopped up a sample that allows him to flip it in numerous ways. The selection of the sample is experience and having a good ear. The way he chopped it, again, skill and experience.

A musical phrase or sample is almost like a sentence. A sentence can be broken down in words, and by flipping around the words you can create new sentences or short phrases.

But with a musical phrase it's harder to tell where a 'word' starts and ends. Every beatmaker hears other words in the same musical phrase or sentence.

Anyway, you have to find a phrase that contain enough interesting 'words' for you to create new 'sentences' and 'phrases' with. (Good ear)
Break it down in chops or 'words'. When you did that correctly you have to use your own creativity to create new phrases.

Lol DeadSoul, I feel your pain brotha. And as many more experienced users have pointed out here, it's all trial and error. To rise to a level that YOU'RE comfortable with will take time, patience and dedication.

And to point out something that I am learning, you will always have people who (some with positive intentions others with negative) who will always say "you should do this" or "you should do that", at the end of the day it's what You're comfortable with.

The whole base line and chopping is all in part due to how you hear and break-down a sample, you can snatch a bassline from "Record A", and one shot vocal from "Record B" and a melody or group of melody chops from another record(s). As one user said, treat it like a kid treats a toy, push the sample/beat to the breaking point, once you find the limitations then you know what the boundaries are and from there tweak it until it makes Your head nod.

if your just starting to make beats id say make it easy for yourself,

first off sample some slow classical music, classical music is great for learning sampling, because it can be minimal and have lots of space between the instruments and a lot of the time you can sample one instrument/sound at a time.

Find a section of a track that has just strings, then sample about 6 odd seconds worth which has about 4 or so different long notes, now chop that sample up so you have those 4 notes separated on to 4 separate pads, now make the program 'mono' so each pad pressed cuts off the sound of the pad playing before it.

now load up some drum one shot sounds, use quantize for now and record a simple drum track of just kick on the 1 and 3 beat and the snare on the 2 and 4 beat of a 1 bar sequence. (one bar is counting out 1 2 3 4 in time with the metronome)

now with your drums looping start playing your string note pads over the top in different ways, then when you want to record or sequence your string sounds duplicate your 1 bar of drums to make the sequence fill up 2 or 4 bars,

now you have a bigger sequence to record your strings over. Once you get used to using the mpc like this start to sample more notes or chords from a bigger section of music and try a new bunch of samples over the top of that,
look at every new sequence in your beat as a change up in your overall song/beat where instruments appear or disappear.

then after getting the hang of this you can start chopping bigger samples to your pads (few notes on one pad) and messing with the sample start times so they dont just trigger at the start of a note so the samples swirl into one another with grooves etc.

This basic technique should get you on the right track

You just have to spend more hours with your girl, I use to make beats on PC for like 5/6 years, these beats still do sound better than my current MPC beats, just because I know how it works on PC. Then started with a 2500, now on a 4000. I'm now infected by the G.A.S. and 100% hardware for 2.5 years (Look at the date I joined this forum lol). Just now (don't have much time, work to pay the hardware) I'm starting to feel really comfy with it, I'm getting more and more into sound design and I learned: It's in the little things, the experience will make you feel better over time and you will have much "Ohhh & Ahhhh moments, thinking, was it this simple@! ."

Just practice practice practice, till you have the confidence you'll get it over some time. But it will take 100's of hours. (for me it did, I still have a long way to go.)

And remember, everyone has his own style, taste, technique. You will develop this too, I have many tricks but these are mine, you will have them soon to.

Just my to cents, I'm in the same situation as you are. Just keep on reading and spend all your time available in gaining knowledge/experience.

NEVER GIVE UP!