How to Make Trap Beat?

What’s up Producer!
Today we’re talking trap beats! A lot of trap beats are built up around samples. And we have a good collection of them at r-loops.com.

The Trap Genre is a sub-genre of hip hop and has definite ‘signature’ elements. The tempo can range from around 100 bpm (slowest) to 165bpm (fastest). This also includes half-time tempos. A 150bpm tempo for example can accommodate beats at 75bpm.

Complicated double or triple time high hat patterns, nice tuned kick drums with long decays (those 808s), and atmospheric synths, with some melodic synth lines are all part of the Trap signature sound. One of the critical components of any trap-style beat is to give your artist ‘room’. This is especially important for kick drum patterns. As producers, we can really appreciate the patterns and ‘artistry’ that goes into making the beats, but we have to consider the performer. They need to shine, and our beats need to make them shine.

Let’s get right to it:
Here are the steps to make a simple trap drum beat. Set you project tempo to 140 bpm.

You’ll need a kick drum, snare or clap, high hats and a perc sound, a rim shot for example. In your sequencer or piano roll: you’re creating a two-bar pattern. Set your grid to 1/16ths.

This is the pattern:

1. Place the snare/clap on beats 9 & 25,
2. Next, place add the high hats on every down beat and every up beat. This will give a nice steady beat that you can spice up with different rolls as you build up the groove,
3. Place your kick on 1, 3 and on 21 & 27. When you experiment with your kick drum placement, just make sure that you use odd numbers. You’ll feel and hear where the groove works for you,
4. Now to add a little more flavour, place your perc on 15 and 19,
5. For the complicated hats patterns, you can always grab one of the high-hat MIDI patterns often included in the trap sample packs from R-Loops.com.

That’s it! The easy way to create a basic trap beat, that you can use as a foundation in your track, and add the variety and changes as you work. Try it out! We’ve asked Bronwen from www.rapponline.net to do a video demonstrating building a Trap Beat in Logic Pro X, using Ultrabeat!

Experiment and let your imagination dominate!
The r-loops team.

🎹 USED SAMPLE PACK (SONICS EMPIRE - Trap Flavor): https://r-loops.com/sample-pack/sonics-empire/trap-flavor/4153