J. Anthony Allen breaks down the three sounds that make almost every beat: kick, snare, and hi-hat. He shows how closed and open hi-hats work with a foot pedal, then explains why you start with these three frequencies as your foundation before layering anything else.
Okay, let's talk about sounds, sounds and samples that we're gonna need. So the three most basic sounds we need is a kick, a snare, and a hi hat. This is true in just about all genres of music. And once we get into some of the other sounds, some of the rules. Not rules, but some of the stylistic things change. But the reason we, like kick a snare in a hi hat is. And all of the sounds that we use pretty much because we emulate a drum kit, right? Like someone playing a drum. So this big thing is the kick. This thing over here is the snare, and this is the hi hat. Okay. Now, the hi hat has two positions. It can be open or closed. I've started us off with a closed hi hat. Let me pull up a sound of the two of them. Okay. I have here a website full of samples called Freesound. I'm going to talk to you more about this website in a minute, but for now, I just want to show you the different kinds of hi hat sounds. So this is a closed hi hat. Okay. It's a very short, percussive sound, right? Open hi hat sounds more like this. It rings a lot longer, right. It's noisier. There's a lot of sustain to it. Now, you can also have a hi hat that. That's hit open and then you close it, right? You close it with a foot pedal. So I think that's this. Nope. Yeah. So this is the sound of a hi hat. You hit it open and then you close it with your foot. Right. It's kind of a cool sound, but it's really two sounds in one. It's open hi hat and then a closed hi hat. So I've started this off here with a closed hi hat. Actually a synthetic closed hi hat, but it's emulating a closed hi hat. So these are our three elements that I like to start just about all beats off with. Whenever I'm making drums, I start with these three things and really get the foundation. And then I start layering in some other sounds. Right. We're going to talk about those in just a minute. So let's take this back to being something not so crazy here. So I'm going to get rid of all of that. And let's put this. Let's just do. I don't know that. Oops. Let's get rid of that. I screwed this whole thing up. So let's do. Do. There. That should work. Okay, so all of these are synthetic sounds that I'm using just because of the samples. But kick is going to be your bass sound. Your snare is going to be kind of in the middle, and the hi hat's going to be a high sound. Right. So we've got kind of the full frequency spectrum here, low, middle and high. And that serves us really well for a foundation to get started with. So most beats we make, I'm going to start with these three sounds and then start layering some other stuff on top of them. So let's go on and talk about some of those other sounds now.
