J. Anthony Allen shows how to layer hi-hats to transform a basic drum beat. Duplicate notes onto both beats and off-beats, add decorative hits, then use trap-style rolls for energy. Consolidate the pattern so it loops cleanly for copying and pasting.
Now, the hi hats are generally the most forgiving, meaning you can put them really kind of all over the place and make it work. But one thing we can do is we can put take all of our hi hats if we want to, and put them in addition to where they are now, also put them on the beads. So I'm going to copy and paste these on the beads and basically double them up. So now they're on every beat and every offbeat. Let's hear that. Okay, now it's starting to sound like a beat, right? You can also just kind of have fun with your Iats a little bit if you want to. Just add a few around there just for fun. If you zoom in a little farther, you can make some faster ones like that. That gets you into that kind of almost trap style that's really popular right now. That has really frantic hi hats. You just do this a whole bunch and you'll get that really frantic hi hat sound. But let's go back to this. Cool. So now we have our basic beat. So the next thing I want to do with this is make it so that I can easily, easily loop this beat. It's not as easy as looping this beat, right, because this is a loop. So how do I turn this into a loop? Something I can just copy and paste over and over and over. It's not there yet, because if I just copy this and paste it, it can go anywhere. There's one step I can do to make it so that this is an easily loopable beat, and that is called consolidating. So let's do that in the next step to finish off our very basic beat.
