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Understanding Drum Beats

Friday, August 29, 2008

With the release of the new trakAxPC software very close, the trakAx team have decided to post some educational resources and useful links that will hopefully help users understand the basics of music and video structure and in turn, help you create better music and video creations.

In a really interesting article entitled “Beat Mixing: Understanding Drum Beats”, the author Rob Wegner explains the fundamentals of a drum beat. Wegner brings us through the basics of beat counting and understanding measures, while also explaining how DJ’s use these techniques when “phasing” in and out of songs.

A further example, which will help you understand beat counting and beat measures, is a video which was posted on YouTube by A1partydj’s, that explains in excellent detail how to beat count when mixing songs. It also provides an opportunity to actually hear the beats being played so you can count along to the beat yourself.

We hope you find these articles and videos interesting and we will be continuing to post more educational weblogs in the upcoming weeks.

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Beat Mixing: Understanding Drum Beats
taken from “Understanding Drum Beats” by Rob Wegner
One way that you can better understand beat mixing is to understand basic drumming. This is because dance DJ’s listen to the rhythm, as provided by the drum tempo, in order to beat mix. Even though most of today’s dance tracks are composed with computer generated drum beats, these “drum fills” generally replicate the elements of a classic drum-set. In addition, the turntable, in terms of its incorporation into orchestras, is classified as a percussion instrument.

First, let’s review the basic drum-set. As Figure 1 shows, a simple set includes a bass drum, snare drum, hi-hat, cymbals, and tom toms.

Dance music is almost always in 4/4 time (3/4 time can be found in Polka and Waltz). 4/4 time is basically counting 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, etc. Each count (or block) of fours is a measure. If you were to hit the bass drum and snare drum every time you counted to four, it would look like this (reading from left to right) (see Figure 2):

Now let’s play the snare drum on the 2nd and 4th beat (where you snap your fingers) and the bass drum on the first and third beat. The note change will appear as follows (see Figure 3):

Most DJ’s cue their song on the first beat (where the bass drum often starts) at the beginning of a measure. When a DJ is mixing a “32 beat in-and-out,” it means the DJ mixed for this length of time (see Figure 4):

Let’s call the above 32 beat segment a “phrase.” By “phrasing,” a DJ is starting the intro exactly at the beginning of a segment and matching it to the outro of a song with the same number of beats (i.e., 32 beat outro). If the intro is only 16 beats, then the DJ must match that intro with 16 beats of an outgoing song’s outro. Fortunately for today’s DJ’s, the intro’s and outro’s of most dance tracks are essentially drum beats.

A common mistake is failing to compare the number of beats in an intro to an outgoing song’s outro. For example, if a DJ starts to beat match a song with a 32 beat intro into a song with a 16 beat outro, the change at the 17th beat of the outro may ruin the mix (particularly if the intro was noticeable). If the DJ mixed out of the song with the 16 beat outro, then the remaining 16 beats of the intro will most likely consist of just drums, which will most likely drop the energy level.

Finally, you should note that most dance songs maintain the 32 beat pattern throughout the track. In other words, even though the intro may have ended after 32 beats (or four 32 beat segments, etc.), the verse may be 32 beats (or two 32 beat segments), the chorus 32 beats (or two 32 beat segments), etc. In some instances, you may discover a song that has a 16 beat segment between several 32 beat segments. Nevertheless, you can usually expect a change after every 32 beats. This should help you to predict change(s), particularly when you need to find a segment to mix out of a song that’s not working.

Beat Mixing: Understanding Drum Beats by Rob Wegner, October 2001 | http://www.discjockey101.com/oct2001.html

This video explains how to beat count when mixing songs. It also provides an opportunity to actually hear the beats being played so you can count along to the beat yourself.

Hope you’ve found these resources useful and check back next week for the second installment.

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Posted by SysAdmin in Tips & Tricks  trakPack News  

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