Dubstep Tutorial Day 1: Making a Dubstep Beat [7 Day Song]

Hi, I’m Dave from boyinaband.com and welcome to day 1 of the boyinaband seven day song tutorial on Dubstep, where I’ll be making a dubstep song from scratch over 7 days!

If you follow along, building up your own dubstep song as I make mine (don’t just copy mine, make it your own!), on day 7 post your finished dubstep song as a video response to my completed song to show everyone what you’ve learned and how sweet your track is!

I’ll go through all the responses and try to help out with any constructive criticism.   By no means am I saying I’m an expert, but it’s always good to get an opinion from someone else to help you improve your music!

By the end of Day 1 we will have a totally sweet Dubstep drumbeat that we can nod our heads to!

Okay!   Let’s begin.

First things first – Make sure you’ve got an MClass Mastering suite and a 16:2 mixer in your rack.   This will make mastering and mixing a lot quicker if you do this now!   Also move the Tempo to 140bpm as most Dubstep is made at this tempo, meaning it’s easier for Dubstep DJs to use in their mix!

Right click the interface and create a combinator to store the devices we will use.   Right click in the combinator and create an instance of ReDrum.

Next it’s time to pick your samples!   I’m using some samples from the primeloops.com dubstep producer sample pack since, shockingly enough, it’s frickin’ ace for dubstep.   If you’re struggling for samples though, there’s a free dubstep sample pack linked to from boyinaband.com, just look in the free sample packs category.

Remember, to load a sample just click the little “Browse Sample” button on the ReDrum channel you want to load it into (It looks like a folder) and navigate to the sample and select it.

Ok, I’ll just go through the samples I’ve got in here – Two kicks, 2 Snares, a clap, a closed hat, an open hat and a ride.

The kick drums are actually the same sample, on channel 2 though I’ve got it set a bit quieter with a higher tone, and on channel one I’ve reduced the length so it’s a sharper hit with no tail end, and I’ve reduced the pitch and tone so it’s much bassier, providing the meat of the kick sound, where channel 2 will provide the click.

Layering snares is always important – to make a really meaty snare I’ve filled channel 3 with a punchy snare with a lot of body, channel 4 has a snappy, more high pitched snare, and channel 5 has a nice well-rounded clap that’ll fill out the mid-hi end.

Let’s made a beat with the kick and snare to get started then!   First, since I want this to be a to bar loop, I’ll need to increase the number of steps.   Click the up arrow until the steps hit 32.   You can move between steps 1-16 and 17-32 with the “Edit steps” slider.

And on with the beat – I’ve put my main kick on the 1, 16, 17 and 21 steps and my clicky kick on the 1 and 17 to really emphasize the start of the bar.   When I put all three snares on the 9 and 25 steps, this gives a kinda bouncy beat.   To really make it bounce though, we need some shuffle.   Conveniently enough, all we do is hit the “Shuffle” button on ReDrum to add in a nice swing which makes the change between the 16 and 17 kick drum hits.   It’s this swing that will stop your dubstep tracks feeling regimented and start them feeling head-noddingly bouncy!

Now we have this kick/snare combination, it’s time to add some hi end!   But first, let’s copy this to the track.   I usually like to make the low and high ends on seperate lanes so I can easily do simple drops by taking out the high end – you just have more control.   So make sure the beat track is selected, right click ReDrum and click “Copy Pattern to Track”.   This will move the beat you made into the space between the two loop points.

Time for the hi end!   Let’s move to pattern 2 and get to work.   I’m going to start with a ride on every beat and an open hat on every offbeat.  This will really drive the beat along.

Next up though, I want to add some closed hats that will give an interesting, bouncy feel.   One way to get this kind of tripped-up offbeat sound is to use triplets – this is when you place notes in 1/3 intervals over a 4/4 beat.   instead of one-two-three-four, it becomes one-two-three-one-two-three – 6 notes where there would have been 4.

Since ReDrum is kinda awkward in this respect, I’ll stop using the ReDrum sequencer and start with the Reason sequencer window.   So let’s get the pattern as it stands onto the track- right click the “Beat” lane in the sequencer window and click “New note lane”.   With this lane selected, right click ReDrum and click “Copy pattern to track”.   Make sure you click the “Enable Pattern Section” button on ReDrum now so the pattern isn’t playing from the inbuilt ReDrum sequencer!

Now, double click on the pattern in the hi end lane you’ve just created.   from the drop down menu, select 1/16T – which means 1/16th triplets.   I’ll place some of these on the track to make a bouncy, rolling feel.   By putting them on offbeats it really makes it sound interesting.

Now there’s my beat!   Let’s do a few quick things to make it sound a little better.   Right click ReDrum and create > MClass Equalizer.   Since the kick and snare are most important here, we want to emphasize them.   Hit the low shelf on and beef up the sound around 50hz by about 5dB.   This will obviously depend on your sample, but here it’ll just bring up the really low end of the kick.   I’ve also taken the Q (bandwidth) up to full so it affects a smaller area of the frequency spectrum, really emphasising that low end – remember, this is Dubstep.   If you don’t have a meaty bass end then the other Dubstep producers will laugh at you!

Next, hit param one or two, and boost around 1.5khz by about the same amount to really give your snare that crack that will pierce through the mix.  Take down the Q (bandwidth) to about a quarter so this is spread more evenly over the snare sound.

Finally, go up to your mixer, right click it and create > RV7000 advanced reverb.   Just with the default settings, turn the aux 1 knob on your beat’s channel to about a quarter to give a bit of room to the effect, this will just make it sit in the mix better later on.   Make sure you don’t drown it in reverb!

Okay!   So there’s our dubstep beat that we’ll be building a song onto!   They grow up so fast…   In day 2 we’ll be adding some sweet blips, samples and effects to give a bit more character and power to the beat!

Until then, have a play and make your beat unique, then just nod your head to your bouncy new Dubstep beat!