Sunday, November 15, 2009

Replacing Your Drummer With Beat Making Programs

By Anthony Carter

There is a lot to consider being a solo music artist in this day and age. The pressure to make a quality sound is great, and it often requires a good deal of money. It's not even cheap to have a beat back your music. So, if this is you, you have to think of ways to save. Any musician will tell you that having a live drummer beats automated loops any day, but these programs are improving all the time so that it is becoming cost effective and comparable to replace an expensive live drummer with beat making programs.

You might be thinking, "what are beat making programs?" Well they literally are exactly what they sound like. Programs and software designed for those who need beats to be able to make them simply.

There is an ever-increasing amount of these programs, and to be fair, most of them work rather well. I have compiled a list of what ratings and reviews have labeled as the best on the market right now. They are not in any particular order, because side to side, these programs are all basically neck and neck.

Perhaps the growing favorite among hip hop producers and beat makers of all types is the software known as Fruity Loops. They have already made five updates to the software through new additions since the software was released early into the millennium. Fruity Loops is recommended most on its simplicity of use and extensive tutorial modes. This allows even the newest people to the software to start making quality beats fast. You can download a trial version of the software from: http://flstudio.image-line.com/documents/download.html, but purchasing the software for full functionality will generally run somewhere between fifty to one hundred dollars.

Equally popular to Fruity Loops is the extensive program developed by Sony known as Acid Pro. While the most common version of this product in circulation is 4. 0, Acid Pro has released seven versions of this popular software which offer a lot of options for the budding solo artist or producer. Basically, you can choose a vast amount of drums and sounds of kits to pick exactly how you want these beats to sound like. Acid Pro takes samples from popular kits both of the past and of today. On top of all of this you can record things to accompany with your beats, which makes it all inclusive software for a solo artist and a powerful tool for a hip hop producer. This generally ranges around $175, but you can try out a version of 7. 0 here: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/download/trials

The first two mentioned programs were exclusively for those running PCs. The only drawback to this is the increasing popularity of Mac computers. So I had to include software to make beats that can be used on a Mac, and this means Reason. This is the highest recommended recording software for Mac, and among the highest rated overall. It boasts an exhausting library of available sounds for beats including specific drums from specific kits and other odd sounds. Similar to Acid Pro, you can record on top of adding percussion which makes it a lot more diverse.

So now nothing should be stopping you.

Making beats is literally as simple as a download anymore. With a little bit of practice you can really make the software worth your time and your money. At any rate, its cheaper than hiring a good drummer to sit in your studio for a couple hours.

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