Make your first beat
Press Play and listen: three drum sounds, one bar, looping. Then build your own.
Lesson 1 of 9
A beat is a short drum pattern that repeats. Most of the music you hear is built on one, and you can make one in a minute. Press Play on the grid below.
A basic beat
Press Play. While it loops, click any square to add or remove a hit.
| Kick | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Snare | ||||||||||||||||
| Closed hat |
Time runs from left to right. Each square is a step, a sixteenth of a bar. The playhead lights the steps up one after another and starts over at the end, and every lit square plays its sound when the playhead reaches it.
Each row is one drum sound. Here the kick (the low thump) plays on the first and third beat, the snare (the crack) on the second and fourth, and the closed hi-hat (the tick) on every other step, keeping time between them.
Your turn
This grid only has a kick on the first step. Add snares and hi-hats until it grooves. There are no wrong answers: if something sounds odd, click it again to take it out.
Your beat
Try snares on steps 5 and 13, then a hi-hat on every other step.
| Kick | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Snare | ||||||||||||||||
| Closed hat |
Your grids are kept in this browser, so you can leave and come back. Reset brings back the lesson’s pattern, and Open in TuttiDAW opens your beat in the full editor, ready to build a song around it.