What are the best drum sample packs to improve your songwriting? For starters, let’s be honest. There are tons of drum sample packs online. But, finding the drum samples that will work best for your music is often tricky given the sheer volume of choices (ranging from amazing all the way down to useless). We […]
Midi Drum Loops or Live Audio Drum Loops? An In-Depth Look into this Long-Debated Topic So, you’re inspired, and you want to write some new music. But, no matter what ideas you have going in your head, you are likely are going to need some drums to truly take your rough ideas to a more […]
Using a Metronome to Practice? Five reasons you Should (Sometimes) Lose Your Metronome Introduction Let’s start off this article by getting this out of the way. You should practice with a metronome. No matter your instrument. There’s no better way to improve your sense of time. That perfection of time, punctuated by an endless stream […]
Free play-along drum backing tracks to get the creative juices flowing right now! We put together a few play-along rock drum tracks for you rockers, some powerful backing tracks using modern metal drums for the metalheads, and some funky goodness for basically everyone. There’s something, musically-speaking, for everyone here on this page. All play-along drum […]
Popular Examples of Music Written in 3/4 Time: A Historical Look at the Use of the 3/4 Time Signature in Popular Songs While we have previously covered different time signatures in other tutorials, today we’d like to explore a time signature often forgotten about when thinking of modern popular music. While everyone has surely heard […]
Get to Know: Simon Reich Simon Reich is an award-winning pianist and composer from Victoria, Australia. Despite a later start than most, he turned music into a full-time profession. He shares his insight and work as a long-time Beta Monkey user. Simon Reich began composing music in his teenage years, but in most cases, […]
Take Your Music and Songwriting to the Next Level: Converting “Audio Drum Loops” to MIDI In this tutorial, we will cover a number of topics about converting audio drum loops to MIDI loops. These include: Introduction Hands-On Treatment for Small Batch Conversions Dedicated Software Options Keep the Feel, Add the Melody Parting Thoughts and Final […]
Drum loops for jazz? Drum loops are not necessarily ideal for all musical genres. For rock, pop, and country songwriters, of course, drum loops are an easy and viable way to get the songwriting process going. These genres generally feature drum beats that are repetitive in nature, meant to lock down the groove and serve […]
How Do You Use Drum Loops? Seven Tips and Tricks You Should Know While nearly everyone is aware of drum loops and their use in modern music, fewer folks know more than a handful of ways how they can be used. We’d like to think since we’ve recorded, produced, and edited nearly 60 drum loop […]
Why Download Online Drum Loops? In this article, we examine three benefits of downloading online drum loops for musicians and drummers alike. Introduction Every songwriter has or can easily download drum loops. There’s no shortage of free drum loops out there if your music is of the electronic sort: Drum & Bass, Dubstep, Hip Hop, […]