How to Make Your Own Beats: Velocity and More

Adjusting the volume of drum samples is the easiest mixing process to consider, both at the start, during, and at the end of the production process. Even with regular instrument tracks, it's as easy as it gets. Adjusting the volume of certain tracks will allow others to fit in and not clash all that much, hopefully not at all! It comes quite naturally to even people who have just come into the music production game.

Adjusting the volume of multiple tracks is possible in many different places in, well, basically all different samplers and hosts. For instance, Propellerheads' Reason has volume mixers on a lot of buses and all the different devices to help you figure out how to make beats, and also in the main mixer. So that's three places that you can easily change the volume of whatever sound you're currently attending to. Logic, which is Apple's audio flagship program, also has a similar structure. You can easily adjust all types of volume quite easily in different places.

One of the essential mixing rules that all music producers and beat makers should take to heart is that you should never lower the volume of a song so much that it can't be heard. There's a big difference between a drum samples sound that is low but complements or pushes another sound up, and another sound that is so low that it cannot be heard through everything else. Mixing engineers will tell you the same, so start focusing on making each sound valuable to a mix. If the song could do without that sound, then ditch it. A song is as good as its weakest part, so each track complementing the song as a whole is vital.

You can expect that a sound's volume, when lowered by 6 decibels, will be lowered just about half, and the same thing on the way up; raising a sound by 6 decibels will double its volume. When adjusting the volume of hi hats, it's a good idea to let it sit where you think it should and then take a few decibels off that further. Because the human ear has a tendency to overcompensate for these higher frequencies, so they don't need to be as high.

Velocity is different from volume as it pertains to drums, because it's based on a note by note dynamic. One note could have a different velocity from the next, meaning they will be heard in different volumes and at times with completely different sounds if your drum samples were multi-sampled.

As you start to make your own beats, you should always take care when lowering volume, and never make decisions recklessly. Pay attention with every creative decision. One tip offered by a lot of professional mixers is that sounds should be lowered and never increased in volume. This will ensure that no clipping occurs and that sounds are the best volume they could possibly be. With drum samples, try to mix it in as a group, separate from the mix, before mixing it together.