By: Ebony Anderson-Brown

BUILDING BEATS WORKSHOP LEADER & MUSIC PRODUCER EL BLANCO NIÑO HAS SOME TIPS TO CREATE A BEAT WITH VIDEO GAME SAMPLES USING THE FREE BROWSER-BASED MUSIC PRODUCTION PROGRAM SOUNDTRAP. YOU CAN ACCESS SOUNDTRAP ON YOUR LAPTOPS, PHONES, AND IPADS USING THE CHROME BROWSER. 

This tutorial will show you two ways to create a beat using video game samples in Soundtrap. We are going to look at one shot samples, or sound effects that you would typically hear in classic video games, and MIDI notations which can be imported once downloaded.

First, you will need a video game sample, which you can find on a number of websites, one being Sounds Resource. This site is very energetic and has a fairly active community of people sharing a variety of sound effects from video games. Usually samples are arranged by console, mobile games, characters, stages, and more.

Once you choose your sample of choice, you’re going to download it onto your computer and extract the files by unzipping the package. You’ll be able to see all of the sounds in the folder, and what you’re going to do next is import those sounds into Soundtrap.

You can make sure that the sounds aren’t too low by previewing them before creating your beat.

When you’re ready to start, create a new beat in Soundtrap and add the sample into your project. You’re going to want to loop the sample, maybe have the sound effect fall at the top of every new beat to make a little impact. Feel free to layer any additional effects and rearrange as you see fit.

Now that you’ve got the one shot sample into your beat, we can check out MIDI notation files. One site that can be used for this is called MIDI Shrine, a site that’s geared with classic video game soundtracks. Similar to how we chose a sample from the previous site, we’re going to do the same thing here and download the file and unzip the package.

Next you’re going to import the MIDI files into Soundtrap. You’ll notice there are a couple of different notations or loaded presets.

You can choose to change the instrument of the notation to whatever you like, such as a string, a woodwind, or a brass instrument.

Now that you have created a beat with video game samples, you can play around with the effects a bit and layer other sounds like a trap beat over the two elements you just learned to make it more unique to you. If you enjoyed this, stay tuned for our other How-To videos!