BUILDING BEATS WORKSHOP LEADER & MUSIC PRODUCER OBAH HAS SOME TIPS TO CREATE A METRO BOOMIN TYPE BEAT, USING THE FREE BROWSER-BASED MUSIC PRODUCTION PROGRAM SOUNDTRAP. YOU CAN ACCESS SOUNDTRAP ON YOUR LAPTOPS, PHONES, AND IPADS USING THE CHROME BROWSER.

Today we are going to create a Metro Boomin type beat using Soundtrap.

Metro Boomin is one of the top trap producers right now. He’s produced tracks for every major artist in the genre. His sound is the trap sound: syncopated, heavy drum programming, booming 808 basses, simple melodies and harmonies, as well as a nice mixdown to complement the vocalist.

In the video above, OBaH discusses trap music techniques and some cool creative strategies for your productions. The elements that make up trap music are pretty simple. It is the producer’s ability to pick out complimentary sounds, and to arrange, edit and mix those sounds, that makes the difference between an okay beat and a really good one.

OBaH’s sounds come from pre-made loops found in the Soundtrap loop library. The premade loops showcase the type of quality sounds that come in Soundtrap. We also want to show that anyone can make a quality beat in Soundtrap without being a trained musician, and loops are great for this.

Let’s start with the lead melody. OBaH found a nice synth loop in the loop library called Final Boss, and didn’t change too much about it. He did a few things; at one point in the beat, he changed the key of the synth. He also removed a few notes from the melody when he did a breakdown in the beat.

The synth starts at the beginning of the track, but at bar 17, the key changes. How does he do that? When you mouse over a MIDI clip in Soundtrap, you’ll see the Edit option appear. Click on Edit, then go to Transpose. For eight bars at a time, OBaH changes the key of the synth part from G major to A major. He did that so the same melody doesn’t repeat from start to finish in the beat, to add variation in the melody.

He began the key variation at the 8-bar section at bar 17, and then again later on in the beat.

At bar 33, he creates a breakdown in the beat. For the synth, he opens up the MIDI clip. To do that, you double-click on the track (in this case, the track with the synth part). Soundtrap gives you two options in this view: 1) Instrument, which means you can add notes to it, or 2) Piano Roll, which means you can add or delete notes. So he highlighted some notes, and then deleted them to make a more sparse synth. Editing in the piano roll allows you to make variations on MIDI parts.

We also want to point out the drum beat. In this tutorial, there are two pre-made loops from Soundtrap making up the drum beat. The green one is the primary beat and plays through the track. The purple one is a secondary beat which comes in later and is meant as a layer on top of the primary.

OBaH has taken some MIDI notes out of the drum parts. When you have too many notes going on at the same time, it becomes like a musical argument, and we don’t want that. We want there to be space, so when both tracks play together, we have room to breath musically.

For the green track, OBaH opened the loop so he can edit the bass (or kick) drum.

He double-clicks the MIDI clip on Soundtrap’s beat, Confidence, and goes to the piano roll to edit the notes. He added more bass drum hits as the track progresses. Soloing this drum part and playing it allows us to hear the variation and increased energy due to the additional kick drums.

One important thing when considering the mixdown of our track is deciding what needs to be automated. OBaH places automation on the Vocal Nowhere. To add automation to a track, click the automation button under its name.

The automation track appears below the audio track. Panning allows you to decide whether the sound will go more to the left or right side of the stereo track. One sample plays in your left ear and then the next time you hear it it’s in your right ear. It’s a very popular technique with hip-hop producers.

In the intro, OBaH uses the Volume Fade In on the track called Brampton Beat. Hover over the MIDI clip, click the edit box, and there’s the Fade In option as well as Fade Out and others.

The last piece of the puzzle is the beat’s arrangement - how long the sections are and in what order they happen. The entire beat is arranged in 8-bar sections. There’s an intro, then there is the first section starting at bar 9. We’ll put the Loop Cycle bar over that section so it loops when we play it. You will notice that we have done some edits to the drums at the end of that section.

Then we will move the Loop Cycle bar over to 17. When we are working with 8-bar sections, the best places to make changes are either halfway through the section or towards the end of it.

At Bar 25, there is a verse section where things are mostly intact. At Bar 33, there is a breakdown section, with plenty of MIDI parts muted. The next 8-bar section is at Bar 41, then there is another 8-bar verse section at 49. At Bar 57, we have a 16-bar outro where OBaH has edited out many of the sounds.

Towards the end of the outro at Bar 65, he has taken out most of the instruments, and it is mostly just sound effects left in at that point.

Thanks for tuning in; if you enjoyed this, stay tuned for our other How-To videos!