How to Make a BK Drill Type Beat in Soundtrap

BUILDING BEATS WORKSHOP LEADER & MUSIC PRODUCER VAUGHN LEVI WALKS US THROUGH CREATING A BK DRILL BEAT, USING THE FREE BROWSER-BASED MUSIC PRODUCTION AND BEAT MAKING PROGRAM SOUNDTRAP.

BK Drill is a subgenre of Drill music specific to the Brooklyn, NY area, influenced by both Chicago and UK Drill. Popularized by artists such as Pop Smoke, BK Drill combines popular trap styles of music production with the 808 percussion characteristic of Chicago and UK Drill styles.

Vaughn Levi shows us how to create a BK Drill type beat using Soundtrap in the video above. First off, he plays the track through so we can hear all of the elements together. Sounds dope - let's learn about each individual element.

First, we start off with the melody. Vaughn Levi is using a free web-based app called Chord Player to create his BK Drill melody. He notes that drill is usually in minor chords to denote sadness, so he changes the scale from major to minor, and puts his melody in the key of C Minor. Chord Player automatically shows all of the chords for the scale of C Minor (very handy!) and Vaughn Levi plugs in four of them: C Minor 7, E Flat Major 7, F Minor 7 and D Minor 7 Flat 5 (or D half-diminished). This makes for a sad, emo chord progression perfect for a BK Drill style beat.

He changes the tempo to 140 BPM under Styles, and then begins the export process.

To export this out of Chord Player and bring it into your DAW, you'll want to click on the Project Menu, hit Export MIDI file, make sure both Bass and Chords are checked, and hit Ok to export. As you'll see in a second, having the bass line melody comes in handy as Vaughn Levi is going to use it to create more texture and fullness in the melody.

Once Vaughn Levi downloads the MIDI files, he just drags and drops them right into new tracks in his DAW of choice, Soundtrap. You can drag in drop in most other DAWs as well. When you first bring in MIDI files, the DAW automatically assigns the notes to a default instrument (in Soundtrap, the default is currently Rhodes for this type of MIDI), but this is easy to change. In Soundtrap, Vaughn Levi clicks the instrument icon and changes it from Rhodes to Upright Piano - sounds much better.

Now to add texture. Vaughn Levi creates two new empty tracks below and then holds the Alt button while dragging the Upright Piano melody to the track directly below.

This is where things get cool: he hovers over the notes and hits Edit, hits Edit Notes, then deletes the chords above and just keeps the bass notes below. He then changes the instrument from a piano to String Section Chamber.

It's a little low so he brings the notes up an octave by again hovering over the notes, selecting Edit-->Edit Notes, and then selects all the notes, dragging them up exactly one octave in the note editor. Now with the Piano and String Section together, the melody is sounding full and Vaughn Levi's ready to move on to the drums.

First, we have the snare. Vaughn Levi emphasizes that you want to have your snares be slightly off to give it swing, so you want to play out your snares live rather than using the pattern sequencer. He has the snare hitting on the third beat on bars 1 and 3, and on the fourth beat on bars 2 and 4.

Next, we have the 808, which is a very important component of any BK Drill beat. (Although BK Drill artists don't always use an 808 in their tracks, such as in the case of some of Sheff G/ Sleepy Hallow's tracks). Vaughn Levi has also played this one by hand for the human feel, using the 808 Tube instrument in Soundtrap. He has the notes hitting in places that go well with the snare and plays those two tracks solo'ed to show us how they complement each other.

For the high hats, Vaughn Levi has programmed these in Soundtrap's sequencer, Patterns Beatmaker. He has them in random spots for each beat, with some hitting more than once per beat, but they go really well with the snare and 808.

All of the tracks together.

And there's our BK Drill Type Beat!

If you enjoyed this video, please be sure to like, subscribe and follow us on all social media platforms @BuildingBeats!

You can also visit our Toolbox to learn how to create more beats on DAWs like Soundtrap, and be sure to check out some of our other How-To videos!