Making a Beat in iPhone & Android in 10 Minutes | easy way to make music at home

Hey guys, n-Track. In this post, we're going to go over how to make a beat using the n-Track Studio app, using only loops and instruments found within n-Track. We'll look at making a drum pattern in the Step Sequencer shown here - and, howto import and customize sounds from our new Loop Browser. We're filming the tutorial on an iPhone - everything can be done on Android and Desktop versions ofn-Track too. We'll select 'Create a Beat' from the screen you see when you open n-Track - this takes us straight to the Step Sequencer. You can use this exactly as is,or make the pattern a bit longer which we'll do in this example by selecting settings and doubling the number of 'Steps' from 8 to 16. Clicking on 'Apply' we can see that the beat pattern is now longer. Clicking on 'Instrument' we can select the drum kit for our beat. We'll go for 'Rap Beats Toolkit' kits and select 'Rap Drums 2' -

 clicking on each sound we can hear we've got a great sounding Snare, great sounding Kick & useful Floor Tom and Closed Hi-Hat sounds aswell - so, we'll get started by pressing play and building our beat. We'll start with a Kick pattern. We'll also add a Snare. Let's layer this with some Closed Hi-Hat - we'll also have some Floor Tom Fills at the end. Okay, that's sounding pretty mean - let's move on to selecting the Loop to run over the topof our beat. Let's open up the Loop Browser and from Add-ons we can see theSample Packs included within n-Track. For this beat we're going to select from Atlanta Rap by Kato the Producer. 'Calm Before Storm' is a great loop, although at first it might sound too slow for our drum part, if we select the 'Follow Song BPM' button the loop will automatically match the speed of the drums and n-Track project, so it's just got a whole lot faster. We'll click and drag the plus button to bring the loop into the n-Track project and click and drag the loop icon to repeat the loop. If you click on a loop, you can see the key it is in, which can be adjusted by

 clicking on the key name - in this case 'E4'. Thisopens up the key selector where we can audition different pitches for the loopto see if they sound better or worse - here's an example of 'D5', making the loophigher. That sounds good to me. Let's try a bit lower with 'C5'. Okay, and let's try'Bb4'. I imagine you can hear the difference here. I like D5 - then, when this loop repeats, I want the beat to have a change, sowe'll make the repeat one octave lower from 'D5' by selecting 'D4'. Hear how that change gives the beat more movement? Okay, let's hear where we're up to from the start.I'm gonna adjust the volume, the loop as we go along. What this beat needs now isa solid foundation so let's compose a bass line. Let's add an 808 bass. We'll click on the 'Add' icon and then 'Add Instrument track.' Let's find our 808 Bassby selecting 'Synths' then 'Rap Beats Toolkit' and then selecting '808 Bass'. We'll bring up the Screen Keyboard and we can play in some bass. In fact, let's push up the bass partvolume - so you can hear this better as we record. So, to record, we'll hit 'Play', 

'Record',and open up the screen keyboard... Here we go. Make a bass slide like that by pressingand sliding your finger from one note to another. Okay, let's listen back to thatand adjust the volume of the track back to where it should be. For this beatarrangement we can definitely add something to the chorus to give it alift. Let's select another loop -- again from the 'Atlanta Rap' pack -- let's scrolldown a bit and choose 'Crazy life organ'. Cool loop! Let's click and drag this loopinto the project and n-Track will create a new part for the loopautomatically. Also just to rewind one second back to the bass line - if youprefer to quantize your MIDI parts you can select the MIDI that you want toquantize, click and hold and you'll see that 'Quantize' is available to select.That said, let's return to our chorus part You hear this new loop is not inthe right key for this tune so let's pitch it up and we can hear howit all starts to fit better with the track. There's still this last part of the loopthat's not sounding so good - so let's look at how to customize a loopby chopping it up.

 So, let's edit this loop to fit the beat in a more musicalway - we'll start by moving the playhead one bar into the loop, which is wherewe're gonna make the first cut - we'll press and hold, see that a menu appearsand select 'Slice' to cut the part. We're gonna do this for each of the four barsin this loop. Let's re-listen to the last bar. Itdidn't fit with the beat so we're going to delete it. We'll select the bar, longpress for the same menu and select 'Remove', we'll drag the third bar in itsplace and select the 'Loop' icon on the second bar of the loop and drag toduplicate. Let's hear how that sounds. Okay cool, and with the beat. Much better. So the chorus is another four bars long, which means we'll need to duplicate thisloop. We'll use the Select tool to select the portion we want to duplicate, thenlong press, select copy, move the playhead to where we want the paste to occur, longpress & select 'Paste'. This beat needs a melody, let's compose one by selecting the 'Add' icon and then 'Add Instrument Track'. We'll go to 'Synths' and we'll staywith the 'Atlanta Rap' sound pack, selecting 'Synth Bells'. As with the 808Bass example, press record, open the Screen Keyboard and play in our top line. we also need a top-line response forthe 'Chorus' section with the organ loop we customized, so let's compose anothermelody... Okay, we'll record something like this. That works.

 You'll hear that music producerslike Pharrell repeat the first beat of a loop as an opening, like an audio signature. Let's try it - we'll 'Slice' the first beat, and then we'll press and dragthe left loop adjuster like this to remove beats two, three and four of thefirst bar. We'll press and drag the right loop adjuster to duplicate the firstbeat. Let's hear that again... We want to go one step further, we canadd another 'Slice' on the fourth beat. We'll zoom in, open up the track display, and atthe top, select beat. The menu that appears allows us to choose how wesubdivide each bar in a project in beats, eighth notes, sixteenths and so on - we'll select the 'Eight', which is the next subdivision down from our current 'Beat'view. We can see by selecting 'Eight' that we now have twice as many vertical lines.We'll move our playhead to the center of our fourth beat, long press and 'Slice' it.We'll move the second half and copy and paste the first half. That's now going tosound like this... The download the sample paths used in this video select the menu icon, then Add-on Manager. From the Add-on Manager you can view and downloadall the sound packs in this video.

We use loop sounds from the 'Atlanta Rap' pack,which is available in n-Track Suite Edition. We've created Suite Editionespecially for producers and musicians that want to capture vibes and create music out and about. You can subscribe for less than 5 euros a month and getthe most feature packed version of n-Track Studio, with 100s of playable instruments, gigabytes of royalty-free loops like the ones used in this video,and Exclusive Beats complete with the n-Track project sessions so you canactually edit them to your taste. Do give it a try - we think you guys are going tolove it! We also used the 'Rap Beats Toolkit' for the drum sounds. This pack isavailable in all the versions of n-Track, and it's at the bottom here. To download or update packs just click on the button next to the packs. This beat, and it's n-Track project, are available in n-Track Studio Suite Edition on iOS, Android andDesktop. Share this post with a friend that needs some help making beats, giveit a like, give us a comment if you've got any other questions on this video orthe Loop Browser in general. We hope you're having as much fun with the Loop Browser and making songs as we are in the office. See you on the next one! 

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