Backing Tracks

Producing beats using an online service is a fast, easy way to make backing tracks for your music project. To ensure professional quality, however, you need to follow a few simple tricks and rules. Here are some tips to help better understand the choices with which you will be faced. (Please note that these tips are listed separately below, but they should be considered simultaneously in conjunction with each other. Read through the article and remember that all the tips apply to each stage of your music creation.)

1. Choose Quality Sounds
One or your first decisions will be what sounds to use when building up backing beats for your project. Listen carefully to the samples you want to include and make sure they are professional quality. If you have less than high quality sounds, you can never achieve a high quality track, no matter how innovative and catchy the beat may be. Check for unwanted distortion and equal output level of the sample. You do not want to have to mix one track so high that it clips or bring one down so low that its quality is compromised just so it fits in with the other tracks. You are listening for an evenness of quality - all professional!

2. Place Sounds Within Your Sequence Intelligently
When you start to place your sounds into the service's online sequencer, note how some sounds will support each other directly and others will compliment sounds indirectly. Memorable tracks will utilize a balance between both types of sound interaction without being cluttered or over simplified. Most popular audience members are smart, contrary to common jokes, and they appreciate tastefully placed sounds within a beat structure, yet they most likely do not want to be overwhelmed with a bombardment of noises in an over-worked track. Anchor your beat with strong, clear and unique sounds, then enhance those anchors with lighter, complimentary sounds. Pay attention to how the frequency and timbres of samples work with each other and how they support or extend the melodic content of the track.

3. Shape Your Beats to Match Your Musical Goals
Another element to address is what is your goal with the beat you are creating? If you are planning to place vocals over the track, mix it into your DJ set at a club, or send it off as a demo for your composition skills, you may need to approach the track's structure in different ways. Vocals are the main concern. The human voice has a particular range (a wide one, but one within the range of samples you can use in making beats). Be sure to have an idea of the range you or your vocalist has before filling that sonic space too heavily in your backing track. You do not want the track to compete with your vocals, but rather to bring out the vocals and make them that much more attractive and prominent. If you are not using vocals, take that into account as well. The human ear likes to hear something in the frequency range of voices, so place a strong melodic hook or enhance a strong bass and/or drum beat with catchy sections within that range.

Keep these tips in mind when constructing and mixing your beats and you will be well on your way to producing a professional quality track ready to use! Add your vocals or mix it into your set and you are ready to master the overall recording and take the music world by storm!

All you have to do now is find an online service, sign up, and get started! There are a few online beat making services out there currently. I personally like using Sonic Producer. They offer professional and concise tutorials and lessons. If you want to find out more about it, check out this review by going here: Sonic Producer Review

Good luck!
William Connor, Percussionist and Ethnomusicology Ph.D. candidate,
London, England and Honolulu, Hawaii, USA