How to Make a Reggae Beat in Five Minutes

It’s easy to make a reggae beat in five minutes using these simple steps. You don’t need any fancy equipment, just a computer and some basic software.

Introduction

Welcome to our tutorial on how to make a reggae beat in five minutes. This guide will walk you through the process of creating a basic reggae beat using a drum machine or sequencer. We’ll start by discussing the characteristic elements of a reggae beat, then we’ll dive into setting up our drum machine or sequencer. Finally, we’ll put it all together and create our beat.

The Basic Reggae Beat

The basic reggae beat is built around the drum and bass guitar. The drums play a steady four-beat rhythm while the bass guitar plays a slow, fat riff on the off-beats. This simple combination forms the foundation of reggae music.

To create a basic reggae beat, start by programming a drum loop with a steady four-beat rhythm. Add a bass guitar playing a slow, fat riff on the off-beats. Finally, add a clavinet or electric piano playing chords on the downbeats. For an authentic reggae sound, make sure to use plenty of reverb and delay on all of the instruments.

Adding the High Hat

Now that you have your drum track laid down, it’s time to add some hi-hats. Hi-hats are played by the drummer using a pair of sticks and are used to keep time and create a “chick” sound.

To create a reggae hi-hat beat, you will want to use an open hi-hat sound on the upbeat of each measure, like this:

1 e + a 2 e + a 3 e + a 4 e + a

You can find an open hi-hat sound in your DAW’s sound library or by searching for “reggae hi-hat” in an online sound library. Once you have your hi-hat sound, load it into a MIDI track and set it to play on the upbeat of each measure.

Adding the Snare

Possibly the most important part of the drum kit in reggae is the snare. The snare provides the signature off-beat sound that is essential to reggae. In this section we will show you how to add a snare to your beat.

First, open up your drum machine or sequencer and create a new track. Next, load a snare sound into the track. If you are using a drum machine, you will need to program in the snare hits. If you are using a sequencer, you can either record the snare hits live or use MIDI to enter them in manually.

Once you have your snare sound loaded into the track, it’s time to start adding in the hits. The most important thing to remember when adding snare hits is that they should always fall on the “2” and “4” of each measure. In other words, if you are playing in 4/4 time, the snare should hit on beats 2 and 4 of each measure.

If you are having trouble getting the hang of this, try counting out loud as you add in the snare hits. For example, if you are addingsnare hits to a measure that looks like this:

1 2 3 4

You would count out loud like this: “1-2-3-4-2-4”. As you can see, thesnare hits fall on beats 2 and 4.

Once you have added your snare hits, it’s time to add some variation by adding ghost notes. Ghost notes are very soft sounds that fall between the main beats (on counts “1” and “3” in our example). To add ghost notes, simply add very softsnare hits on those counts. You can make them even softer by using a lower velocity when entering them into your drum machine or sequencer.

Adding the Bass Drum

Now that you have your snare and hi-hat, it’s time to add the bass drum. The bass drum is what gives reggae its signature “one drop” feel. To program a bass drum in your DAW, create a midi track and assign it to a suitable virtual instrument. In the example below, we’re using the “Bass Drum” from the Addictive Drums 2 plugin.

First, set the tempo of your project to around 80-100bpm. Then, insert your chosen bass drum sound into your midi track. For our reggae beat, we’re going to use a simple four-to-the-floor pattern. To program this, simply click on each quarter note in your DAW’s piano roll editor. Your pattern should look something like this:

Now that you have your bass drum programmed, it’s time to add some variation to it. In reggae, the bass drums are usually heavily accented on the first and third beat of each bar. To do this in your DAW, simply increase the velocity (volume) of those two notes. In the example below, we’ve increased the velocity of those two notes by about 50%.

Conclusion

There you have it, a basic reggae beat that you can use as the foundation for your own songs. If you want to add more complexity to the beat, try adding in another drum or instrument. And don’t forget to experiment with different turnaround and fills. With a little practice, you’ll be making reggae beats like a pro in no time!