![Creating A Future Bass Track (Part 1)]()
Creating A Future Bass Track (Part 1)
In this article we will create a future bass drum pattern and discuss a few techniques you can use to make your patterns stand out. Let us start off with some ground rules. Future Bass tracks vary between 130 - 160BPM. For our project we will set the BPM at 150. Our time signature will remain 4/4 just like most tracks in the genre.
Sample Selection
Future Bass has very punchy drums. So it is always ideal to start off with a good sample. Starting with a bad sample will lead to endless processing that will probably not end up sounding on par with a good sample anyways. There are a lot free resources on the internet where you will find some good samples. Once you have your samples ready we will move on to programming our drum pattern.
Programming the kick
Select a punchy kick with a short decay. You can drag your audio sample directly into your track and arrange them on the grid, but we will use midi for our project. Insert an empty midi channel in Ableton (Shift+Ctrl+T for Windows and Shift+Cmd+T for Mac). Double click on your midi channel and then double click on your kick sample. Your kick should open up in a simpler, in the device view of your midi channel. Switch the simpler to 1-Shot mode from the default Classic Mode. In this mode the sample triggered plays till the end of the sample.
Now highlight the first 8 bars of your grid and insert midi clip (Shift+Ctrl+M in Windows and Shift+Cmd+M for Mac) and double click on it to open up you piano roll.
When using midi always remember the note C3 will play the kick sample in its original form.
Now go ahead and program the kick pattern like shown in the image below
As you can see we have placed a kick at the beginning of every bar. There is an extra kick at the end on beat 4 of bar 4 which will create a nice variation. We have also added variations in the velocity of our kicks which helps keep things more organic.
Programming the Snare
Insert your snare sample into a new midi track as we did with the kick, choose 1-shot mode and insert a midi clip.
Future bass snares are tonal in character. Our snare is in G note so we will pitch it up by two semitones to A note, so it matches the scale our track we will create in this series. Now program your snare with the velocity changes as shown in the image below.
The snares are placed in beat 3 of every bar. We vary the velocity so that it does not sound monotonous.
We will start off with our closed hat first. Go ahead insert your closed hat sample into an empty midi channel and program in the pattern according to the image given below.
The hi hats are quite varied in their velocity to create a groove. We also like shift the pitch of certain hits according to tase to create bounce. Also lower the volume of the track by 12.
We will insert another midi channel and insert an open hi hat sample in it. For this one we will set the simpler to gate so that the sample plays according to the note length in our piano roll. This is important so that we can imitate the feel of a real hi hat by having our open hat sample cutoff when the closed hat sample is triggered.
Program your open hi hat pattern as shown in the image below.
Adding Cymbals
We will need a crash sample at the beginning of drum pattern to add some impact to the groove. We will not be using midi for our Crash, instead we will directly insert our crash into an audio channel.
We will also add a reverse crash at the end of or 8 bar loop by reversing our original crash sample, putting it on bar 7 and dropping the volume considerably (as shown below).
Adding some extra touches
A nice touch to add in any future bass track is a reverse snare leading upto our snare hit in certain parts to add more interest into the groove. Also layering foley samples with your drum hits can create added variations and textures. We have also added a reverse kick at the end of bars 2 and 6 respectively. Always use fades to have your foley and reverse sounds sit well with the overall groove and eliminate any clicks. Look at the image below for reference.
We are also adding two percussion hits at the end of bar 8 to create a drum fill so that it can lead in smoothly to the next cycle. We also pitched the first perc hit down an octave to add some more variation.
This completes part 1 of our future bass drum pattern for the time being. Watch this space for Part 2 and 3, where we will go over the bass and melody programming for a trap beat. We will also upload the whole project (Ableton Live Set) as a free download, once all three parts are uploaded.
