Using a Metronome to Practice? Five reasons you Should (Sometimes) Lose Your Metronome Introduction Let’s start off this article by getting this out of the way. You should practice with a metronome. No matter your instrument. There’s no better way to improve your sense of time. That perfection of time, punctuated by an endless stream […]
Popular Examples of Music Written in 3/4 Time: A Historical Look at the Use of the 3/4 Time Signature in Popular Songs While we have previously covered different time signatures in other tutorials, today we’d like to explore a time signature often forgotten about when thinking of modern popular music.While everyone has surely heard or […]
Take Your Music and Songwriting to the Next Level: Converting Audio to MIDI In this tutorial, we will cover a number of topics related to converting audio loops to MIDI loops. This includes: Introduction Hands-On Treatment for Small Batch Conversions Dedicated Software Options Keep the Feel, Add the Melody Parting Thoughts and Final Bits of […]
Seven Tips and Tricks for Using Drum Loops While nearly everyone is aware of drum loops and their use in modern music, fewer folks know more than a handful of ways how they can be used. We’d like to think since we’ve recorded, produced, and edited nearly 60 drum loop libraries that we can maybe […]
Why Download Online Drum Loops? In this article, we examine three benefits of downloading online drum loops for musicians and drummers alike. Introduction Every songwriter has or can easily download drum loops. There’s no shortage of free drum loops out there if your music is of the electronic sort: Drum & Bass, Dubstep, Hip Hop, […]
Rock drumming means different things to different people. For some, it’s all about high-energy and power. For others, however, it’s more about a deep pocket and play-for-the-song mentality. While the rock genre is vast (just think of all the rock genres: classic rock, hard rock, Southern rock, blues-rock, pop rock, alt rock, to name a […]
No one does anything usable in 3/4 and 6/8! Does Beta Monkey cover these time signatures? One of the most popular email questions we get from customers relates to which Beta Monkey sets contain 3/4 and 6/8 drum loops. It’s an often-overlooked time signature when it comes to most other loop companies who try to […]
Some of our Favorite Songs in 6/8 Time While drum loops in 6/8 have a long tradition here at Beta Monkey, we’d like to talk about something else: namely our favorite all-time grooves in this unsung but grooving time signature. Songwriters have always found the best drum loops for different styles and time signatures in […]
Take Your Drum Loops to the Next Level by Replacing Drum Sounds One of the best ways to add some color and originality to your existing drum loops is to get inside the groove and replace the drum sounds. While we offer many great and diverse sounds in our drum loops, some of us are […]
Five Ways to Process Drum Loops to Stand Out from the Crowd or: You Don’t Have to Sound Like Everyone Else Probably one of the worst kept secrets about drum loops is that everyone who uses drum loops in their songwriting (and, believe us, there are a lot of you out there!) doesn’t want anyone […]