Trap music is on fire lately, so naturally everyone wants to make it.
Elements of Trap Music:
1. Roland TR808 kicks, hats, toms and snares
Kicks are made to sustain for a long time typically to emphasize sub bass tails. 808 Toms are probably the most common element used for “fills” (maybe every 4 bars or so, depending on energy of the tune and what else in it).
Typically the snare is an 808 snare with an equalizer boost around 200hz and highpassed somewhere in the 50-120hz range (depending on the bass of course!)
You can obtain these from any 808 sample pack on the net, use an actual TR808 or Nepheton by D16 Software which emulates a TR808 in a VST (I happen to use Nepheton myself).
2. Drip effects
Sampled or synthesized water droplet sounds are very common.
3. Chants
Made popular in recent history by Crunk artists like Lil’ Jon and the Eastside Boyz. Sounds a bit like old native american chants (think of the classic Ho-Ya Ho-Ya Ho-Ya Ho-Ya war / drum circle chant used in a lot of movies). But in crunk, it’s “Hey!…Hey!…Hey!…Hey!”, or “Grr” “Uh-huh” or any other type of repetitive short vocal hit. You can cut these from rap acapellas a lot of the time.
4. Leads, other basses etc
This is the best part about trapstyle – the rest is pretty much up to you! A lot of artists will put moombahton leads hits and elements to fill the lead line, or some will play something dubsteppy to give it a melody, or even electro or swing elements go well in here. Another alternative that is fairly common is to do literally NOTHING in this place, instead putting in a raw lead vocal acapella or emphasizing variations of the standard elements of trap in the beat. It really is up to you… And I think this is what motivates a lot of artists like myself to make this type of music. You are left with a lot to your imagination as to what goes in (at this point in time, anyway!)
I attached a sample pack of loops made in Nepheton (a TR808 emulator VST). Feel free to cut out the individual drums or use the loops in your own compositions, however you see fit.
Have fun with em, I reserve no rights except to ask that if you redistribute the raw loop files let everyone know they came from angryrancor and bassadelic.com. Otherwise go ahead and use them in your own free or for sale music – you can give a mention to me and bassadelic on your tunes if you want, but it isn’t required.
Likely the most talked-about genre to really surface in 2014, trap seems to have dug its claws into every corner of electronic music—whether through its hip-hop proponents like Lex Luger, or its clubbier progenitors like TNGHT and Baauer. It’s been called “the new dubstep,” and even the biggest main-room electro tracks have been given a taste of its southern rap-tinged vibes via some huge remixes.
But what’s it all about? Technically, it’s about big basslines and skittering 808s set to a low-slung, head-nodding cadence. It still swings heavily towards southern-style rap beats, but, as this great piece from Resident Advisor indicates, there’s plenty brewing in trap’s dancier realms. So check out some choice jams from the genre here and here, and peep five helpful how-to tutorials below to get you started in the studio.
What I like about the drums in trap music is that there is such a big variety. Everything ranging from live drums to 808 drum machines, to drum sample libraries are fair game when it comes to choosing where you are going to get your drum sounds. Often it is best to combine a variety of different sound sources. For example if you want your drums to have a deep kick and really boom than you should try to combine the boom of an 808 kick drum with a live kick drum on top. You just have to hollow out the low frequencies of the kick drum to make room for the 808-kick drum to fit in the mix. This will give you a clean deep kick sound that has some live elements to it. Perfect for trap Music.
These same ideas can be applied to the snare drum as well. The characteristics of a live snare and an drum machine created snare are pretty vast. Generally if you want clean go synthesized, if you want grimy go with live. Beyond that there is a lot of grey area in between. Try combining the two. One of my favorite things to do is add a small lives snare to my 808 snares then send them both to the same bus channel and compress them together. This will glue them together and make it sound like 1 snare instead of two layered snares. The same idea holds true when you put reverb on your snare. Put it on both to help glue them together.
The other driving element in a trap beat is the bass. The bass line is can either be comprised of a live bass, or a synthesizer like a moog synthesizer. Stylistically speaking the different subgenres of trap beats tend to have a certain bass sound that is commonly used. For example, a group like "The Roots" is a live band and use's a live bass guitar in their tracks. Generally speaking the underground community of trap beat producers tends to gravitate toward the sound of the live bass. If you are doing southern trap beats or "trap beats" you are probably going to use a sine bass sound. This gives you a bass tone that is clean, deep and really grabs the subwoofer.
Typically the frequencies of an 808 kick drum and a sine bass will overlap. This in turn will create a problem for your mix when the kick drum and bass play at the same time. A common solution that engineers use to solve this problem is taking a compressor and side chaining the kick to the bass. What this does is every time the kick enters the mix it compresses the peak of the bass tone allowing both instruments to seamlessly fit in the mix.
If you want to take this side chaining trick one step further you can use what is called a "Linear Phase Compressor" which allows you to compress individual frequencies. What this allows you to do is compress only the frequencies that the two instruments share. This way you don't take away the entire sound of the bass, just the frequencies that overlap with kick drum.
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