At first glance, your favorite songs, those beats you hear, might seem straightforward.
Focusing on beat makers or music producers across hip-hop, R&B, pop, and electronic music who have found a way to master the art of creating the rhythms you hear behind some of your favorite songs.
When you listen to music, there is a long process that happens before it hits the listener’s ears.
A genre that, not until recently, started getting recognition for being complex in more ways than one is Hip-Hop, thriving on beats that sound simple but are engineered in such a structured way.
Take the legendary producer J Dilla; his rhythms changed the sound of Hip-Hop.
His way of making music created a hypnotic groove that, at the time, no one was creating. Tracks like Donuts released in 2006 are built on precise timing adjustments.
Inspired by J Dilla’s style, Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak (2008) used a drum machine to tap into real raw emotion, making the layering of synths with live percussion seem simple.
J Dilla shaped the style of a lot of your favorite Hip-Hop tracks that are made today.
Producers like Metro Boomin and Hit-Boy continue this tradition that J Dilla created. Metro’s trap beats, as heard on HEROES & VILLAINS (2022), rely on sparse 808 patterns that became a staple for J Dilla.
Even when moving into genres like R&B, there are artists like Timbaland, a groundbreaking producer who built his career on polyrhythms, layering conflicting time signatures to create grooves that feel both familiar and like nothing you have ever heard before.
A clear example of this is in Aaliyah’s Are You That Somebody? (1998) but R&B also leans on something known as a swing rhythm.
It is a style of music production that creates a bouncy feel. This style is used by producers like Kaytranada, who create this mix of soulful, breathing rhythms that are his signature style.
Genres like electronic, house and techno, where producers like Fred Again use granular synths to chop vocal samples into these rhythmic elements, blurring the line between melody and percussion, in such a way that you can hear the human imperfections in the samples.
Then you have the legendary Carl Craig, whose musical style balances repetition with subtle shifts in rhythm.
Craig has found this way to transform straightforward techno into a journey that is sometimes somewhat emotional. Tracks like At Les (1997) have live instrumentation and modular synth patterns that prioritize groove over anything else.
A genre that is the best at creating an illusion is pop music. While pop was sometimes dismissed as being very formula-driven.
There are modern pop icons like Chappell Roan and her track Pink Pony Club (2020). The song opens with a very punchy four-on-the-floor kick drum and handclaps as well.
The track finds a way of bringing together retro elements like glam-rock guitar riffs and 80s synth pads but with the modern hyper-pop style she is known for.
A “simple” beat is often carefully created. Producer No I.D. once said, “A simple beat is just a complex one with the right elements removed.”
Next time you nod your head to a catchy beat, remember the real magic lies in what you don’t hear.
