Okay, so what is a beat? Exactly? So when I say beats, I don't mean the instrumental you rap on beats are repeating moments of time that are used to create structure in music. So they don't need to be associated with a sound. And everybody that walks this planet has an internal beat that's on repeat over and over again. And that's your heartbeat.

So when you think of a beat, it's a moment of time. And you can think of beats as the heartbeat or the pulse of the music in rap drums will land on these beats in different patterns to guide the song. Okay, so just as your heart rate is determined by how many times your heart beats per minute, a song tempo is determined by how many beats there are per minute, right? So most of the rap you listen to is in something called for for time and this is Kind of what it looks like in the structure of a bar and beats, okay? So all that means is that there are four beats in a bar. Okay?

A bar is a measure of time, that's all it is. It could be, you know, really fast beats like 12341234, that's two bars right there, or it could be 1234. And that's a bar. Now how fast those beats go by in moments of time is how fast the beats per minute is right? So if it's 60 beats per minute, it would be like 123412 and then so on. And if it was 120 beats per minute, it would be 123412341 to the to the three to the four, and those are the beats.

Now, the That is not doesn't like so whenever somebody makes an instrumental or a track, that is what they're using, and that's where they put their drum beats in. So you see this diagram that I have here, if you think of it, like every bar is that rectangular shape and then every beat is the square. That's exactly what rap is all the time, you can break down every single hip hop beat pretty much by this like 95% of them with the exception of some trap rap out there right now. Alright, so what is a bar and rap. So a bar is a representation of a period of time in the song. So every bar has four beats and rap and those beats are you they can be accounted by number just to kind of keep time so every four beats in rap 1234 that is one bar and you can see it again.

I kind of visualized and added this in there as well just to show you where the drums would go. And then it repeats over and over again and then starts a new bar. This continues throughout the whole entire song. So the whole song is made up of a certain amount of bars, which is just a measure of time, which is also made up of a certain amount of beats as well. So in hip hop beat makers and producers will land drums on those beats in the song and those measures of time in order to create the structure of the instrumental, which is huge for us to know. Because we need to be able to identify and find those beats in order to wrap in rhythm and stay on flow and stay in the pocket.

That's why certain people sound better and more on flow than off flow. And that's why some people sound shit because they're not recognizing the kicks, the snares and where the beats and how the bars go together. And that's one of the biggest mistakes I see in hip hop, and making rap music. So I know I'm just a word nerd. But honestly this will help everybody and anybody that wants to learn rap. So that's it for that one.

Let's get into identifying and picking apart those drums in the next one.