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Part II
Adding Percussion

Now for dance tracks, adding percussion is important, you wouldn’t want it to sound just plain or people will lose interest in the song. You gotta keep the groove on so people can get down to the beat. Now that we have are simple dance beat, let’s get on with adding percussion.

First, we ought to add a new channel; to do that; we need to go to “Channels” on the top left menu right next to “Edit”

There we have a menu that opens. Now let’s click on “Add one”

It opens sub menu of what channels to add. Now let’s click “Sampler”

Now we have a new channel in the sequencer. Now let’s right click on the “Sampler” channel and let’s choose a shaker.

Ok, now that we have chosen our shaker, let’s click on the boxes the arrows in the picture are pointing at and the same thing on the next eight boxes.

Here is how it will sound.

Alone
http://www.orbitfiles.com/download/id2730762631.html

With background beat:
http://www.orbitfiles.com/download/id2730763615.html

Now that we clicked on those boxes, let’s add it in the playlist.

Let’s place the shakers right in the beginning to help make it groovier.

Then we drag it over to where the all the other blocks have ended. Here’s how it would sound now:

http://www.orbitfiles.com/download/id2730776744.html

See, doesn’t that sound better than just a plain old beat? Now let’s add more percussion and see what comes of it. Now let’s add a wood.

Well, we added a wood, now I have red arrows pointing certain boxes, how about we click those.

There we go, now we have another decent percussion to add to the beat. Here’s how it would sound:

http://www.orbitfiles.com/download/id2731518331.html

Ok, now let’s add it in the playlist. How about we put it to where the claps begin as I have a red arrow pointing there in the picture above.

There we go, now here’s how it would sound:

http://www.orbitfiles.com/download/id2731538275.html

There we go, now we’re getting somewhere. How about a tambourine to help as well? This would help make a good dance track.

There we go, I added a tambourine, let’s see how that would sound.

http://www.orbitfiles.com/download/id2732769508.html

Alright now, let’s add that to the arrangement.

There we go, but now we’re gonna need to make it longer. So we’re gonna need to copy the section I highlighted in red and we’re gonna need to make a copy of it. To do that, you need to go to “Select” which is to the left of zoom. Then we’re gonna drag from the bottom to the top.

After we highlighted the section, we need to go to “Edit”.

Then we need to go to “Copy” Now we need to move the scroll all the way to the right so we can paste right after the highlighted section.

Now, go to edit and “Paste” and it will paste perfectly. Now there are shot cuts. For Copy, the command is Ctrl+C and for Paste, it is Ctrl+V.

Now we have extended the arrangement. Here is how it would sound like so far:

http://www.orbitfiles.com/download/id2733138621.html

There are other kinds of samples for percussion you can add, but make sure you get a good rhythm. This pretty much covers the percussion parts. Now let’s move to making basslines and melodies.