Amable / Guides / UK garage beat
How to make a UK garage beat in Ableton Live 12
UK garage lives in the shuffle: swung hats, a bass that jumps octaves and short chord stabs on the off-beats. Here is speed garage step by step in Live 12, the switch to 2-step, then the one-line version.
1. Set the tempo
UK garage sits between about 130 and 138 BPM; 2-step tends to the lower end. Click the tempo field in Live's Control Bar, type 134 and press Enter.
2. Add a MIDI track with a drum kit
Insert a MIDI track (⌘ Shift T). In the browser, open Drums, pick a kit and drag it onto the track. A kit with a tight kick, a snappy clap, crisp hats and a rimshot suits the style.
3. Make a clip
In Session View, double-click an empty clip slot on the drum track. Live makes an empty MIDI clip and opens it; the pattern below is one bar. Set the grid to 1/16 with the grid chooser at the right of the Clip View header (⌘ 1 and ⌘ 2 narrow and widen it), so each beat has four steps and the bar has 16.
4. Program speed garage
Switch to Draw Mode (B) and click the notes in. Most Live kits follow the General MIDI layout (kick C1, snare D1, clap D#1, closed hat F#1, open hat A#1); check the pad names in yours.
- Kick on every beat: steps 1, 5, 9 and 13.
- Clap on beats 2 and 4: steps 5 and 13.
- Open hi-hat on every off-beat, as in house: steps 3, 7, 11 and 15.
- Closed hi-hat on the sixteenths between the beat and the off-beat (the even steps), soft. These are the notes the swing will push.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kick | ||||||||||||||||
| Clap | ||||||||||||||||
| Open hat | ||||||||||||||||
| Hi-hat |
Dimmer cells are notes played softer.
5. Swing the hats
Straight sixteenths flatten garage; the style runs on heavy swing. Drag a swing groove from the browser's Grooves onto the clip, and it applies at once. Then raise its Timing in the Groove Pool (⌘ ⌥ 6) until the off-beat sixteenths sit late. Garage wants more than most styles: keep going until the soft hats skip.
A rimshot on a few of the in-between steps adds to the shuffle.
6. Switch to 2-step
2-step takes kicks away. Keep the kick on step 1, move the second to step 11, halfway through beat 3, and delete the rest. The claps and hats stay where they are.
For a push into the next bar, some producers add a fast, softer kick right at the end, like the dim one on step 16.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kick | ||||||||||||||||
| Clap | ||||||||||||||||
| Open hat | ||||||||||||||||
| Hi-hat |
7. Organ bass and chord stabs
The speed garage bass is a short, organ-like tone that jumps between a low note and the same note an octave up. Put Drift on its own MIDI track (or Operator, in Live Suite), play the root on each beat and its octave on the off-beat after it, keep the notes short and add Saturator for grit.
On top go short minor 7th or 9th chord stabs on the off-beats. In F minor, try Fm9. Put Auto Filter on them, so you can open and close the tone across the phrase.
Or ask Amable
Amable does these steps in your set when you ask in plain words:
set the tempo to 134, load a drum kit and make a speed garage beat with swung hats
now make it 2-step
add an organ bass on a new track that jumps octaves on the off-beats, in F minor
It writes the pattern into a clip and fires it. Want to learn it instead? Ask it to walk you through it, and it guides you one step at a time, checking your set before the next.
Free trial, no card needed. Needs Ableton Live 12.