beat [beet] noun

a beat is the driving headnodding rhythmical bed that lies under your favorite songs. Mostly used in urban genres of music that include hip hop, rap, r&b, pop, trance, techno, even rock and jazz have somewhat of a beat while acoustic genres tend to shy away from beats.

Most beats are buried under a bunch of different pieces of music here is an example:

Here is an example of a beat with no musical accompaniment (besides the vocal) just by itself.

instrumental [in-struh-men-tl]

an instrumental is all the layers that combine a song minus the vocals which includes the melody section, rhythm section, bass section and any other accompaniment. Here is an example of just an instrumental.

So for future reference when I refer to beats on here I am referring to the actual instrumental not the rhythmic section(drums). Beats is just a shorter word for instrumentals to most people and I just happen to be one of them. Click HERE if you wanna take a shot at making your own beats.