Learning how to make a type beat is really two skills in one: reverse-engineering the sound of a specific artist, then packaging the instrumental so producers and rappers can find it. A type beat is an original instrumental made in the recognisable style of an established artist — a “Drake type beat” or a “Travis Scott type beat” — and it’s the single most reliable way new producers get their music discovered and sold online. Get the sonic details right and the naming right, and one beat can quietly earn for years.
Violet Recording is reader-supported — we may earn a commission from links on this page, at no extra cost to you.
Below is the full workflow: how to choose a reference artist, deconstruct their sound, program the drums and 808s that define their lane, add the right melody, then title and tag the finished beat so it actually gets found. You can follow every step in any DAW — FL Studio, Ableton Live, GarageBand, or a phone app — because the craft is about matching a style, not any one piece of software.
What you’ll need before you start
- A DAW or beat-making app you’re comfortable with (see our roundup of the best beat-making apps if you’re still choosing).
- A drum kit — kick, snare or clap, hats, and percussion. Free options are in our best free drum VST guide.
- A reference track or two from the artist whose style you’re targeting, loaded up so you can A/B against your beat.
- A way to keep and check time. Our free online metronome and BPM tools help you set the grid and match a reference tempo.
Steps at a glance
- Pick one artist to emulate and gather reference tracks.
- Find the tempo and key of their signature sound.
- Program drums in their style — kick placement, snare, hats.
- Write an 808 line that matches the reference.
- Build the melody, loop, or sample on top.
- Arrange, add swing and variation, then rough-mix.
- Title and tag the beat so it’s searchable, and upload.
How to make a type beat that actually sounds like the artist
The whole point of a type beat is recognition — someone hears it and immediately thinks of a particular artist. That only happens if you study the reference properly instead of guessing. Pick one artist to start; producers who chase five styles at once master none of them. Load two or three of that artist’s recent tracks into your DAW or just have them playing beside you, and listen like an analyst, not a fan.
Ask concrete questions. What tempo do their beats sit at? Are the drums crisp and modern or dusty and sampled? Is the 808 sliding and melodic or short and punchy? Are the melodies dark and eerie, bright and bouncy, or lush and emotional? Write down two or three defining traits before you place a single sound — those traits become your checklist for the rest of the session. The best type-beat makers can name exactly why a beat sounds like its artist, and they build to hit those specific marks.
Matching the tempo and key
Tempo is the fastest way to land in the right ballpark. Most trap-leaning type beats sit around 130–150 BPM (often felt at half that), drill lands near 140 BPM, and slower R&B or melodic styles drop into the 80–110 BPM range. Don’t guess — you can tap along to a reference track with a BPM tool to lock the number, and our free BPM finder and metronome make that a ten-second job. Set your project tempo before you program anything.
Key matters just as much for the mood. Most modern type beats live in a minor key — natural minor, harmonic minor, or a phrygian flavour for darker trap and drill — because that’s where the tension and emotion sit. If you’re not confident finding a key by ear, start any melody in a minor scale and your notes will stay in the right emotional zone. Once your melody has a root note, everything else — the 808, the harmony, the bass — tunes to that root, which keeps the low end clean instead of muddy.
Programming drums in the artist’s style
Drums are where a type beat lives or dies, because the drum feel is often the most recognisable fingerprint of a producer’s sound. Start with a one- or two-bar loop and get it grooving before you build anything else on top.
Lay the kick on beat 1, then add one or two syncopated hits placed against the snare — those “off” placements are what give trap and drill their bounce. Put the snare or clap on beats 2 and 4; that backbeat is the spine of nearly every style. Then program hi-hats: straight eighths feel steady, sixteenths feel busy, and the rolls and triplet bursts that define trap come from briefly doubling or tripling the hat speed for a beat or two. Match the density to your reference — some artists ride sparse, hard-hitting drums, others live on fast, rolling hats.
Vary velocity so hats aren’t all the same volume — accent the downbeats a touch louder and let the in-between hits sit quieter. Uniform velocity is the biggest giveaway of a stiff, programmed beat. If you want to sketch a pattern fast before committing, our browser-based drum machine and beat tools let you tap out an idea in seconds. For deeper drum work, our guide on gain staging keeps those hits punchy in the mix.
Writing an 808 that matches the reference
The 808 is both bassline and second kick, so it has to agree with your kick drum rather than fight it. Two rules keep the low end clean. First, tune the 808 to the key of your melody — an untuned 808 is why so many home-made beats sound muddy or “off.” Second, watch where the 808 and kick overlap: if they hit at the same instant with the same weight, they’ll boom or cancel. Sidechain the 808 to duck slightly when the kick lands, or arrange them so the kick punches and the 808 sustains around it.
The style of the 808 is a big part of matching an artist. Sliding, glided 808s with portamento between notes give that melodic trap feel; short, hard, staccato 808s suit drill and harder trap. Listen to your reference and copy the behaviour, not just the note. Long, sustained 808s under the hook and shorter ones in the verse also reinforce your sections. Our EQ and compression fundamentals guide explains how to carve room so the kick and 808 coexist.
Building the melody, loop, or sample
Melody is what gives a type beat its identity and its hook. You can play a simple progression on a piano or synth, or build around a pre-made loop. This is the fastest place to level up: a professionally-played loop, a vocal chop, or a one-shot instantly adds polish you’d spend hours programming by hand. Pulling melody loops, textures, and one-shots in your key and tempo from a royalty-free library like Splice is the standard modern workflow — you audition sounds that already fit the session, then drag the ones you like straight in.
Layer with restraint. A lead melody, a supporting countermelody or pad in the hook, and one or two texture sounds — a vinyl crackle, a reversed cymbal, an atmospheric pad — is usually plenty. Match the melodic character to your artist: dark bells and muted plucks for one lane, bright arps and lush keys for another. Every element should either fill a frequency gap or mark a section change; if it does neither, mute it.
Arranging, swing, and a rough mix
Stitch the sections together — intro, verse, hook, verse, hook, bridge, hook, outro is a proven template you can bend to taste. Hold the drums back in the intro and drop them in at bar 5 or 9 for a built-in lift. Add swing to your hats — even 8–15% nudges the off-beats slightly late for that human, head-nod bounce. Then build in variation: drop the hats out for a bar before the hook, add a snare roll to signal a change, or mute the 808 for a beat to create a hole the drop fills.
Once the arrangement holds up, a rough mix — levels balanced, kick and 808 sitting right, hats not piercing — is enough to release. Our beginner’s guide to mixing your first song walks through that first balance pass. For a repeatable full-length structure, see our companion guide on how to structure a beat.
Titling, tagging, and uploading so it gets found
This is the step that separates a type beat from just any instrumental, and beginners skip it constantly. A type beat only sells if it surfaces when a rapper searches “[Artist] type beat.” Title it in the standard format producers and buyers actually search: something like “[Free] Artist Type Beat – ‘Track Name’”. Put the artist name and the words “type beat” in your title, your description, and your tags. Add the BPM and key in the description too, because serious artists search by those.
Drop a producer tag — a short vocal or sound stamp at the start of the beat — so nobody can steal it, and always keep an untagged, exported version to license to the buyer. When you’re ready to treat this as income rather than a hobby, our guide on how to start selling beats covers licensing tiers, leasing versus exclusive rights, and where to list your catalogue.
Turning a beat idea into a full track
Sometimes you want to hear a beat as a complete song — with vocals and a full arrangement — before you commit hours to producing it out, or you simply want an original track that isn’t tied to anyone else’s style. If you’ve got a beat idea or a hook in your head and want to hear it realised quickly, you can turn that idea into a full, original track with an AI tool like Solmi. It’s a fast way to test whether an idea carries a whole song before you invest in the production.
Frequently asked questions
What exactly is a type beat?
A type beat is an original instrumental made in the recognisable style of a specific artist and labelled that way — “Drake type beat,” “Travis Scott type beat,” and so on. You’re not copying their actual songs; you’re creating your own beat that captures their sound, then tagging it with their name so artists searching for that vibe can find and license it. It’s the dominant way independent producers market instrumentals online.
Is making a type beat legal?
Yes, as long as the beat is your own original work. Using an artist’s name to describe the style of your instrumental is standard and widely accepted. What you can’t do is sample the artist’s actual recordings without clearance, or claim any affiliation with them. Keep the composition original and label it honestly as a “type beat,” and you’re on solid ground.
Do I need expensive software to make a type beat?
No. A type beat is about matching a style, not about price. Free DAWs and mobile apps handle drum programming, 808s, and arrangement perfectly well — start with our best free DAWs for beginners roundup, or the best beat-making apps if you’re producing on a phone. Browse more tutorials in our Mobile Music Production hub.
