Trap is a hip hop style built on a booming 808 that slides between notes, hard layered drums with fast hi-hat rolls, and a dark, sparse minor-key loop with a lot of space around it. It is written fast, around 130 to 150 BPM, but felt at half that, so a quick track still sounds slow and heavy. Here is what each part does and how they sit together.
Works in any DAW, with any sampler or synth. Nothing here needs a particular plugin.
Trap is a subgenre of hip hop that came out of the Southern United States in the early 2000s. It is usually written around 130 to 150 BPM, but felt at about half that speed, because the groove is slow and spacious. That half-time feel is why a fast trap track still sounds slow and heavy rather than busy.
The sound rests on a few parts: a booming 808 bass that slides between notes and doubles as the bassline, crisp layered drums with a hard kick and fast rolling hi-hats, a dark and sparse minor-key melodic loop, and a wide-open arrangement with plenty of room. Most of the craft is leaving space rather than filling it, so only a couple of parts play at once.
The style is usually traced back to Atlanta producers in the early 2000s, with the Shawty Redd era and, a little later, Lex Luger often named as touchstones, though trap grew out of a whole scene rather than any one person.
| Part | What it does | Rule of thumb |
|---|---|---|
| 808 bass | Carries the low end and the bassline | A long, tuned sub that slides between notes |
| Kick | The hard downbeat | Often the 808 itself, or a short kick on top |
| Snare or clap | The backbeat | Lands once a bar, around beat 3 |
| Hi-hats | The movement and energy | Fast rolls, triplets and stutters, changing in volume |
| Melody loop | The mood and the harmony | Dark, sparse, minor key: bells, plucks, strings, flutes |
| Space | The room the parts sit in | Leave a lot of it, few parts at once |
The rest of this page takes those parts one at a time: the 808 and the bass, the drums and the hats, and the melody. A good sound and a good pattern are separate wins, so you can work on them one at a time.
In trap the 808 is the bass. It is a long, tuned sub tone, stretched out of a kick sample, that plays the low notes of the track and slides between them. Tune it to the key, keep it mono, and let it double as the low end of the kick so the bottom stays as one solid sound.
An 808 is a pitched note, so it has to agree with the music. Modern trap leans hard on tuning the 808 to the key of the track, usually following the root of the chord or the loop underneath it, so it lands in tune every time you move it. An 808 that is out of tune reads as a muddy rumble that fights the harmony rather than a clear low note. For how to build the sound itself, from the sine core and the long decay to the saturation that keeps it audible on small speakers, see how to make an 808.
The sliding 808, where the pitch scoops from one note to the next instead of jumping, is a signature of trap. You get it with glide, also called portamento: set the instrument to mono, one note at a time, turn glide on, and the pitch slurs between overlapping notes. Short glide gives a quick scoop, longer glide a slow slur. How you play or program the part decides where the slides land.
Because the 808 is already a tuned kick, a lot of trap simply lets it carry the whole low end, with no separate bass part at all. If you put a short, punchy kick on top for the click and attack, keep it out of the 808's way, either by ducking the 808 a touch each time the kick lands or by tuning the kick to sit with it, so the two read as one bottom rather than two fighting ones.
Build a hard kick, a snare or clap on beat three, and a line of fast hi-hats with rolls. The main snare lands about once a bar, which is what gives trap its half-time feel, and the hi-hats carry the speed and the energy with rapid triplet and stutter rolls.
The kick is hard and often the 808 itself, hitting on the downbeats and any syncopated spots you want. The snare or clap is the backbeat, but in trap it usually lands once a bar, around beat 3, rather than on every other beat. That single, spaced snare is a big part of why the tempo feels slow even at 140 BPM. The drums as a whole follow the same backbone as any hip hop kit, covered in how to make hip hop beats.
The hats do most of the work in trap. On top of a steady line you add fast rolls, rapid triplet and stutter bursts where the hat retriggers many times in a beat, and clear changes in volume so the line breathes instead of buzzing. Those rolls and the way they speed up and slow down are a large part of the trap signature, so it is worth spending time on them.
Loop just the drums and the 808 for a minute. If it feels slow and heavy while the hats still move underneath, the half-time snare and the rolls are doing their job. If it feels busy or rushed, the fix is usually to space the snare out more and thin the layers, not to add more.
Keep it dark, sparse and in a minor key. Most trap melodies are a short loop of a few notes on a bell, pluck, string or flute patch, sitting in a lot of empty space so the 808 and the drums have room to hit.
Trap loops usually sit in a minor key, which is where the moody, tense feel comes from. Bells, plucks, muted strings and flutes are common voices, often thin and a little cold rather than lush. A simple minor phrase of a few notes, repeated, is enough; the mood matters more than the number of notes.
The arrangement stays wide open. A trap beat is defined as much by the gaps as by the parts, so a loop with two or three elements and a lot of silence around them hits harder than a full one. Leave room for the 808 and the drums, and only bring the melody up where it earns its place.
Whatever the loop plays, that is the key the 808 has to follow. Write or pick the melody first, note its key, then tune the 808 to the root of the chords underneath it. Keeping the loop and the 808 in the same key is what makes the low end read as part of the music instead of a rumble fighting it.
Everything above is a handful of parts: a tuned, sliding 808, a hard kick, a spaced snare, rolling hats and a dark minor loop. The sounds are not the hard bit. The work is the writing, the actual note movement of the 808 and the shape of the riff, and that is a job you do not have to do by hand.
REHEAT is a writing tool. It generates the sliding 808 bassline, the note movement trap is built on, and the dark minor-key riffs that sit over it, so once you have a sound you like you do not also have to labour over the notes. You either drag the line out as MIDI, or play it live through your own 808 or synth. It runs as an Audio Unit, a VST3 and an AAX.
The sound design stays yours. REHEAT supplies the notes and the movement, the sliding 808 and the minor riff, and you decide what plays them, so you can change the sound without redoing the part.
Free to hear in the browser, no signup. Everything above still works by hand in any DAW, which is rather the point of writing it down.
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