How to Make a Drake Type Beat (2026 Tutorial)
Drake's production style has defined modern R&B and Hip-Hop for over a decade. From "Hotline Bling" to "Rich Flex," his beats share specific characteristics that create the signature OVO sound. Atmospheric, emotional, spacious, and instantly recognizable. If you want to make a Drake type beat that actually sounds authentic, you need to understand the philosophy behind the production, not just the surface-level techniques.
This guide covers everything. Chord progressions, drum patterns, 808 selection, atmospheric layering, mixing approach, arrangement strategy, and the specific production choices that separate an OVO-style beat from a generic moody instrumental. Every technique here comes from studying what Drake's actual producers do.
How to Make a Drake Type Beat
The Drake sound is built on emotional restraint. His producers, primarily Noah "40" Shebib, Boi-1da, Vinylz, and more recently Gordo, share a common philosophy. Space is an instrument. What you leave out matters as much as what you include. The beat supports the vocal rather than competing with it.
This separates Drake production from nearly every other style in hip-hop. Where Travis Scott beats fill every frequency with atmospheric density, Drake beats create pockets of emptiness that give the vocal room to breathe. Where Lil Baby type beats drive forward with aggressive hi-hat patterns, Drake beats pull back and let the groove emerge from minimal elements.
Drake type beats typically sit between 70-90 BPM. This slower tempo creates intimacy and gives space for his melodic delivery style. Minor keys dominate the catalog. A minor, C minor, G minor appear constantly. The darkness of minor scales matches the emotional vulnerability that defines his music.
Start at 76 BPM in A minor. This combination appears across dozens of Drake hits and gives you the classic foundation. Once you are comfortable with the core sound at this tempo, experiment with the 60-70 BPM range for more stripped-back, emotional tracks or push to 90-100 BPM for his more energetic material.
Drake Type Beat Chord Progressions
Chord progressions in Drake production lean heavily on minor key emotions. The progressions are not complex. In most cases, you are working with three or four chords that repeat throughout the track. The magic comes from voicing, texture, and the instruments chosen to play those chords.
The most common progression in Drake-style beats is i - VI - III - VII in natural minor. In A minor, that gives you Am - F - C - G. You have heard this progression in countless OVO tracks. It moves between melancholy and hope, which mirrors Drake's lyrical content perfectly.
Another signature progression is i - iv - v in minor. Am - Dm - Em. This creates a darker, more introspective mood. "Jungle" uses this type of minimal harmonic movement to devastating effect. The progression barely moves, but the emotional weight is enormous because of how the chords are voiced and produced.
Voicing matters more than the chords themselves. Play your chords in the middle register of the keyboard, around C3 to C5. Spread the notes out. Use inversions so the movement between chords is smooth rather than jumpy. Add the 7th to your minor chords. Am7 instead of Am. This adds the jazzy, sophisticated quality that defines the OVO harmonic palette.
Piano is the most common instrument for chord progressions in Drake beats. But it is not bright, present pop piano. It sits back in the mix. Filtered, reverbed, sometimes pitched down slightly for warmth. Electric piano textures from plugins like Keyscape or Lounge Lizard work equally well. The R&B production approach to chord voicing applies directly here since Drake's harmonic language borrows heavily from R&B tradition.
Best 808 Patterns for Drake Style Beats
The 808 in a Drake type beat serves a fundamentally different purpose than in trap or Travis Scott production. It is not the star of the show. It is the foundation that everything else rests on. Smooth, sustained, warm, and never aggressive.
Drake-style 808 patterns are sparse. Where a trap beat might have the 808 firing on every other beat with slides and rolls, a Drake beat might have the 808 hit once per bar and sustain through the entire measure. Long, held notes that provide a bed of low end rather than rhythmic impact.
Choose an 808 sample with a clean, round tone. Avoid heavily distorted or clipped 808s. You want warmth and body. A sine-wave based 808 with moderate sustain works best. The sub frequencies should be prominent and the harmonic content should be gentle rather than harsh.
Pattern-wise, follow the root notes of your chord progression. If your chords are Am - F - C - G, your 808 pattern plays A, F, C, G with each note sustained until the next chord change. Add subtle slides between notes that are close together. A slide from A down to G at the end of a progression creates smooth movement.
Velocity variation adds human feel. Not every 808 hit should be at the same volume. Drop the velocity by 10-15% on less important beats. This creates a breathing, organic quality that separates a programmed pattern from something that feels played.
Keep the 808 clean in the mix. Minimal processing. Maybe a gentle low-pass filter to remove any harsh upper harmonics. A touch of compression to even out the sustain. No distortion, no saturation. The Drake 808 sound is about purity and warmth.
OVO Sound Drum Patterns
Drum programming in Drake production is an exercise in restraint. The drums should feel like a heartbeat. Steady, reliable, present but never demanding attention.
Kicks land on beat 1 and sometimes beat 3. That is often it. The kick provides the initial transient for the 808, anchoring the low end to the rhythmic grid. Use a kick sample with a quick attack and short decay. It should click and disappear, letting the 808 handle the sustained low end.
Snares hit on beats 2 and 4 with room sound built into the sample. 40's signature snare has a papery, almost lo-fi quality. It is not the crisp, sharp crack of a trap snare. Layer a snare with a finger snap or rim shot for texture. Add a short room reverb with 0.5-1 second decay. The snare should feel like it exists in a physical space.
Hi-hats stay simple. Eighth notes or sixteenth notes with minimal variation. No rapid-fire rolls. No complex triplet patterns. The hi-hat provides a consistent rhythmic pulse. Use a closed hat with a slightly dark tone. Bright, sizzly hi-hats sound wrong in this context. Subtle velocity variation on every other hit creates groove without complexity.
Percussion accents appear sparingly. A shaker loop at low volume adds texture. A single rim shot on an off-beat creates interest. Vinyl crackle layered underneath the drum pattern adds the lo-fi warmth that 40 is famous for. These textural elements connect to the same philosophy behind effective drum sample pack usage. It is not about having the most elements. It is about choosing the right ones.
How to Create the Atmospheric OVO Sound
Atmosphere defines the OVO sound more than any other single element. Remove the atmosphere from a Drake beat and you have a basic minor-key instrumental. Add it back and suddenly you are in that late-night, introspective world his music lives in.
Start with a pad layer. Choose an evolving, warm synthesizer pad. Omnisphere excels at this. Its atmospheric presets are practically designed for OVO-style production. Load a pad with slow attack, long release, and built-in movement. Play your chord progression with the pad, but play it softly. This layer should sit underneath everything else, felt more than heard.
Reverb is the primary tool for creating atmosphere. Use a plate or hall reverb with a 2-4 second tail on melodic elements. The decay time should be long enough to fill the gaps between notes but not so long that it creates mud. A high-cut on the reverb around 8-10kHz keeps the ambient tail warm rather than bright.
Delay creates rhythmic atmosphere. Tempo-synced delay at 1/4 note with 25-35% feedback on melodic elements creates repeating echoes that fill the arrangement without adding new musical content. Filter the delay feedback so each repeat gets darker. This mimics the sound of sound dissipating in a real space.
Vocal samples appear frequently in OVO production. Pitched-up R&B vocal chops, reversed vocal phrases, and heavily processed vocal textures add a human quality to the atmospheric layers. You do not need a singer. Sample old R&B records, pitch them up or down, add reverb and delay, and chop them into rhythmic fragments. This technique connects Drake production to its sampling roots.
Ambient noise layers add realism. Rain, vinyl crackle, tape hiss, room tone. These low-level noise elements make the production feel like it exists in a real space rather than a sterile digital environment. Keep them very low in the mix. They should disappear when you focus on them but leave a noticeable gap when removed.
Mixing a Drake Type Beat
Mixing a Drake type beat follows the same minimalist philosophy as the production itself. Every element needs its own space. Nothing competes. Nothing fights for attention.
Start with levels. Pull everything down and build up from the vocal space. Even though you are making a beat without vocals, leave room in the mid-range frequency spectrum where a voice would sit. This is the fundamental principle of hip-hop mixing. The beat serves the vocal.
EQ with surgical precision. High-pass everything except the 808 and kick. Pads get high-passed at 150-200 Hz. Melodic elements at 100-150 Hz. Hi-hats at 300 Hz. This clears the low end for the 808 to live without competition. Cut problem frequencies rather than boosting good ones. If a pad is too bright, cut the highs rather than boosting the lows.
Compression should be gentle throughout. Drake beats have dynamics. The quiet moments are quiet. The loud moments are loud. A compressor with a ratio of 2:1 to 3:1 on individual elements keeps things controlled without squashing the life out of them. On the master bus, use very gentle compression or none at all. The beat should breathe.
Stereo width comes from placement, not processing. Pan your elements deliberately. Hi-hats slightly left. A shaker slightly right. Pads wide. Lead melody center. Piano slightly off-center. This creates a three-dimensional mix where every element has its own position in the stereo field.
The overall tonal balance should lean warm. More low-mid energy than high-frequency sparkle. If the beat sounds bright and polished, you have probably gone too far. Drake mixes have a slightly dark, warm quality that makes them feel intimate. A gentle low-pass filter on the master bus at 16-18kHz can help achieve this without making the mix sound dull.
Drake Type Beat Arrangement Tips
Arrangement in Drake production follows a "less is more" philosophy taken to its extreme. Verses might have only a pad, a kick, a snare, and one melodic element. The hook adds one or two more layers. That is it. The journey comes from subtle additions and subtractions rather than dramatic changes.
A typical Drake beat arrangement starts with an intro of 4-8 bars. Usually just the pad and maybe a filtered version of the main melody. This sets the mood before any drums enter. The verse brings in the core drum pattern with the full melody. Keep it sparse. Three to five elements total.
The hook adds energy through layers rather than complexity. Maybe the hi-hat pattern doubles in speed. Maybe a second melodic layer enters. Maybe the 808 pattern becomes slightly more active. The change should be felt emotionally rather than heard as a dramatic shift. Listen to "Passionfruit" for a masterclass in this approach. The verse-to-chorus transition is subtle but the emotional shift is enormous.
Breakdowns strip everything back. Drop the drums entirely for 4-8 bars. Let the pad and melody play alone. This creates contrast that makes the drums hit harder when they return. 40 uses this technique constantly. It is the musical equivalent of taking a breath before speaking.
Transitions are gentle. Risers and build-ups exist but they are subtle. A filtered sweep, a gradually opening low-pass filter, a snare roll that barely increases in speed. Hard transitions break the intimacy that defines the Drake sound. Everything should flow.
The outro often mirrors the intro, creating a bookend effect. Strip elements away gradually until you return to just the pad or melody that opened the track. This gives the beat a sense of completeness and narrative arc. It is the same principle that makes lo-fi hip-hop beats feel like complete journeys despite their simplicity.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Key Are Drake Beats Usually In?
Minor keys dominate Drake's catalog. A minor is the most common, followed by C minor, G minor, and E minor. The natural minor scale gives his beats that melancholic, emotional quality. Occasionally, Drake tracks use the Dorian mode which adds a slightly brighter, jazzier flavor to the minor tonality. "Passionfruit" uses a major key, which is unusual but demonstrates his range. Start in A minor for the most authentic OVO sound.
What BPM Is a Drake Type Beat?
Most Drake type beats fall between 70-90 BPM. His classic R&B-influenced tracks like "Hotline Bling" sit around 100 BPM but feel slower due to the half-time drum pattern. Darker, more introspective tracks like "Jungle" land around 70-75 BPM. His trap-influenced collaborations with 21 Savage push to 130-140 BPM but still maintain that spacious OVO quality. For the classic Drake sound, start at 76 BPM.
What DAW Does 40 Use?
Noah "40" Shebib primarily uses Ableton Live. His workflow centers around live recording, sampling, and real-time manipulation rather than step-sequencing. However, the DAW matters less than the approach. You can create authentic Drake type beats in FL Studio, Logic Pro, or any other DAW. Focus on the production techniques rather than the specific software.
What Plugins Are Used for Drake Type Beats?
Omnisphere for atmospheric pads and textures. Keyscape for realistic piano and electric piano. Valhalla VintageVerb or Valhalla Shimmer for reverb. RC-20 Retro Color for lo-fi texture and vinyl warmth. iZotope Vinyl is a free alternative for adding crackle and warmth. Any quality VST collection that includes good reverbs, pads, and lo-fi tools will work.
How Do I Make Drake-Style Vocal Chops?
Sample an R&B vocal recording using AI stem separation tools to isolate the vocal cleanly. Pitch the vocal up 3-5 semitones for that bright, ethereal quality. Chop it into short phrases or single syllables. Add heavy reverb and tempo-synced delay. Layer the chops with your pad or melody. The vocal becomes a texture rather than a lyrical element.
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