How to Make a Bad Bunny Type Beat (Dembow + Free Loops)

What BPM and key is a Bad Bunny type beat?

The loops here run 120 to 140 BPM. Classic reggaeton and dembow actually sit slower, around 85 to 100, and Tainy has talked about cutting records as laid back as 82. The trap latino lane Bad Bunny helped open runs faster, so double-time hats over a half-time dembow feel is the sweet spot.

The key is mostly minor. Take the key straight from your loop and put the bass and the melody on the same root, so the low end and the chords never fight.

How to make a Bad Bunny type beat in 6 steps

The loops in step 1 stream right here and the mp3 is free. Then work through the six steps.

1. Pick a sample. Take a minor loop built on choir, guitar or strings, 120 to 140 BPM, and start from the sound before the drums. Reggaeton producers flick through presets until one catches the ear, then decide where to take it. Grab one from the list below that already carries a melancholic mood.

2. Program the dembow. This is the heart of it. Kick on the one and the and of two, snare or clap on every offbeat. If your dembow comes as a single wav with kick, snare and perc baked together, split the kick into one track and the snares into another so you can treat them apart, and sit the snare a touch lower for the groove. Loop it until the perreo bounce sits before you add anything else.

3. Lay the bass. A simple sub or 808 on the root of the loop, bouncing with the dembow instead of droning. Cut the lows of the melody around 40 Hz first to give it room. Leave gaps so you feel the snare punch through: that bass, no bass back and forth is the movement. Tainy reaches for the Arturia mini moog preset A Base You'll Use for extra weight and grit.

4. Add Latin percussion. A shaker on the offbeat, a conga or timbale fill, a rim click. This percussion is what separates a reggaeton beat from a plain trap beat.

5. Try the pitch. Only once the groove sits. Move the whole melody group one or two semitones and hear which lane fits a vocal. A little airy reverb on the lead, something like Valhalla Vintage Verb, opens up a verse moment. Pull the bass to the new root afterwards.

6. Arrange. Less is more. 16 bars as the hook with the full groove, a verse with one layer pulled out, a bridge that switches the lead. Chop a Splice vocal to the key, drop a telephone EQ and reverb on it, and bring the hook in early so it lands like a single.

The dembow groove is the signature

The dembow is a syncopated kick and snare figure, not the straight pattern of a trap beat. It traces back to a dancehall riddim, and some version of it sits under almost every Bad Bunny record, from the perreo bangers to the slower, folk-tinged cuts.

Program it by hand or pull it from a loop, then take it apart. Tainy keeps the kick and snares on separate tracks so he can punch up the kick and drop the snare a hair, which is where the groove comes from.

Keep it danceable, not heavy. The low end bounces with the groove and leaves space instead of sitting on every beat, and that space is what makes people move. Learn the groove first and the melody second.

Which sounds do you actually need?

For the melody, choir, guitar and strings carry it. Bad Bunny leans on acoustic and folk colours as much as synths, so a dry guitar or a plucked string loop fits better than a busy pad. If you want a real guitar and cannot play it clean, record a loose take on your phone, clean it with noise reduction, then widen the mono signal with a touch of chorus and reverb.

The bass is an 808 or a deep sub, kept simple and bouncing with the dembow. One clean low voice, nothing stacked on top of it. A plain sine sub works, or the A Base You'll Use preset if you want more edge on phone speakers.

Percussion is the Latin fingerprint: shaker, conga, timbale, rim. Let them answer the kick and snare instead of filling every gap. A chopped shaker loop fit to tempo does the job fast.

Pitch the sample up and down

The position of the loop is not fixed. One or two semitones change the whole mood.

Up the melody gets brighter and lighter, down it gets heavier and more melancholic. Drench a lead in reverb and ride a filter for a cave or underwater moment, then cut back to the dry version to snap the track back. The key moves with every pitch, so pull the bass to the new root afterwards.

Common mistakes

Building a trap beat and calling it reggaeton. Without the dembow kick and snare pattern and the Latin percussion, it is just a trap beat with a Spanish title.

A bass that drones on every beat. Sustaining the 808 under the drums kills the movement. The low end has to bounce with the dembow and leave space for the snare, or the groove stops moving.

Only other type beats as a reference. Those are built to rap on. Put on the real records, from perreo to the folk cuts, and copy the groove, not someone else's beat.

In FL Studio and in Logic

Nothing in the steps above depends on the DAW. You need a sampler for the bass, an EQ and a reverb, plus a handful of percussion one-shots.

FL Studio: program the dembow in the Channel Rack, kick simple on each beat, snare on the quarter steps and copied across for the reggaeton bounce. Pitch any percussion one-shot to the key before you place it. Drag the 808 up a couple of octaves to hear the melody, shorten it with the amp knob and add a little distortion. A reverb-tail drop one bar before the intro ties it together.

Logic: Quick Sampler for the bass set to mono, the Step Sequencer for the dembow and the percussion. One bus for the melody tracks with a Channel EQ cutting the lows plus a reverb.

Using the loops from NDA Company

Every loop here is played by hand, no AI, and free as an mp3. Pick a minor choir, guitar or string loop, build the dembow under it and you are most of the way to a Bad Bunny type beat.