How to Make a Gunna Type Beat: Woozy Loops, 808 & Bounce

What BPM and key is a Gunna type beat?

A Gunna type beat sits in a minor key, often C sharp minor, at 125 to 140 BPM on a Rhodes, e-piano or clean guitar. Most beats run 125 to 140 BPM, with the classic guitar records sitting around 124 to 131. Drop to 120 and set your grid to a 1/3 step and you get the slow triplet bounce Wheezy leans on for the harder, ethnic cuts.

The key is minor. C sharp minor, D sharp minor and E minor all come up often, so the exact key matters less than the progression. The move that shows up in nearly every tutorial is two chords where the second drops four semitones below the first. That is the simple, slightly sad progression you hear under records like the ones everyone references.

Three chords are plenty, and the space between them matters more than the number of notes. Use the scale highlighting in your DAW so every note stays in key, and skip a note of the scale to build each chord fast.

How do you make a Gunna type beat?

You make a Gunna type beat from a few minor chords on a Rhodes, e-piano or clean guitar at 124 to 140 BPM, a deep gliding 808, light two-step hats and plenty of space for the vocal. The loops in step 1 stream right here and the mp3 is free. Grab one, then work through the six steps.

1. Pick a sample. Rhodes, e-piano or clean guitar in minor, around 124 to 140 BPM. Two chords are enough, the second one dropping four semitones below the first. Strum the chord instead of blocking it, and add a couple of passing notes in the scale. A good trick for a top line is to keep returning to the same note, like the fifth, instead of writing a busy melody. For a free guitar that still sounds good, something like Flex works, and most listeners care that it sounds good, not that it sounds perfectly real. Take one of the loops below, one with air around the chords.

2. Process the chords. Run an RC20 or similar for noise and a touch of reverb so a clean Rhodes reads as a sampled record. Widen it with a stereo shaper, add light chorus, and a short delay. Then transpose the whole thing up three semitones, render it, and pitch it back down three. That round trip through stretch mode adds the overly processed, slightly broken texture you cannot get from the clean VST.

3. Lay the 808. It is the foundation. Put it on the root notes with rests, and follow the bass notes of your chords. Add a couple of slide notes so it glides between pitches, and keep plenty of space. Spins and Zeus style 808s both work, the Zeus tends to sound more bouncy. The same figure for two bars, then one variation.

4. Hi-hats on top. Two-step pattern, quiet. Lock the main hats to every two or four steps first, then add rolls and a few triplets only where they fit. Set the grid snap to a half or quarter step for the faster rolls, randomize the velocity and a little of the pitch, and push a few hats a few milliseconds off the grid so it bounces instead of sounding robotic. Keep one dry hat channel and treat a second one through something like EFX Motions for movement.

5. Clap and kick. Layer the clap with a snare so it hits harder, clap on 2 and 4, a short kick played on top of the 808. Add at most one open hat and one perc. On the newer luxury records the low end is often just the live or synth bass, so you can even skip the 808 and let the bass carry it.

6. Arrange and mix. Keep it simple, less is more. Three layers at the same time at most, 8 bars of melody, then the drums, hook early. Use half time on a melody for one section to switch the energy, and pitch the loop up for the hook. A soft clipper on the master gets it loud, push your levels so the master sits near 0 dB and the clipper actually grabs the drums. That keeps it catchy and easier to place.

What makes the woozy, spacious signature?

The whole point is restraint. The chords are few and the drums stay out of the way, so the glide in the vocal has somewhere to sit. As one producer put it while building the beat, you cannot do too much on the melody because you need that space for Gunna to get on it.

Turbo described his own style as woozy flecks of guitar and drums over a blown-out bass with intricate hi-hats. That blend is as central to Gunna's hits as the melodic flow itself.

So the move is not to fill the beat but to carve space. A clean guitar, a deep 808, light hats, and silence where a busier producer would add a layer.

Two cheap moves sell the handmade and flipped feel. Run the chord loop through a reverse, a tool like Gross Beat on its reverse preset works, merge the clip to render it, and chop the flipped tail back in. For a deeper flip, resample the processed loop into Fruity Slicer, stretch it, and rebuild a simpler version of the melody from the slices. Reverb on the hi-hats is a signature of the newer albums, so throw a short reverb on a hat channel and bring the size down.

Who produces for Gunna?

Two names shaped the sound. Wheezy, a frequent Young Thug collaborator, produced the 2017 EP Drip or Drown on his own and tied Gunna into the YSL camp. His harder cuts lean on that slow 120 BPM triplet bounce and ethnic melodies.

Turbo became the main producer after months in the studio and carried the sound through Drip Season 3 and beyond. On Drip or Drown 2 at least one of the two was on every track, which is where that hypnotic, consistent feel comes from.

Later hits and the recent albums spread the credits wider. Producers in his newer camp lean on reverb-soaked hats, live and synth bass instead of heavy 808s, and ambient pad textures, but the woozy, spacious core stayed the same.

How do you pitch the sample up and down?

The position of the loop is not fixed. A few semitones change its character.

Up the Rhodes gets lighter and airier, down it gets fuller and slower. For variation inside one beat, pitch the melody up four for the hook, render it, then drop it eight so the key stays in the same octave but the texture changes.

The key moves with it, so move the 808 root notes after. A jump of three semitones is common. Move the roots the same three, and if an R&B vocal chop sits on top, re-key that too so it still lands. If you pitched a D sharp minor loop up three it lands in F sharp minor, so a vocal already in F sharp minor needs no change, while an F minor sample would need one semitone up.

What mistakes should you avoid?

The common mistakes are no high-pass on the melody, too many effects, overly complicated hi-hats and filling every gap. No high-pass on the melody. Cut the lows, the bottom belongs to the 808 or the bass.

Too many effects. The vibe comes from the Rhodes or guitar itself, not from reverb, delay and chorus stacked on top of it.

Hi-hats too complicated. Building a different pattern every bar takes the bounce out of it. Lock the main pattern first, then add rolls only where they serve the beat.

Filling every gap. It is easy to get carried away with counter melodies and turn the beat into something you can only rap over, not sing over. Leave the space.

How do you use the loops from NDA Company?

Every loop here is played by hand, no AI, and free as an mp3. Pick one with air around the chords, run it through the processing and flip tricks above, and you have the top line for a Gunna type beat in minutes.