How to Make a Gun-Inspired Beat: Simple Piano & Drums Tutorial

YouTube, man. What's good with y'all? Welcome back to a brand new video on the channel. As y'all can see, we're back in

the bedroom today. I just woke up and I felt like making a beat, so I figured why not just record a video at the crib.

You feel me? I record all of my videos in the studio. So, we going back to where we started. Um, today I felt like

making a beat for Gun. He just dropped this song right here called Won't Stop. It got 1 million views in two days, so I

figured I'll make a tutorial about it. Yeah, I'm just going to use this for reference. I think I'm not going to copy

it, but um I'm just make a beat in the style of the beats that Gun has been using lately over the past few months.

So I can see E Studio pulled up as well. So uh let's get right into it, man. Let's do it.

Let's go. 127. I'm going to start out with the piano going to Keyscape. Uh I get one of these acoustic pianos. Maybe

a wing upright. Let's get this wing upright mono bright. Start up with that.

at that D sharp as well. Uh, use these as the root notes. And now I'm going just copy this up an octave. And uh,

let's create some chords out of these root notes. Now just skip one highlighted note in the scale. Working

in C minor. I don't like this one. I don't know how I want it to sound, but I'mma just

switch some of the notes up. Invert some of the notes. That's cool. I'm just keep these chords

very simple, but instead of them being so basic, I'm going just add some notes up top.

Yeah. All right. Next, I'm going randomize the velocities just to make it sound a

little bit more human, right? Humanize it. Like I said, shorten some notes, push them off grid,

all that stuff. What I'm going to do actually is pitch it up. Then render this out and pitch it down

through the audio clip. Sounds different compared to just doing it in MIDI. Right. And now pitch it down.

[Music] Feel sounds a bit muddy though. So I'm going

add some effects to it. Take out some of the muddiness right here. This EQP18

boost that presence bring us some air brings it back to life. You feel me? Compression.

Add some distortion to that piano. I don't really do that too often, but I feel like it's still kind of kind of

muddy, right? Use this uh plate reverb from Arttoria. I use this when I want to make something sound vintage. Um it's a

cool plugin. Boom. Let's play around with the width, too,

since the preset is in mono. If you'll take a look at that keyscape patch, it's in mono, as y'all can see. So, that

means that it's in the center, and it's not really a left and right, you feel me? It's the same both left and right.

So, I'm going just play around with the width, you feel me? Add some stereo imaging to

it. If y'all listening on headphones, for example, add some drive to it as well.

Just listen to the difference that makes. Five.

Bit of white noise. All right. Next, I'm going to go splice and look for a vocal. I never use

splice, bro. So, let's see if uh we can find some. All right. See if we can find some humming. Feel like that would sound

good. [Music] Let's save that.

[Laughter] Fire two. Save that. [Music]

Save that as well. Let's go with small like vocal phrases. All right. Got like three layers now. Let's look up scream.

I don't know. Let's not do that actually. Um let's play around with these three. Chop them

up and come up with some sort of vocal phrase, man. Make this a bit longer. [Music]

Doesn't have to be nothing crazy, right? Like we're going to make it ambient. I like that, too. All right, let's um

make this unique. Reverse it and chop it up right here. [Applause]

[Music] All right. Going to drown in them reverb. So, it won't really doesn't

really matter if it's not like perfect. [Music] Yeah.

EQ some more and add some compression to it to even out the um loud and quiet uh parts

like that. Next, I'm add some distortion, some reverb to it. Use that same reverb

Perfect, man. That's all. Let's actually duplicate this real quick. So, it's a different section of that vocal.

Just like this. Yeah. Let's add some strings to it. Let's go SRX strings for that. I'm just

lay down the pattern first and after that we can always browse through the presets and stuff. So, get the chords

from before. I think you only need the root notes for this. Let's inverted some of the notes.

That's so hard, bro. Yeah. That's crazy actually, man. Okay, so we

got the chords and the root notes. What I'mma do, let's clone this right here and get these root

notes. Paste it into the new patch and find another patch or a sound for the root notes and use these for the chords.

So, take out the root notes on that and let's make this unique and push this down an octave. So

we got two. All right. Yeah.

All right. That sounds so much better at this bass section. Just call that bass string. Uh yeah. So,

for the processing, what I'mma do is since the piano's in the middle, and I kind of want to make the sample sound

wide since in that one song we're using for reference, the melodies, like it was probably three melody layers max. So,

I'mma pan these out to the right. Let's get these uh strings. P them to the left. Makes it sound wider, right?

Find that balance real quick. And let's next I'm going to highlight them both. Right click this. Route to this track

only. So now um they are routed to that one mixer track. You feel me? So they just became one

mixer if that makes sense. Now we can actually process them. Let's use this EQP1A some compression and some reverb

just to tuck this in the back. Uh let's get some fenn for this. a lot of reverb.

Yeah. [Music] Um, we can also layer that one piano

with uh, copy this over first. Can also layer that with the grand piano since I don't feel like I got to add more

counter melodies to it. I'm just going to layer it now just to make it sound fuller since I want the beat to be

simple. And if I'm going to just add a thousand different melodies and counter melodies, it's going to get very

cluttered and very busy. So, I'm going just keep the sounds stacked on top of each other with the same pattern. So, we

got the first piano, now the grand piano, and the strings. They're all playing the same chords, right?

Quick piano. Just make these into chords. [Music]

Take out all these notes. All right. All [Music]

right, that's it. Piss it up an octave so they're not playing in the same octave.

That's fine. Pand this out a bit though so they're not both in the middle. EQ and compression reverb once again.

Just another layer. You feel me? You won't really notice it unless like until you take it out. Right. Pause. All

right. That can be hard, too. Yeah. That's what I mean. Like the

chords stay the same, but the sounds just changed. So the whole beat changed up, but it still sounds the same. You

feel me? It's still the same melodies being played. That's way harder. But I'm going to get

rid of those. Way better. All right, sample's pretty much done. The last adjustment I'm going

to make to the sample is go back into the original chords and get rid of all these notes so it's just the chords.

Makes it easier when arranging the the beat. Right. Just like that. [Music]

Yeah. And render it like this. Pitch it down six. I send it to the same mixer track.

So now the switch up is nice, right? [Music] Bit more minimalistic.

That's it for the sample. Next, I'm just add effects on that that bus, the melody bus. So it's um a mixer

track which I sent all of the melody um mixer tracks to. And I might just add some RC20 on that just to make the

entire thing fall into place. Sound like one sample. And like the same reverb on all these

sounds makes it sound like one hole, bro. That's crazy. For the drums, we might be

cooking up at the crib, but we still using sounds from Derky. Shop, man. You know what I'm saying? All the sounds I'm

going to be using in today's beat for my drum kits on Derky. Shophop. All the sounds I use every single one of my

videos. My sand drum kit makeelief collection right here and my Rook Sision drum kit. All the sounds you need to lay

on hard drums for any type of beat, man. Make sure to go check it out if you're still looking for some new sounds. Durk

that shop, man. Let's do it. So, want to go for a heavy subbase on this beat. Instead of 808, I'm going to go subbase

and kick. So, exactly what we need uh for my precision drum kit, the subbase. And

before I lay down that pattern, I'm going just get some high hats to set the bounce so we can go off of that, right?

like otherwise you won't really have a reference for it. The subbase. I haven't used this in a minute. Let's

use that to uh kind of complement the main high hat. Let's go for this one. These two. I'm

going to have a centrum kit. Yeah. Basic two-step high hat to get the bounce started.

All right. I'mma spice this up later. You feel me? That's all we need for the subbase. I

want to use the subbase to fill out the low end in the beat. Uh, and use the kick to set the tempo. So, I'm gonna not

go too crazy on the subbase pattern, but just make it follow the root notes like this.

Actually, [Music] get this one out of my makeelief

collection, bro. Make it follow the root notes. [Music]

tough. Don't want this to be too present, right? Just subtle. So, I'm going to turn that down. Um, let's

actually add a kick to it first. Let's go for this stab kick. I'm going have a centrum kit get too boosted a little

bit. Feel like it's still kind of slow, though. So, I'm going just speed it up just a little bit to 130

132. Got a little bit more more swing to it. [Music]

That snare really going to set the tempo when we add a snare to it. [Music]

Thinking about using this one from my Makeelie collection. [Music]

Keep this simple though. Maybe layer this with another snare. [Music]

That's fine. Perfect. Some reverb on the center. That's hot, bro.

[Music] Give the high up real simple. Oh, that might be hard if you just clone

this [Music] tough, bro. Add some swing to it as

well. Uh, right here. That beat stupid simple, but that's what we going for, right? Like I be doing too

much some some of the times on my channel, bro. Trying to impress y'all, but sometimes just got to keep the beat

simple, man. The other high we still had. Let's get that simple as well.

[Music] Pand this out to the left. Little accent, man. Get some open heads

going. Makeelie collection. And these are my favorite open hats out of all my kits.

Get this one. All right. Get this one. Use the second one as well.

[Music] Give this sample on the first bar. All right. Send those to one bus and use

the same reverb that we added on that snare just to add some space to the drums.

Actually, bro, [Music] jumps kind of crazy.

I got a triangle layer on the first snare and the fifth. Turn that to the right. Very

[Music] subtle, man. Can even spice this up a little bit more with this clap. I'm

going have to send drum kit. Add that on the last four. [Music]

Add even more dimension to the drums. Um, get that same reverb and add on that

clap. Yeah, that's pretty much it for the beat as well, man. Came out crazy. Very

simple, like I said, but it's what we're going for. Little intro right here, man.

Very simple. But that bounce was crazy, bro. [Music]

That's pretty much it for today's video as well. Hope you all learned something from today's video. If you're new to the

channel, don't forget to like the video, subscribe to the channel. Trying to hit 80,000 subscribers. Uh go to derky.shop

of course. first link out in description if you enjoyed the sounds that I used in today's video. And that's pretty much

all I got. So, I'm going catch you on the next one, man. I'm out. [Music]