How to make a rap beat: which video to watch

Busy Works Beats presents a 36-minute FL Studio tutorial structured around four named layers — top line, contrast section, foundation, and texture 6:01 — working through melody construction, chord building (the perfect fifth found by pressing shift-up seven times 13:25), drum programming (snare on beats three and seven 23:07), 808 sequencing, mixer routing, reverb sends, and arrangement in a single session. The presenter explains music theory concepts such as root note and chord voicing before demonstrating each step in the piano roll, rather than expecting you to follow on blind faith.

watch on YouTube → 36:38

Why it ranks here: No other video in this pack covers the complete chain from melody theory to an exported, arranged beat in one sitting. The four-layer framework 6:01 gives beginners a repeatable mental model rather than a single recipe. One commenter says they were close to giving up before watching; another describes it as something they will study carefully for weeks. The one real downside is length — 36 minutes asks for genuine commitment, and the transcript is downsampled to roughly one in five segments, so some detail falls between sampled moments.

~36 min · beginner to intermediate · FL Studio required

shonci's seven-minute tutorial takes an absolute beginner from a blank FL Studio project to a finished beat, opening with a layout tour of the playlist, piano roll, channel rack, and mixer 0:39, then walking through sourcing a free drum kit from Reddit and a melody loop from Looperman 1:39. It builds hi-hats in the piano roll 2:52, adds a clap on the offbeat 3:56, programs an 808, tunes it to the melody by holding Ctrl and pressing the up-arrow key to C8 or C9 5:07, and closes with a fade-in intro built in the playlist 6:22.

watch on YouTube → 7:09

Why it ranks here: The pacing is the main argument for it. A genuine beginner has layered drum sounds, a melody, and a structured arrangement within seven minutes — not theory, a working beat. The 808-in-key step 5:07 is one of those specifics most beginner tutorials skip entirely; a commenter singles it out as the most useful moment in the video. Multiple others say it is the first tutorial where they actually finished a beat. Mixing and arrangement receive almost no attention, so treat it as a foundation to build on.

~7 min · beginner · FL Studio required (trial version works)

Chambers, a two-times gold and Billboard number-one producer, builds a complete beat live in his studio in under six minutes: recorded melody at nearly 200 BPM 0:09, notes quantised and separated so they are not connected 0:29, kick and snare placed on beats three and seven 0:44, open hi-hats with panning 1:14, an A minor chord with tension added by dropping the third down to the second 1:58, a melody derived from those same chord tones 2:40, dramatic strings 3:05, and tuned percussion throughout. Music theory decisions are narrated as he works rather than presented as a lesson.

watch on YouTube → 5:48

Why it ranks here: Seeing a professional's actual choices — BPM, chord tension technique, using chord tones to build the melody 2:34 — is different from a tutorial structured for teaching. Everything moves at pace and the reasoning is musical. Watch this after Busy Works Beats or shonci rather than before; it assumes you can already find your way around a DAW. One commenter notes the cinematography; another that the beat sounds like a film soundtrack — both point to how polished the result is in under six minutes.

~6 min · intermediate · any DAW

Jay Cactus TV's 15-minute tutorial applies a five-step framework — melodies 0:28, processing 6:10, drums 8:10, mixing 10:40, arrangement 12:16 — to a single aggressive dark trap beat built in FL Studio. The melody section uses chord inversions to keep a common note across chord changes, layers multiple instruments, and at the processing step 7:33 renders the lead, reverses it, and uses the result as a new texture.

watch on YouTube → 15:54

Why it ranks here: This is the only video in the pack that treats arrangement as a full step, explicitly mapping the beat into verse, hook, and bridge sections with deliberate energy changes 12:21. The render-and-reverse technique at 7:33 is not covered anywhere else here. It sits firmly in intermediate territory — basic FL Studio familiarity is assumed — but commenters describe using the channel as an ongoing reference for learning production from scratch, not a one-off view.

~15 min · intermediate · FL Studio required

L.Dre's tutorial demonstrates making a beat using BandLab — a free app that works on any device — without paying for software or plugins. Working on an iPad, he selects a lo-fi drum loop from BandLab's built-in sample library 2:22, layers a keyboard loop, records a piano part using the on-screen keys, saves the project, then opens the same session on a desktop computer to arrange and export a WAV file 7:56.

watch on YouTube → 8:48

Why it ranks here: The cross-device sync is confirmed live in the video rather than just claimed: the beat built on the iPad appears immediately on the desktop 6:28. The built-in sound library removes the need to hunt down drum kits. The result is loop-heavy and the video itself frames this as a starting point, but comments show it regularly gets beginners to a finished, exported beat for the first time. If the cost of FL Studio is a barrier, this is the right first video.

~9 min · beginner · free (BandLab, any device)

rly Beats compresses a trap melody walkthrough into 60 seconds: start with bass notes or dark sounds centred on the one, six, and four 0:07; build those into chords using suspended second and suspended fourth voicings with inversions to keep a common note throughout 0:13; add a repetitive top line whose rhythm repeats 0:25; arpeggiate some chords, layer strings, add a percussion accent and a pad, then add minimal trap drums 0:47. The DAW interface and parameter values are not shown or described in the transcript.

watch on YouTube → 1:00

Why it ranks here: At one minute it cannot teach chord construction in depth. What it does is name the harmonic vocabulary — sus2, sus4, inversions, the one-six-four movement — that Jay Cactus TV and Busy Works Beats spend considerably longer unpacking. Useful as a checklist once you understand the basics. Not a substitute for any of the ranked tutorials above it.

~1 min · quick reference · DAW not shown