How to make hyperpop in your browser

By Tongkit Leong · August 28, 2026 · 8 min read

Hyperpop is built by pitching a vocal hook past the point of comfort, crushing an 808 bassline with distortion until it saturates, and breaking a straightforward drum pattern apart with glitchy stutter fills at section changes — and you can build the whole thing from scratch in the Tracks browser studio with no software to install and no account to create.

The anatomy of a hyperpop track

Hyperpop takes pop songwriting and pushes every production choice past its usual limit — vocals pitched until they sound synthetic, bass distorted until it crunches, and arrangements that lurch between sections instead of transitioning smoothly. The genre borrows from bubblegum bass, EDM, and pop-punk, but the production tells is consistent across most tracks:

• A pitched, artificial-sounding vocal — a hook run through heavy autotune or repitched well outside a natural vocal range.
• A distorted, saturated 808 — a simple bassline pushed through distortion and bitcrushing until it loses its clean low end and gains grit.
• Glitchy, stuttering drum fills — straight drum patterns interrupted by rapid stutters, reversed hits, or dead silence at unexpected moments.
• Bright, detuned synth stabs — clashing, slightly-off synth layers that add tension instead of smoothing the mix out.
• Abrupt arrangement changes — sections that cut hard into each other rather than building gradually.

Tracks covers this end to end — built-in autotune and repitch for the vocal, the subtractive synth plus distortion and bitcrusher for the 808, and the drum machine and piano roll for the glitch work.

Step 1: Set your tempo

Open the Tracks studio and set the BPM in the transport bar. Hyperpop doesn't sit in one narrow pocket the way a lot of dance genres do:

• Most hyperpop: 150–160 BPM, close to a fast pop or EDM tempo.
• Some tracks: as low as 130 or shifting tempo entirely partway through the song.

150 BPM is a solid starting point, and Tracks' tempo map lets you change BPM mid-track if you want a section to suddenly speed up or slow down.

Step 2: Record and pitch a vocal hook

Record a short vocal hook — a few words is enough — through your mic. See How to record and tune vocals in your browser for the recording setup.

Then push it past a natural-sounding correction. Open Tracks' built-in autotune and turn the retune speed all the way down while raising the pitch, or use repitch to shift the whole take up several semitones. See How to use autotune: natural or robotic and Time-stretch and repitch explained. The goal isn't a subtle correction — it's a vocal that reads as obviously processed, which is the point in hyperpop.

Double it for extra artificiality

Record or duplicate a second pass an octave or a fifth above the main take and blend it in low. The clash between the two pitched layers is a common hyperpop texture.

Step 3: Distort an 808 into a wall of grit

Add a track and open the Tracks subtractive synth. Write a simple 808-style bassline — a handful of sustained or sliding notes is enough, following the approach in How to write a bassline that locks with the kick.

Then push it hard. Add the distortion insert effect and drive it well past a clean overdrive, then stack the bitcrusher on top and lower the bit depth until the low end starts to crackle and fold. See Chorus, phaser, distortion, and bitcrusher explained for how each effect works. The bass should sound damaged on purpose — that crunch is doing as much melodic work as the notes themselves.

Step 4: Program glitchy, stuttering drum fills

Open the drum machine and program a straightforward pattern first — a normal kick and snare pocket at your chosen tempo. Then break it. Chop a section of the pattern into rapid-fire repeats, drop a bar of silence right before a new section, or reverse a snare hit into the downbeat. See Quantize and swing explained for working the grid at fine subdivisions when you're building a stutter.

Keep the glitch moments short and placed at transitions — a clean pattern most of the way through with a jarring two-beat fill right before the hook lands harder than glitching constantly through the whole track.

Step 5: Layer bright, detuned synth stabs

Add a second synth track and program short, bright stabs that land between the vocal phrases. Detune the oscillator slightly from the synth's default tuning, or layer two voices a few cents apart, so the stabs sit slightly out of tune with the rest of the mix. See Subtractive vs FM synthesis for shaping a bright, cutting patch.

These stabs aren't meant to blend — they're meant to add friction against the vocal and bass, which is a large part of what gives hyperpop its overloaded, maximalist character.

Step 6: Arrange for whiplash, then export

Hyperpop arrangements favor sudden cuts over gradual builds. A workable shape looks like this:

1. Intro (4–8 bars): pitched vocal alone or with sparse synth, no drums yet.
2. Verse (8–16 bars): drums and distorted 808 enter, vocal stays relatively controlled.
3. Pre-hook glitch (1–2 bars): a hard stutter fill or a bar of silence to signal the cut.
4. Hook (8–16 bars): full pattern — pitched vocal, distorted bass, detuned stabs, and the busiest drums in the track.
5. Bridge or breakdown (4–8 bars): strip back hard, often to just vocal and a single element, before cutting back in.

Block these sections on the Tracks timeline before refining individual sounds — see How to arrange a song for more on structuring around loops and section changes, and How to make dubstep in your browser for another genre built around sudden, engineered contrast.

When the mix feels right, export to WAV for a clean master file or MP3 to share online — see How to export your song to MP3 or WAV for the full walkthrough. Your project never leaves your browser; Tracks doesn't upload it anywhere.

Frequently asked questions

What BPM is hyperpop?

Most hyperpop sits between 150 and 160 BPM, though the genre is loose about tempo and some tracks shift speed entirely partway through. 150 BPM is a reasonable default to start from.

Do I need a real singer for hyperpop vocals?

No — heavy pitch processing is part of the sound, so a rough take works as well as a polished one once it's run through autotune or repitch. What matters more is committing to an obviously processed result instead of dialing the effect back.

Why does my distorted 808 sound muddy instead of gritty?

Check the order of your effects chain first — distortion generally sounds cleaner before bitcrushing than after, since bitcrushing a heavily distorted signal can collapse the low end into noise. Also try pulling back the distortion drive slightly and compensating with more bitcrusher instead of maxing both at once.

Is hyperpop the same as bubblegum bass?

Bubblegum bass is generally considered the earlier, more purely maximalist pop strain that hyperpop grew out of and broadened, pulling in more distortion, glitch, and genre-blending along the way. The production techniques in this guide apply to either label.