How to make R&B music in your browser

By Tongkit Leong · September 8, 2026 · 9 min read

R&B is built on extended jazz-voiced chords, a drum pocket that sits deliberately behind the beat, a sparse sub bassline, and vocal harmony stacked two or three layers deep — and you can build all four from scratch in the Tracks browser studio in an afternoon, with no software to install and no account to create.

The anatomy of an R&B track

Before you open the piano roll, it helps to know what separates R&B from the pop and hip-hop it constantly trades ideas with:

• Extended chords — sevenths, ninths, and eleventh chords borrowed from jazz, instead of the plain major and minor triads pop leans on.
• Behind-the-beat pocket — drums and vocal phrasing that land a fraction late, giving the groove a relaxed, unhurried feel even at a slow tempo.
• Sparse sub bassline — a bass part that mostly sustains the chord's root, leaving room rather than filling every gap.
• Stacked vocal harmony — a lead vocal doubled and harmonized in thirds and fifths, plus quieter ad-libs and runs filling the space between phrases.
• Space — R&B arrangements are often sparser than pop, trusting the vocal and chords to carry a section rather than stacking instruments on top of each other.

Tracks has everything you need for this built in — a subtractive/FM synth and SoundFont playback for keys, the drum machine for the pocket, mic recording with take comping for vocal stacks, and a full mixer for the vocal chain.

Step 1: Set your tempo

Open the Tracks studio and set the BPM in the transport bar. R&B covers a wide range, but most of it clusters here:

• Slow / ballad R&B: 60–75 BPM. Sparse, vocal-forward, plenty of space between chords.
• Mid-tempo R&B: 75–90 BPM. The most common modern range, often felt as half-time against a faster underlying subdivision.
• Uptempo / dance-leaning R&B: 90–110 BPM. Closer to pop, with a more active drum pattern.

A useful trick: if a groove at 140 BPM feels too fast and rigid but 70 BPM feels too slow to program drums against, set the tempo to 140 and simply write the drum pattern with hits every two steps — that's the half-time feel most modern R&B actually runs on.

Step 2: Voice extended chords

Add an instrument track and load an electric piano SoundFont or a warm subtractive synth patch. Open the piano roll and write a progression using seventh chords (root, third, fifth, seventh) or ninth chords rather than plain triads — a ii7–V7–Imaj7 or a Imaj7–vi7–ii7–V7 loop are both R&B staples borrowed straight from jazz.

Focus on voice leading: instead of jumping each chord to its own root-position shape, keep shared notes in place and move the others by the smallest interval possible from one chord to the next. This is what makes an R&B progression feel smooth and connected instead of like a sequence of separate blocks. If you're not confident with chord theory yet, Chord progressions in the piano roll covers how to build and audition these shapes directly in Tracks.

Adding movement without adding notes

Instead of writing a new chord every bar, try holding one chord for two bars and using automation to open a low-pass filter or swell a synth pad's volume partway through — see How to use automation to make your mix move. This kind of static-harmony, moving-texture approach is common in slower R&B where the chords change less often than the tempo would suggest.

Step 3: Program a laid-back drum pocket

Open the 808 or 909 drum machine and place a simple kick and snare pattern — kick on beat 1 and the "and" of beat 2, snare or clap on beats 2 and 4. Then work against the grid on purpose: nudge the snare a touch later than exactly on the beat, and set the hi-hats to a moderate swing amount so the off-beat sixteenths sit slightly behind rather than perfectly even. See Quantize, swing, and groove explained for how swing amount works in the Tracks sequencer.

Keep the hi-hat pattern understated — short, closed hits with occasional light velocity variation — and reserve any busier rolls or fills for transitions between sections rather than running them throughout.

Step 4: Write a simple sub-driven bassline

Add a bass track using a sine-wave or sub-focused synth patch and open the piano roll. Resist the urge to write a busy, moving line — most R&B basslines simply sustain or gently repeat the current chord's root note, occasionally sliding to a passing tone right before the chord changes. The goal is low-end that feels felt more than heard, supporting the chord and vocal without pulling attention toward itself.

Keep the sub tight in the mix by cutting the same low frequencies from the electric piano that the bass occupies, so the two don't smear together — EQ cheat sheet: what to cut and boost by instrument has starting points for both.

Step 5: Record and stack vocal harmony

Plug in a mic and record your lead vocal take using Tracks' built-in recording with count-in. Once you have a lead you like, record two or three additional passes singing the same melody a third above, a fifth above, or a third below the lead — these are the classic harmony intervals that give R&B vocals their thick, choir-like stack.

Record each harmony a few times and use take comping to build one clean composite performance per layer instead of settling for a single imperfect pass — see Take comping: building the best vocal take for the workflow. Pan the harmony layers slightly left and right of center, keeping the lead vocal dead center so it stays the clear focal point.

Step 6: Add ad-libs and vocal runs

On a separate track, record short ad-libs — a repeated word, a breathy "yeah," a quick melodic run — timed to land in the gaps between lead vocal phrases rather than underneath them. If you can sing a short melisma run (a quick, ornamented run across several notes on one syllable), that's another hallmark of the genre worth layering in during a chorus or outro.

Keep these elements noticeably quieter than the lead and push them slightly further back with a touch more reverb, so they read as texture supporting the vocal rather than a second lead competing with it.

Step 7: Arrange the full track

R&B arrangements tend to leave more space than pop, trusting the vocal and chords to hold a section on their own. A dependable structure looks like this:

1. Intro (4–8 bars): chords and a light pad, no drums yet.
2. Verse (8–16 bars): chords, sub bass, and a stripped-back drum pattern under the lead vocal.
3. Pre-chorus (4–8 bars): add fuller drums and a harmony layer building into the hook.
4. Chorus (8–16 bars): full arrangement — drums, bass, chords, lead vocal, and stacked harmony.
5. Bridge or breakdown (4–8 bars): strip back to vocal and chords alone, or a solo ad-lib run.
6. Final chorus and outro (8–16 bars): full stack, often with extra ad-libs layered over a fade.

These lengths are conventions, not rules — R&B is one of the more arrangement-flexible genres, so trust the vocal performance to tell you when a section has said what it needs to.

Step 8: Mix and export

Before you export, spend time on the vocal chain first — it's the focal point of nearly every R&B track:

1. Build a vocal chain on the lead: EQ to remove mud and add presence, a compressor to even out dynamics, and a de-esser to tame harsh "s" sounds — see Vocal chain order explained and De-esser explained.
2. Group the harmony and ad-lib tracks onto a shared bus and send that bus to reverb, so they sit in their own space behind the dry lead vocal — see Mix groups, buses, and sends explained.
3. Balance the sub bass against the kick with an EQ cut and, if they're still fighting for space, a light sidechain duck — see Sidechain compression explained.
4. Check the whole mix at a quiet volume before finishing — R&B mixes rely on the vocal cutting through even when everything else is understated.

When the balance 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 stays in your browser the whole time; Tracks never uploads it anywhere.

Frequently asked questions

What BPM is R&B music?

Most R&B falls between 60 and 90 BPM, with slow ballads sitting at 60–75 BPM and mid-tempo tracks around 75–90 BPM. Many modern R&B songs are actually written and felt at double that tempo — around 140 BPM — with the drum pattern placed on every other beat for a half-time feel.

What chords should I use for R&B?

Seventh, ninth, and eleventh chords instead of plain triads. A ii7–V7–Imaj7 or Imaj7–vi7–ii7–V7 progression, played with smooth voice leading between chords, is a dependable starting point for the genre's signature harmonic color.

Do I need to be a trained singer to layer harmonies?

No, but it helps to know the interval you're singing. Try singing along with your recorded lead a third above it — if that feels out of reach, a third below or a fifth above are equally common R&B harmony choices. Recording several takes and comping the cleanest one, as described above, forgives a lot of imperfect single passes.

Why does my drum pattern feel too stiff even though the notes are right?

It's likely too quantized. R&B pockets rely on small, deliberate timing offsets — a slightly late snare, swung hi-hats — rather than every hit landing exactly on the grid. Nudge a few hits off-grid or apply swing, and the same pattern will start to feel like a groove instead of a metronome.