Make Phonk

Make phonk with your own personal music producer, free in your browser. Veena's CoProducer builds the cowbell riff, the 808 distorted until it growls, the hard drums and the dark vocal chops as real tracks you can edit, then mixes the whole thing loud and dirty on purpose, the way phonk is meant to sound.

Phonk took shape in the early 2010s, built from 1990s Memphis rap: pitched-down vocals, chopped-and-screwed tapes, dusty samples and hiss. Late in that decade drift phonk, which grew up in Russia, turned the TR-808 cowbell into the lead, pushed the bass into distortion and picked up the tempo. Whichever phonk you are after, the recipe has three ingredients: a cowbell riff in a dark minor mode, an 808 that growls, and a mix that clips on purpose.

Three phonks, side by side

This page builds drift phonk first, because it is the one most people mean today. The Memphis haze and the Brazilian groove come after.

The cowbell riff

The TR-808's cowbell is two short metallic tones, and in drift phonk it plays the melody. The riff lives in the Phrygian mode, a minor scale with a flattened second: in C, that is C, D flat, E flat, F and G. Keep it in straight 8ths, move by step, and repeat a two-bar idea with one small change:

8ths     1   &   2   &   3   &   4   &
Bar 1    C   C   Db  C   Eb  Db  C   C
Bar 2    C   C   Db  C   Eb  F   Eb  Db

The D flat is the menace. Sitting a half step above the root, it never resolves comfortably, and that tension is the whole mood. Play the riff high, around C5, so it cuts above the 808.

Three ways to get the cowbell in Veena:

1. Veena's own synth. Bell Pluck is struck metal, seven clashing partials that ring out in about a quarter of a second, and it plays your riff as editable MIDI. Turn BRIGHTNESS up for more clang and EDGE for grit.
2. The 16-pad sampler. Load a single cowbell hit onto the pads by dragging it in, uploading it or searching for it, then tune each pad up to 12 semitones up or down and write the riff across them.
3. A cowbell loop. Ask CoProducer for a phonk cowbell loop. It searches 27,356 curated samples plus a licensed professional catalogue and shows ten preview cards; if the loop you pick sits in the wrong key, run Find Key on the clip and pitch-shift it into yours.

Hum the riff first if it is in your head. Record a few seconds into Veena and ask CoProducer to turn the take into MIDI, then put the notes on Bell Pluck. The phonk cowbell melody page has more riffs to start from.

The 808: distorted on purpose

A clean sub sounds wrong in phonk. The 808 should growl, and it should still be heard on a phone. Veena has six 808s on its own synth, and three of them suit phonk:

• 808 Distorted. Split-band saturation: the sub underneath stays clean while the harmonics on top survive a phone speaker. The default phonk choice.
• 808 Hard. An aggressive 18-semitone pitch drop in 25 ms with a square edge, for hits that punch through a busy mix.
• 808 Glide. Mono and built to slide 150 ms between notes you write overlapping, for the slides that end a phrase.

The five 808 basses share four macro knobs: DROP for the pitch dive at the start of each note, DECAY for its length, DRIVE for the dirt and GLIDE for the slide time. Write the line the way the riff moves: the root C on the downbeat, a jump up an octave on the "and" of 2, and a slide down to D flat on beat 4 before it falls back home. Then turn DRIVE up until it snarls.

Drums: two chassis

Drift phonk often rides a hard, simple four-on-the-floor. X is a full hit, x a softer one:

Drift     1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a
Kick      X . . . X . . . X . . . X . . .
Clap      . . . . X . . . . . . . X . . .
Hat       . . x . . . x . . . x . . . x .

Memphis-style phonk sits on a half-time trap chassis instead, the snare on beat 3 and the kick syncopated around it:

Memphis   1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a
Kick      X . . . . . . x . . X . . . . .
Snare     . . . . . . . . X . . . . . . .
Hat       x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x x

The hat roll at the end of the bar is where Memphis swagger comes from. In Veena's piano roll, set the snap to 1/6 Beat for 16th-note triplets or 1/8 Beat for 32nds and draw a burst before the next downbeat. Use the Electronic kit for both chassis, and let CoProducer's AI drum generator write the variations. A good drift track switches between the two: 16 bars of four-on-the-floor, then 8 bars of half-time where the 808 slides and the riff breathes.

Vocal chops and the Memphis haze

Memphis phonk is a sound of old tapes: vocal phrases pitched down until they drawl, drenched in reverb, sitting behind the beat. You can build that haze from your own material. Record a line or a shout into Veena, pitch-shift the clip down four or five semitones, add a Hall reverb, and you have a menacing chop that belongs to you. Reverse Audio turns a phrase into a swell that rushes into a drop.

For ready-made chops, ask CoProducer for a dark, pitched-down vocal chop and pick from the ten cards. A Dark Pad underneath, one low chord held for eight bars, fills in the gloom; it breathes open and shut on its own every seven seconds.

Drift phonk arrangement map

That is 76 bars, about 2 minutes 20 seconds at 130 BPM, a typical drift phonk length: long enough for an edit, short enough to loop.

Make phonk with CoProducer

1. Go to daw.veena.studio and sign in with Google. The studio loads in the browser, so a school Chromebook works as well as a gaming PC.
2. Paste the brief:

Make a 130 BPM drift phonk track in C minor: a cowbell-style riff on Bell Pluck in straight 8ths on C, D flat and E flat; an 808 Distorted bassline that follows the riff's root with octave jumps and a slide down to D flat; Electronic kit with a four-on-the-floor kick, a clap on 2 and 4 and offbeat hats; a Dark Pad and a pitched-down vocal chop in the breaks. Intro 8 bars riff only, drop 16, break 8, drop 16 with 16th hats, an 8-bar half-time switch with the snare on 3, final drop 16 with the riff up an octave, outro 4.

3. Watch it land. CoProducer sets 130 BPM and C minor, maps the seven sections and writes the riff, drums and 808 on separate tracks. The 808 reads the riff's actual notes, so the octave jumps and the D flat line up.
4. Pick. Three takes arrive for each new part and the vocal chop comes as ten preview cards. Arrow keys browse, Enter adds, and you can change your pick while the carousel is open.
5. Dirty it up in plain words (the list below), one undo per change.
6. Export WAV, MP3 or, if you imported a video, an MP4 with your track on it. No watermark, as many exports as you like, and the track is yours.

Describe the sound rather than an artist. In Veena's own data only about 3% of typed requests name an artist; the phonk requests that work name the tempo, the key, the cowbell and the 808.

Moves after the first pass:

• "Double the cowbell an octave up in the final drop."
• "Make the 808 hit harder and slide into every new bar."
• "Swap the drums to half-time for the break and add a triplet hat roll before each drop."
• "Pitch the vocal chop down and put it on the last bar of every 8."

Mixing phonk: loud and dirty, on purpose

Phonk is one of the few genres where clipping is a feature. In Veena, effects sit on each clip, so every part can have its own dirt:

• 808. Put Distortion on the Clip preset over the 808 clip, then Utility with Mono on so the low end stays centred. On the 8-Band EQ, lift a peaking band around 700 Hz–1.5 kHz: that is where the growl lives on a phone speaker.
• Cowbell. It is the lead, so it sits loud and bright. A small lift with the high shelf and a short Slap delay make it snap.
• Drums. The Compressor's Smash preset (8:1 from −30 dB) flattens the kit into one slab; Distortion on the Crunch preset roughens the clap.
• Chops and pads. Reverb and a dark tone belong here, not on the 808.
• The whole mix. Ask CoProducer for "a loud, distorted phonk master, the 808 growling but the cowbell on top" and it sets the levels and effects on every part.

Phonk mistakes to avoid

1. A clean 808. A pure sine sub disappears on phones and sounds polite. Drive it.
2. A buried cowbell. It is the melody, not a percussion layer. Mix it like a lead.
3. Too many notes. Three or four notes in a Phrygian loop hit harder than a full scale run.
4. A riff and 808 that ignore each other. When the 808 follows the riff's root and flat second, the track locks together.
5. Reverb on everything. Haze belongs on the chops and pads. Drums and 808 stay dry and in your face.

Phonk terms

Cowbell: the TR-808's metallic two-tone hit, played as a melody. Phrygian: a minor mode with a flattened second, D flat in C. Chopped and screwed: a slowed, pitched-down, cut-up style from Houston that shaped phonk's vocals. Drift: the car culture drift phonk soundtracks. Switch: the moment the beat changes feel, often from four-on-the-floor to half-time. Slide: an 808 note gliding into the next. Memphis: the city whose 1990s rap tapes are phonk's source.

Phonk styles to try next

• Drift phonk: 120–130 BPM on a four-on-the-floor, cowbell up front, 808 Distorted.
• Memphis-style phonk: 130–145 BPM, half-time, rolling hats, pitched-down chops and a Dark Pad.
• Aggressive gym phonk: 140–160 BPM, 808 Hard, the Chaos kit and Distortion on almost everything.
• Brazilian phonk: funk automotivo, the tamborzão groove around 130 BPM with cowbells; how to make Brazilian music covers the baile funk side.
• Phonk-trap crossovers: half-time 808 beats with a cowbell hook, close to how you make trap beats and drill beats.

Every one of these starts in the free online beat maker or with one sentence to CoProducer. For every other sound, see make music by genre.