Two real briefs: a duet and a beat
Both of these were typed by visitors who had not signed up yet, and both came back in Portuguese, which is half the lesson: a brief can be written in any language, and the Lyrics language menu decides what the verses are rapped in.
The prompt that made it
“A confident hip-hop intro track announcing my arrival, hard drums, clever wordplay”
An English brief, with Lyrics language set to Portuguese, Voice set to Duet, and Hip-Hop and Epic picked from the style menus. The lyric came back as a two-rapper track: parts marked voice A and voice B, both on the hook, and a call-and-response bridge. “Clever wordplay” was taken literally; one line checkmates with a pawn.
The prompt that made it
“um beat de trap sombrio e pesado a 140 bpm com 808 estrondosos e hi-hats rápidos”
Portuguese for “a dark, heavy trap beat at 140 BPM with booming 808s and fast hi-hats”, made with Instrumental ticked. Style, tempo, drums: the three things a beat brief needs. The two takes came back at 1:59 and 2:46, and this one plays at full level to its last second, so there is no fade to trim.
What rap briefs leave out
Rap and hip-hop are about a tenth of everything made on Tunely. The briefs are long on attitude and short on the beat: only about one in three says how fast it should go. A rap brief that works decides six things.
| Decide | Write it like this | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The style | “trap”, “boom-bap”, “drill”, “melodic rap over piano”, “phonk” | It picks the drums and the bass before anything else. |
| The speed | “140 BPM, half-time”, “90 BPM”, “fast” | Trap and drill usually sit around 140 BPM felt at half speed; boom-bap around 85 to 95. |
| The drums | “booming 808s”, “hard snares”, “rolling hi-hats”, “dusty sampled drums” | Rap is drum-led, so name the drums you hear in your head. |
| The delivery | “fast double-time verses”, “laid-back flow”, “a chanted hook”, “ad-libs” | It tells the vocal how to ride the beat. |
| The voice | Voice menu: Rap, Duet, Deep male; or “female rapper, confident” | Left empty, the engine chooses. |
| The topic | One situation and one image: “the night I quit my job, counting coins in a 24-hour diner” | “Money, fame, haters” returns a lyric made of those three words. |
Naming a rapper does not buy their sound: Tunely rewrites the name into a plain description of the style and makes the track from that, without charging twice. Writing that description yourself keeps the choice in your hands.
Bringing your own bars
Switch to Custom mode, paste your verses and hook, and put the beat in the style line (“dark trap, 140 BPM, 808s”). The tags above the lyrics box, [Verse], [Chorus] and [Bridge], mark the sections; the hook goes under [Chorus]. Your bars are rapped as written, in the language you wrote them in, and lyrics taken from an existing song are declined before anything is generated.
Rap fits more lines into a minute than singing does. Measured from the files, a rapped line takes about 3.3 seconds against about 4.4 across everything made here, which is roughly 18 lines a minute. The duet above gets through 48 lines in 2:31, and that makes a fair rule of thumb: two 16-bar verses and a hook twice come out at about two and a half minutes.
A beat to rap over yourself
Tick Instrumental, just above the Create button, and describe the beat the way the Portuguese brief above does: style, tempo, drums, mood. Instrumentals on Tunely run 3:00 at the median. Tick the box rather than writing “no vocals”: a word in the description is a request, not a setting, and it can still come back with a voice. Already have a rap you like? On Pro and Ultra, Get stems splits any finished track into a vocal and an instrumental for one credit, and the instrumental is your beat. For other beat styles, each of the beat makers starts from its own preset.
Posting it, and the rights
Listening and sharing are free, with no watermark. Keeping the MP3 is $1.99 per track on the free plan; Pro and Ultra include MP3, lossless WAV and stems. Releasing a track on streaming services or under a monetised video is commercial use: Pro and Ultra license every track in your library for it, each with a certificate and licence code, including tracks made before you upgraded.
Before you press Create
- A style and a tempo: “trap, 140 BPM” or “boom-bap, 90 BPM”.
- The drums named, and how the verses ride them.
- One situation and one image instead of a list of themes.
- A voice picked: Rap, Duet or Deep male in the Voice menu, or described.
- Your own bars? Custom mode, sections tagged, about 48 lines for two and a half minutes.
- Beat only? Instrumental ticked.
Sources
Written and fact-checked by the Tunely team · Updated