How to Make Hyperpop: Genre Guide, Sound Design & Plugin Chain

Hyperpop is one of the most polarizing and sonically distinctive genres of the last decade. It emerged from the intersection of UK PC Music aesthetics, AutoTune-heavy SoundCloud rap, emo and pop-punk melody, and early 2010s internet culture — a genre that sounded like pop music if it had been designed by someone who understood pop music's mechanisms too well and wanted to see what happened when you pushed every knob past the red.

Artists like 100 gecs, SOPHIE, A.G. Cook, Charli XCX, Bladee, and Glaive brought hyperpop from niche internet phenomenon to genuine cultural force between 2018 and 2023. Its influence has since spread into mainstream pop production in ways that aren't always labeled as hyperpop but are unmistakably there — the distorted bass, the pitched-up vocals, the sense that everything is happening at once and that this is fine.

This guide covers the full production process: the sound philosophy, the core elements, the DAW-specific techniques, the plugin chain, and how to make something that sounds like hyperpop on purpose rather than by accident.

The Philosophy: Maximalism as Aesthetic Choice

Before any technical discussion of how to make hyperpop, it's worth understanding what makes it distinctive philosophically, because this shapes every technical decision.

Conventional music production treats distortion, aliasing, clipping, and over-compression as problems to avoid. Conventional pop production is about polish — smooth transitions, balanced frequency spectrum, natural-sounding vocals, controlled dynamics. Hyperpop inverts this. The distortion is the texture. The clipping is the energy. The over-compressed, crushed vocal is the aesthetic, not a symptom of poor technique.

This doesn't mean anything goes. The producers who defined hyperpop — SOPHIE, A.G. Cook, Dylan Brady of 100 gecs, Whitearmor — are exceptionally skilled and make deliberate choices about which kind of excess to deploy and where. The chaos is curated. The noise is composed. Understanding this is the difference between making hyperpop and making something that just sounds like a broken mix.

The PC Music aesthetic that seeded hyperpop operated with a knowing ironic relationship to pop conventions — it sounded like pop music but slightly too much like pop music, as if someone had fed pop into a machine and the machine had tried extremely hard and gotten almost everything right but slightly wrong. This uncanny quality is central to the genre and should inform every sound design decision you make.

Tempo and Time Signature

Most hyperpop sits between 140 and 175 BPM, with a common sweet spot around 150–160 BPM. This tempo range achieves something specific: it's fast enough to feel kinetic and urgent but slow enough that the melodic and harmonic content isn't sacrificed to pure speed.

The breakcore-influenced percussion elements that appear in drops and outros often feel much faster because they operate at double time against the project tempo. A track at 150 BPM with a double-time breakcore section has percussion functioning at an effective 300 BPM — which is why hyperpop drops hit with such intensity compared to the relatively controlled verses that precede them.

Time signature is almost universally 4/4. Hyperpop's relationship to pop structure means it follows pop rhythmic conventions, but fills that conventional structure with unconventional content. The surprise is in the sound, not the meter.

Song Structure in Hyperpop

Hyperpop follows recognizable pop structures but compresses them and subverts their emotional logic. A typical structure:

Intro (4–8 bars): Often a brief statement of the hook or a processed, abstracted version of the chorus. Hyperpop has little patience for long intros — it arrives.

Verse (8–16 bars): Melodic content, often simpler rhythmically than the chorus. Vocals are processed but not fully blown out — this is where you establish a relative baseline of intensity so the chorus can exceed it.

Pre-chorus (4–8 bars): Tension-building. This is often where the first breakcore elements appear — a brief chaos moment that resolves into the drop.

Chorus / Drop (8–16 bars): Full deployment of all elements. Distorted 808s, breakcore percussion, vocals at maximum processing. This should feel like a release of everything the verse held back.

Bridge (optional, 8 bars): Sometimes a moment of relative quiet — a stripped version of a melody or a different emotional perspective. This makes the final chorus hit harder.

Outro: Hyperpop often ends abruptly or with a brief decay rather than a fade. The internet-native sensibility is that the song is over when it's over.

Total length: most hyperpop tracks are 1.5 to 2.5 minutes. Brevity is a feature. If you can say it in 90 seconds, say it in 90 seconds.

The Vocals: Where Hyperpop Lives or Dies

Hyperpop is fundamentally a vocal music, and the vocal processing chain is the most sonically distinctive element of the genre. The goal is not a natural-sounding vocal. The goal is a vocal that sounds processed in specific, musically intentional ways.

Step 1: Pitch Shifting

The most fundamental hyperpop vocal technique is aggressive upward pitch shifting. Most hyperpop vocals are shifted 3 to 7 semitones up from the recorded pitch — sometimes more. This creates the characteristic high, almost cartoonish quality that distinguishes hyperpop vocals from conventional pop.

Tools for pitch shifting:

• Melodyne — the highest-quality pitch shifter. Allows formant control, so you can shift pitch without making it sound artificially chipmunk. For hyperpop, some formant shift is often desirable, but Melodyne gives you control over how much.
• Antares Auto-Tune — combines pitch correction with pitch shifting. Set retune speed to fast (0–10ms) for the characteristic hard AutoTune effect.
• Ableton's Pitch effect — simple and CPU-light. Less sophisticated than Melodyne but can work well for extreme shifts.
• GSnap (free) — VST pitch correction that can achieve the Auto-Tune effect without cost.

Step 2: Auto-Tune / Pitch Correction

Beyond the base pitch shift, apply pitch correction with a very fast retune speed (0–10ms in Auto-Tune terms). This creates the audible pitch snapping that is characteristic of the genre. Notes don't glide to pitch — they jump to the nearest correct note immediately, creating that robotic, quantized quality. In hyperpop, this is not a failure of the vocal — it is the sound.

Step 3: Saturation and Distortion

Run the pitched vocal through saturation or mild to moderate distortion. This adds harmonic content, makes the vocal cut through dense mixes, and gives it a slightly gritty, overdriven texture. Options:

• FabFilter Saturn 2 — multiband saturation with precise control
• Soundtoys Decapitator — classic saturation with different character modes
• Camel Crusher (free) — aggressive, compressed saturation sound
• Ableton's Saturator or Overdrive effect — built-in options that work well

Step 4: OTT Compression

OTT (Over The Top) is a free multiband upward/downward compressor originally from Ableton's device library and now available as a standalone VST from Xfer Records. It is ubiquitous in hyperpop — applied to vocals, 808s, synth leads, and often the master bus. It squashes dynamics and brings up quiet transients while pushing loud transients down, creating a hyper-compressed, dense sound.

Apply OTT at around 30–60% depth on vocals. Higher amounts create more aggressive compression artifacts. Adjust the high/mid/low band levels to taste — many producers push the high band to add presence and sibilance to pitched-up vocals.

Step 5: Reverb and Delay

Hyperpop vocals often live in large, washy reverbs — plate reverbs or large halls — that create a sense of space around the processed vocal. The reverb should be clearly audible, not subtle. A pre-delay of 20–40ms helps the dry vocal stay present before the reverb tail arrives.

Modulated delays (tempo-synced, with pitch modulation applied to the feedback) add a specific kind of textural chaos. Try an 8th-note delay with the feedback pitched a few cents sharp — the subtle pitch drift creates movement and tension.

The 808: Distorted, Tuned, and Everywhere

Hyperpop 808s differ from trap 808s in one crucial way: where trap treats 808 distortion as something to manage, hyperpop treats it as a feature to amplify. Hyperpop 808s are intentionally blown out, aliased, and sonically extreme.

Starting Point: The 808 Sample

Start with a long-decay 808 sample — sine wave or near-sine bass with a long, pitchable sustain. Many producers use samples from classic drum machines (Roland TR-808) or synthesized 808-style basses from synths like Serum or Vital. The key characteristics are: clear fundamental pitch, long sustain, and enough low-end content to feel physical at volume.

Tuning the 808

Every 808 must be tuned to the key of the track. An out-of-tune 808 sounds like a mistake; a tuned 808 sounds like a bass guitar playing the root notes. Use pitch bend or a sampler's tune control. If working with MIDI, use portamento (glide) between notes for the signature trap/hyperpop 808 slide. The glide speed determines how quickly the pitch transitions — slower glides for melodic slides, faster for punchy note changes.

Distorting the 808

This is the defining step for hyperpop. Run the tuned 808 through distortion — hard clipping, wave folding, or bit crushing. The goal is to introduce aliasing artifacts and harmonic distortion that push the 808 beyond its natural frequency range. A heavily distorted 808 starts to produce high-frequency content (harmonics at multiples of the fundamental) that gives it presence in the mid-range, where it cuts through mix elements that aren't affected by it.

Specific techniques:

• Hard clip with Ableton's Saturator — set the Soft Clip mode to Hard, drive until clipping is severe and visible on the waveform
• Redux (bit crusher) — reducing bit depth creates aliasing noise that reads as texture
• FabFilter Saturn 2 on "Warm Tube" or "Metal" modes — multiband so you can preserve the sub while distorting the mids
• iZotope's Trash 2 — dedicated distortion with unusual waveshaper modes excellent for extreme 808 processing

Sidechain the 808 to the Kick

Even in hyperpop where everything is in excess, the 808 and kick drum need to share frequency space cleanly. Sidechain compress the 808 to the kick so when the kick hits, the 808 briefly ducks. This is standard in trap and applies equally here — it prevents frequency masking between the two elements and gives the kick punch even in an extremely dense mix.

Percussion: Breakcore Influence and Drum Design

Hyperpop percussion borrows liberally from breakcore — an extreme form of electronic music characterized by extremely fast, heavily processed drum breaks. The specific hyperpop application involves layering breakcore-style percussion under or over a conventional kick-snare grid, creating rhythmic density that sounds chaotic but is carefully composed.

The Kick

Hyperpop kicks are often punchy and distorted — similar to trap kicks but sometimes more aggressively processed. A common approach is layering two or three kicks: a sub-heavy one for low-end impact, a mid-focused one for punch, and a high-frequency transient layer for the attack snap. Apply transient shaping (Ableton's Transient Shaper or similar) to exaggerate the attack of the combined layer.

The Snare

Snares in hyperpop are often reverb-drenched and either very crisp (high-end snap) or very fat (processed with reverb and distortion). The reverb-drenched, airy snare popularized by pop producers and applied to hyperpop contexts works well. Alternatively, heavily distorted, almost noise-like snares appear in more aggressive productions.

The Breakcore Layer

The breakcore percussion element is usually a sampled drum break — an Amen break, Think break, or similar — pitched up, time-stretched, and chopped. Key techniques:

• Time-stretch the break to match your project tempo (usually 150–160 BPM, which means massive stretching if the break was recorded at 130 BPM)
• Apply granular stretching rather than standard time-stretching — the artifacts from granular processing read as texture
• Process the break through bit crushing and distortion
• Reverse specific hits within the break
• Chop the break into 8th or 16th note slices and rearrange them in unusual patterns

The breakcore element doesn't need to run through the entire track. It's most effective in drops and outros — deployed for maximum impact and then removed to let the verse breathe.

Synths and Leads: Bright, Artificial, Maximum Harmonic Content

Hyperpop leads and synth elements lean toward extremely bright, harmonically dense sounds — the opposite of a warm, natural synthesis aesthetic. The key characteristic is controlled harshness: sounds that would be considered too bright or aggressive in other contexts are exactly right here.

Serum and Vital

Serum (paid, industry standard) and Vital (free, excellent) are the most widely used synths in hyperpop production. Both are wavetable synthesizers with multimode filters and built-in effects. Key hyperpop-oriented patches:

• Supersaws — multiple detuned saw oscillators creating the dense, wide lead sound. In hyperpop, these are often heavily saturated and filtered to be brighter than conventional pop use
• FM-style harsh tones — operator-based or FM-approximated harsh bell tones that cut through mixes
• Pitch-modulated leads — applying LFO-based pitch modulation creates a wobbling, slightly unstable quality
• Square wave arps — fast arpeggiated square waves give the characteristic glitchy chiptune quality that appears throughout PC Music-influenced hyperpop

The Pluck

Short, sharp attacks with fast decays — plucky synth sounds — appear frequently in hyperpop for melodic elements that live between the vocal and the bass. Process these through OTT to increase their density and apply a short reverb for space. The pluck should feel almost percussive while remaining pitched.

The Mix: Everything at Once, Intentionally

Mixing hyperpop requires abandoning the goal of a clean, balanced mix. The goal is a dense, loud, energetic mix where elements compete for space in ways that create useful tension rather than muddy confusion. This is harder to achieve than it sounds — controlled chaos requires skill.

Frequency Distribution

Despite the maximalist philosophy, hyperpop mixes still respect frequency distribution:

• Sub (20–60 Hz): Owned by the 808 exclusively. Keep everything else minimal here.
• Bass (60–250 Hz): 808 body, kick impact. Keep the vocal and synths minimal here — they don't belong in the bass register regardless of how processed they are.
• Midrange (250 Hz–4 kHz): Where hyperpop lives. Distorted 808 harmonics, vocal, synth leads, and percussion all compete here — intentionally.
• High mids and highs (4 kHz+): Vocal presence, snare snap, synth brilliance. Hyperpop is typically very bright here — more top-end than conventional pop mixes.

Master Bus Processing

Many hyperpop producers apply heavy processing to the master bus as part of the sound:

• OTT on the master bus — at 20–40% depth, this glues the mix and adds density
• Hard limiting / clipping — pushing into a limiter or clipper intentionally creates the distorted, overdriven character that distinguishes hyperpop masters
• Multiband saturation — adding harmonic distortion across the frequency spectrum at the master bus level enhances cohesion

Target loudness: hyperpop typically masters loud — around -7 to -9 LUFS integrated, louder than most pop. The compression and clipping mean dynamic range is minimal, but this is the genre's character.

Hyperpop Plugin Chain Summary

A practical complete chain for a hyperpop track:

Vocals: Pitch Shift (+3–7 semitones) → Auto-Tune (fast retune) → Saturation → OTT → EQ (high-shelf boost at 8–12 kHz) → Reverb (plate, 30–40% wet) → Modulated Delay

808: Sampler/Synth → Pitch Tuning → Hard Clipper → Sidechain Compressor (keyed to kick) → High-pass filter on side channel (to keep sub mono)

Synth Lead: Serum/Vital → Saturator → OTT → EQ → Reverb

Drum Bus: Kick + Snare + Hi-Hat → Transient Shaper → Compressor (fast attack, medium release) → Saturation

Master Bus: OTT (20–30% depth) → EQ (slight high-shelf boost) → Limiter/Clipper (pushing level intentionally)

Key Hyperpop Influences to Study

Understanding the genre's lineage helps you make more intentional decisions. Key touchstones:

SOPHIE — The most technically sophisticated producer in the genre's development. Her work demonstrates that maximalism and precision coexist. Study how she creates texture from noise and what appears to be chaos but reveals, on repeated listening, to be extremely deliberate composition.

100 gecs (Dylan Brady and Laura Les) — The project that brought hyperpop to mainstream awareness. Their debut album is a case study in controlled chaos — the production sounds like everything happening at once but is actually carefully orchestrated for maximum emotional impact.

A.G. Cook (PC Music) — The aesthetic architect. His production philosophy — pop music approached with academic rigor and ironic distance — is the foundation for much of what came after.

Charli XCX — The mainstream adoption vector. Studying how her production choices evolved from conventional pop to hyperpop-adjacent shows how to deploy the genre's techniques selectively and effectively for commercial contexts.

Glaive and Ericdoa — Second-generation hyperpop artists who refined the vocal processing aesthetic and brought bedroom production sensibility to the genre.

Practical Exercises

Frequently Asked Questions

Practical Exercises

Frequently Asked Questions