How to Make Digicore Beats: Glitchy Hyperpop's Underground Cousin

What is digicore and where did it come from?

Digicore is an internet microgenre of hip-hop and electronic music that developed alongside hyperpop in the late 2010s and early 2020s. It leans on trap, emo rap, nightcore and cloud rap, with heavy Auto-Tune, high-pitched breathy vocals, sharp 808s and frequent hi-hats^[1].

The scene started as "draincore," online rap inspired by Drain Gang. In 2018 a Minecraft and Discord server called Loser's Club became a hub for artists such as Quinn, Kmoe, Glaive, Ericdoa and Midwxst; by 2019 lonelee had coined "digicore" to replace draincore, and in 2021 curator Billie Bugara's SoundCloud playlist of the same name popularized it^[1].

NPR's Sheldon Pearce sums up the relationship: "Digicore is hyperpop, but hyperpop isn't necessarily digicore." He places rap, especially 2010s SoundCloud rap, at the center of the digicore sound^[2]. For the wider genre, read what is hyperpop.

How do you make digicore drums?

Digicore drums are trap drums pushed brighter and busier: a hard kick, a snappy or slightly silly snare, a distorted 808 and hi-hats that roll constantly. Producer Blackwinterwells told Splice that the drums might be the most significant part of the style, with distorted 808s, kicks and snares, and a "funny snare drum" as a hallmark^[3].

A good starting point is 140-160 BPM with a half-time trap feel, snare on beat 3 of each bar. Tracks with a nightcore or happy hardcore streak can run much faster.

1. Set the backbone
   Kick on 1 plus a few syncopated kicks, snare or clap on beat 3 in half-time. Pick a snare with character, such as a pitched-up clap, a game-style hit or a crunchy rim.
2. Write fast hats
   Run sixteenth-note hats, then add 1/32 rolls and triplet bursts every one or two bars. Pitch-ramp a few rolls up or down 5-12 semitones.
3. Tune and bend the 808
   Tune the 808 to the key, add glides between notes, and leave gaps where the vocal needs room.
4. Distort the drum layer
   Saturate the 808 and snare separately, then clip the drum bus 1-3 dB so the kit sounds loud before the master.
5. Add a break for builds
   Alice Gas described using drum breaks as a buildup into the part with the big 808s^[3]. A two-bar chopped break before the hook works well.

For deeper drum programming in this family of styles, see how to make hyperpop drums.

Which synths and melodies work for digicore?

Digicore melodies are bright, simple and often a little sad: saw or square arps, bell plucks, chiptune leads and glossy pads playing a short, recognizable progression. Complexity comes from processing and edits, not from dense harmony.

The producers in Splice's feature back this up. Blackwinterwells uses mostly plain subtractive synthesis in FL Studio and built "IRIS" around a few-note saw lead, a saw bass and simple drums. Alice Gas starts melodies with a basic square wave, structures the song, then swaps in more complex sounds and processing, and warns beginners that basslines are often too complicated when the music is pop at heart^[3].

• Saw arp Sixteenth-note arpeggio over a four-chord loop, low-passed slightly, with a quarter-note delay.
• Bell or pluck Short decay (100-300 ms), bright top end, one octave above the vocal range.
• Chiptune lead Square or pulse wave with fast vibrato. Reads well on phone speakers.
• Supersaw pad Detuned saws with a slow attack for the hook; sidechain it to the kick so the drums stay loud.
• Reversed layer Blackwinterwells bounced an arp, reversed a copy, laid it over the original and cut both up for a back-and-forth effect^[3].

How do you get pitched digicore vocals?

Digicore vocals are hard-tuned and pitched up: fast pitch correction for the robotic snap, then a pitch or formant shift for the bright, youthful, nightcore-like tone. Heavy Auto-Tune is a primary trait of the genre, with Bladee a central reference^[1].

Nightcore, one of digicore's roots, speeds a track up by about 35%, which raises pitch by roughly five semitones^[4]. You don't need to speed up the whole song; pitching a vocal or a double up 3-5 semitones gets you into that territory while the beat stays at tempo.

1. Record clean and close
   Record dry, close to the mic, with a slightly breathy delivery. Tuning works better on a clean take.
2. Hard-tune first
   Put the pitch corrector first in the chain. In FL Studio's Pitcher, fast Correction Speed settings sound more artificial and slower ones more natural^[5]; for digicore, go fast and set the correct key.
3. Pitch the double
   Duplicate the lead and shift it up 3-5 semitones or an octave. Pitcher's Formant option keeps the voice character when on; turning it off gives the helium-style sound^[5].
4. Layer and pan
   Blend the pitched double 4-8 dB under the lead, add a panned harmony, and keep ad-libs even higher.
5. Brighten and space
   High-pass at 100-150 Hz, boost air around 10-12 kHz, compress firmly, then add a short delay and a bright plate.

If you are new to tuning setups, how to set up Auto-Tune on vocals walks through key, scale and retune speed.

How do you make glitch edits in digicore?

Glitch edits are tiny stutters, repeats, reverses and pitch jumps chopped into the vocal and beat so the track sounds like it is skipping. The related glitchcore style is defined by heavy Auto-Tune and pitch shifting plus rapidly chopped vocals designed to resemble audio glitches^[1].

Edit after the performance is done. Blackwinterwells rendered the vocal and beat separately for "IRIS" and then added stutter edits to both, and even loaded the last vocal chop into an instrument channel to play it like a piano for the outro^[3].

• Syllable stutter Repeat the first 30-80 ms of a word 3-6 times at 1/32 or 1/64 before the full word lands.
• Pitch jump Shift one repeated slice up an octave or down a fifth to make the stutter feel melodic.
• Beat skip Cut the whole beat for a sixteenth or two and let only the vocal or a reverb tail play.
• Reverse tail Reverse the last word of a line so it swells into the next bar.
• Vocal as instrument Load a vocal chop into a sampler and play it as a pluck or lead. The vocal chop tutorial covers the setup.

Use edits as punctuation, not constant noise. Place the heaviest glitches at the end of vocal phrases and in the last bar of each 4- or 8-bar section, and keep the downbeat of the hook clean so listeners can sing it.

How do you mix digicore loud without destroying it?

Mix digicore loud by distorting and compressing individual parts first, then using a fast limiter lightly on the master, so the loudness comes from dense sounds rather than one crushed bus. Blackwinterwells' advice is blunt: new artists often send tracks that look like a brick and are ear-splittingly loud everywhere; use a limiter set to its fastest speed so it clips in a way that sounds nice, and turn it down^[3].

Multiband "make it bigger" tools are common in the scene. Alice Gas said she puts FL Studio's Soundgoodizer over nearly everything^[3]; Image-Line describes it as a maximizer-enhancer based on the Maximus engine, with one knob and four presets^[6]. Use such tools per channel at partial mix levels, not stacked on the master.

Check the master against a quieter bounce at matched loudness. If the louder version sounds smaller, back off. For the difference between clipping and limiting, see how to use clipping creatively.

How should you structure a digicore song?

Keep a digicore song short and dense: aim for roughly two to three minutes, with a quick intro, a hook that arrives early, one or two verses and an ending that does something unexpected. Every section should earn its place.

Blackwinterwells makes a point about where to experiment: put weird ideas at the end, where listeners can skip, instead of at the start where they might leave^[3]. A switch-up outro with a new tempo, a pitched vocal solo or a breakcore-style burst is a digicore tradition worth using.