In this video I’m making a beat to kind of look back on 2025 and start 2026 fresh. The whole vibe I’m going for is nostalgic but not too much—ambient, smooth, something you can really zone out to. I take you with me from the very first melody ideas all the way to the final beat: laying down root notes on an electric piano, building a jazzy counter melody, then filling the space with chords (including spreading the voicing by moving the middle note up an octave). I also make different arrangements early so I’m not stuck with the same loop the whole time. After that, I process the layers like I always do: EQ to clean harsh frequencies, compression to control the dynamic range, then reverb/delay to glue everything together. I route the melodic layers to one track and hit them with a plate reverb and a little extra vibe (even some saturation), then add synth keys, a pad, and some guitar phrases that I pitch up an octave. I finish it off with subtle vocal phrases (autotune, EQ shelf, reverb, delay, compression, a touch of distortion) and then the drums to carry the bounce—keeping it simple but letting the swing and the highs go crazy while still turning the open hats down so they don’t take over the mix.