Techno & House Production Thread (Not for Feedback)

[dublerium]

Good point earlier btw on the permitted rawness of house and techno. Would that dubstep were more like that in the main.

aye yeah, i think thats what i like about music, theres some that i just dont like, and i can never put my finger on it, but i think its cos its produced too cleanly. dont get what you mean by that last bit, but thats probably why i dont like much 'future garage' and obviously filthy dub, but the older stuff is more my thing cos its not as clean.

Agreed to a degree. I don't dismiss tunes because they sound to crisp but I much a prefer a track which has soul/groove that is raw sounding over something that is produced to be as crisp as possible in general, just don't find it as interesting. STL springs to mind,




Edit: and not to turn this thread into just a general discussion, keeping it production focused any thoughts on creating a raw feel to track... also discuss the track above.

PSP vintage warmer gives a really nice tape/analogue sound elements, I also like adding strange reverbs occasionaly, for example time stretching a vocal/percussion sample, adding revervb and removing the dry hit just to give the song some interesting dynamics, i'm thinking about getting a cheap mic just to play about with and create some odd sounds/hits, what sort of results do those using mics get through experimenting? Anyone else give some input on all the above...

[marktplatz]

- Many techno tracks are very minimal and rely on the fact that the listener imagine he hears stuff. The listeners fills in the gaps in the groove by himself. Very subtle delays, reverbs and heavily filtered percussion (can be anything really) all contribute to this.

Yes! Love it, this puts things in a nice new light and I'm going to try to keep it in mind while working on tunes. It's something I've noticed a bit, partly because I have a really minimalist attitude to production in the first place (in terms of quantity of elements and amount of processing), but explicitly stating the idea of allowing the listener to imagine things in the space of the groove is very helpful.

[AxeD]

- Many techno tracks are very minimal and rely on the fact that the listener imagine he hears stuff. The listeners fills in the gaps in the groove by himself. Very subtle delays, reverbs and heavily filtered percussion (can be anything really) all contribute to this.

Yes! Love it, this puts things in a nice new light and I'm going to try to keep it in mind while working on tunes. It's something I've noticed a bit, partly because I have a really minimalist attitude to production in the first place (in terms of quantity of elements and amount of processing), but explicitly stating the idea of allowing the listener to imagine things in the space of the groove is very helpful.

So true, very hard to do though.

[skimpi]

Good point earlier btw on the permitted rawness of house and techno. Would that dubstep were more like that in the main.

aye yeah, i think thats what i like about music, theres some that i just dont like, and i can never put my finger on it, but i think its cos its produced too cleanly. dont get what you mean by that last bit, but thats probably why i dont like much 'future garage' and obviously filthy dub, but the older stuff is more my thing cos its not as clean.

Agreed to a degree. I don't dismiss tunes because they sound to crisp but I much a prefer a track which has soul/groove that is raw sounding over something that is produced to be as crisp as possible in general, just don't find it as interesting. STL springs to mind,




Edit: and not to turn this thread into just a general discussion, keeping it production focused any thoughts on creating a raw feel to track... also discuss the track above.

PSP vintage warmer gives a really nice tape/analogue sound elements, I also like adding strange reverbs occasionaly, for example time stretching a vocal/percussion sample, adding revervb and removing the dry hit just to give the song some interesting dynamics, i'm thinking about getting a cheap mic just to play about with and create some odd sounds/hits, what sort of results do those using mics get through experimenting? Anyone else give some input on all the above...

oh yeah i dont like think it is shit just cos its too clean, i still like some stuff that is crisp, but i find myself disliking some tunes because of it, well the tune must not be to my taste aswell as that, but it is one of the elements.

yeah, i like to use field recordings, or like make pads out of them, by putting them in a sampler and slowing them down, or looping them really fast, i think like natural sounds or real recordings, help add an element of rawness to tracks, and keeps them away from sounding too digital.

[q-t]

- Many techno tracks are very minimal and rely on the fact that the listener imagine he hears stuff. The listeners fills in the gaps in the groove by himself. Very subtle delays, reverbs and heavily filtered percussion (can be anything really) all contribute to this.

Yes! Love it, this puts things in a nice new light and I'm going to try to keep it in mind while working on tunes. It's something I've noticed a bit, partly because I have a really minimalist attitude to production in the first place (in terms of quantity of elements and amount of processing), but explicitly stating the idea of allowing the listener to imagine things in the space of the groove is very helpful.

So true, very hard to do though.

I know two ways of how you can sort of achieve this effect:
1) Make a really obvious drum pattern, for instance the typical kick on all 4ths and toms on the first 16th after the first kick in the bar, another tom on the 16th before second kick and one tom inbetween the 2nd and 3rd kick. The usual ghetto-house/funky rhythm. Doom-diii-----------diiiiii-Doooooom------------diiiii-----------
Let this pattern run for a very long time, then out of nowhere, take out one of the toms or lower its velocity dramatically.
You could also replace one of the toms with a typical dub-techno stab, for instance.

2) Another way is to build the melody in the track with the rhythm. Pitch your percs, hats, claps and snares and let them bounce off each other in a way that sounds like a melody, only that no real instrument is playing. This lets the listener sum all hits into a melody which is working like if it was only one instrument playing it.

Also, in techno, you rarely have any "true" melodies. It's not like you can hum along or whistle a techno tune. Instead, the few instruments that a track may have, only exists to contribute to the rhythm. If they don't contribute to the overall groove, you should consider if they are really needed in the track.

Example:

Listen to how the stab actually only plays one single chord the whole time. The other percs lure you into thinking it dips down and plays lower cords.
Also, there's no melody in this track. Still, it's catchy and driving forward like hell.
To get this forward momentum rhythm in your track, shift some hits in your rhythm so they play a couple millisecond earlier than they should.

[narcissus]

what?? you mean you don't hum along with the repetitive filtered noises in your favorite techno tracks? i must be abnormal

[q-t]

what?? you mean you don't hum along with the repetitive filtered noises in your favorite techno tracks? i must be abnormal

Haha! Well I am nodding my head and humming along quietly. My point was that you don't really sing a techno track out loud while taking a shower, if you get me?

[AxeD]

Good advice. I always pitch the percussion in a way so it grooves a little. Even without any synths.

Also something to try: limit yourself to around 8 elements and get 32 bars going. I find it helps me to create something
that's one entity. Otherwise it 'll end up sounding like individual sounds layered on top of each other.

[legend4ry]

I have always wondered a bout a few sounds, maybe you lot can help me.

Examples :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFd63W_bTx4 <- the lead

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-7k7ZEmn1k <- the floaty synth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4BCB-Vs4BA <- The little stabs what come in about 1:40ish

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPazLnEwyVY <- what kind of kick is that?

[q-t]

I have always wondered a bout a few sounds, maybe you lot can help me.

Examples :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFd63W_bTx4 <- the lead

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-7k7ZEmn1k <- the floaty synth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4BCB-Vs4BA <- The little stabs what come in about 1:40ish

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPazLnEwyVY <- what kind of kick is that?

The first two are just variations of the classic dub techno stab. Not as hard to get as one might think.
For the Ramadanman one, load up a synth with two square waves and detune them a bit against eachother. You might want to have one of them on a higher octave. The volume envelopes on the squares should be identical - very short attack, full decay, full sustain and 200-400 ish ms release.
Link them to the same low pass filter. The filter envelope should have a tiny bit of attack to get it smooth, around 400-800 ms decay, very little sustain and leave the release as is. It sounds like the filtering is gentle so don't go too harsh on the amount here. Add a bit of resonance to the filter.
Play a pretty high minor chord. A minor C or A will do.
If it still doesn't sound like it should, play around with the volume envelopes, the cutoff frequency and the resonance on the filter.
To get the moving effect of the synth, automate the attack, decay and sustain on the filter and the release on the volume envelopes.
Then it's all about adding the right delays and reverbs. Have them on sends for this sound.
Not 100 percent about this, but I've created this sound a million times and this should get you pretty close.


To get the Appleblim stab. Do the same first steps as above, but try to change one of the squarewaves to a saw. The cutoff frequency should be lower on this one with a faster filter envelope. Place a delay (1/6 or 1/3 will do) and a reverb (mostly plate or spring types) on the instruments channel, not an send. Put a band pass filter after those. Compress the sound so the initial stab, delay and reverb all molds together as one lovely warm sound. You could also try to apply a small amount of distortion after the reverb and before the band pass filter.
Now play two low minor chords after each other, like 8s or 16s. The delay should come in after both hits have played out. Both stab hits rings out with the delay.
*Edit - Realized now that you might have meant the short pad on the Appleblim track. Whatever.

[legend4ry]

thanks mate! I'll try it!

[accordionfan]

can i just thank you all for this thread

[marktplatz]

I have always wondered a bout a few sounds, maybe you lot can help me.
...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4BCB-Vs4BA <- The little stabs what come in about 1:40ish

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPazLnEwyVY <- what kind of kick is that?

I'll have a go at these last two, which I don't think q-t talked about:

- the synth stabs on "You Turn Me On" really sound like pretty simple waveforms to me, maybe even just sawtooth, but I wish I could hear them with less other mid stuff happening around them to judge more accurately. The chord is, at a minimum, two notes a minor third apart from one another, but there could be other pitches below them. Maybe there's a marginal amount of attack on a lowpass filter, like the base cutoff is set to somewhere around 2kHz and then the filter attack's like 20ms and the env-to-filter amount is small? Not sure about that but it sounded reasonable when I tried making it in Reason. Then there's that subtle bit of ping-ponging delay on it.

- The "Hold Strong" kick sounds like it could be approximated just by low-passing a nice thick subby sampled kick or downpitched tom to remove almost all the mid-range attack. It could also be approached with a sine-wave kick with relatively little initial pitch-bend (though still some, otherwise it would just be a simple sub sound). But note that there's also a ride cymbal sound always hitting in alignment with the kick, and maybe some other high perc as well that I can't distinguish, and that gives it a highly distinctive feel.

- Oh yeah and as for the 'Blim/Pev pad (what a wicked tune, hadn't heard it before I don't think, reminds me why I love classic dubstep!) the waveform again might be pretty simple (sawtooth) but the chord shape is somewhat dissonant, maybe something like Bb-C-E. The amp and filter envelopes seem to have full sustain for a little bit. The pad is drenched in long-decay reverb, obviously. I think there's also some resonant bandpass filtration going on after the reverb for that metallic-space feel. It also sounds breathy to me beyond the effect of the reverb, so maybe there's a white noise oscillator in there at the start of the signal chain along with the tonal waveform. I'm getting all kinds of great sounds from Reason in the process of trying to figure this pad out.

All the sound design discussion in this thread is making me realize how limitless is the timbral potential of just simple oscillators + relatively simple filters and envelopes.

[q-t]

All the sound design discussion in this thread is making me realize how limitless is the timbral potential of just simple oscillators + relatively simple filters and envelopes.

This might sound tacky, but back in the days you didn't have limitless plugins or the latest vst downloadable. Still, people in this scene were great at sound design. I have some house records from 89 which still sounds fresh and quite modern. I always use relatively simple techniques when I produce. I can't make any morphing Skrillex basslines, but I'm ok at the style I do. As I've said earlier, the basis of most sounds in techno are often simple. What I really think is the challenge and what for me is a lot more difficult to achieve than in, say halfstep dubstep, is a coherent groove where everything interacts. It's all about the subtle details and manipulation of sounds over time here.

[dublerium]

All the sound design discussion in this thread is making me realize how limitless is the timbral potential of just simple oscillators + relatively simple filters and envelopes.

This might sound tacky, but back in the days you didn't have limitless plugins or the latest vst downloadable. Still, people in this scene were great at sound design. I have some house records from 89 which still sounds fresh and quite modern. I always use relatively simple techniques when I produce. I can't make any morphing Skrillex basslines, but I'm ok at the style I do. As I've said earlier, the basis of most sounds in techno are often simple. What I really think is the challenge and what for me is a lot more difficult to achieve than in, say halfstep dubstep, is a coherent groove where everything interacts. It's all about the subtle details and manipulation of sounds over time here.

Well said, being born into a time where all this technology is readily available I forget about context. For example the posts when talking about rawness and sounding analogue in this thread, a lot of the older techno/house records sounded like this as they weren't using expensive hardware and were just using what they could get their hands on thus resulting in grainy lo-fi sounds which now is something some of us strive for.

I think what you say about simplicity is exactly on point. I think my favourite artists for simplicity are szare, their tunes are so subtle and simple yet they have such groove and flow. Would like to hear what some of you think on some of the techniques used in their songs (just in general).

Soundcloud

[q-t]

I think what you say about simplicity is exactly on point. I think my favourite artists for simplicity are szare, their tunes are so subtle and simple yet they have such groove and flow. Would like to hear what some of you think on some of the techniques used in their songs (just in general).

Soundcloud

Well, in this track, Szare's using another common technique not only in techno, but for most genres. The technique is called "call and response". I'm sure some of you know about it or have heard it before.

The idea is that one element in the mix (stab hit, any percussion, melody, whatever) makes a sound and then another element answers. The two elements keep going back and forth against each other over the track. In this track, it's the two stabs. One of them is higher and comes in early in the mix (comes in at 35sec). After a while, this stab gets an answer from a higher pitched chord stab (51sec). They then bounce of each other in a rhythmic way. The elements are swapped a couple of times throughout the track, for example the higher stab is replaced by some hi-hats (1.57).

[briskisgoodforu]

With regard to raw sounding stuff versus to clean and crisp, I have found that when I layer drum samples that I've found from vinyl with the sample pack of the day, I get the rawness from the vinly and the punch and "power" from the pack hit. Best of both worlds kind of. Also, lots of layering. Like Kick 1+Kick 2+Kick 3 = Kick 4, Kick 4 + Kick 5...etc. Might end up with a muddy kick but i think if you work it right, can end up with something raw sounding, expecially if you're incorporating analogue sounds into their, and paying attention to frequencies.

Also using wider eq boosted humps on drum hits gives it a less crisp boost.

[q-t]

With regard to raw sounding stuff versus to clean and crisp, I have found that when I layer drum samples that I've found from vinyl with the sample pack of the day, I get the rawness from the vinly and the punch and "power" from the pack hit. Best of both worlds kind of. Also, lots of layering. Like Kick 1+Kick 2+Kick 3 = Kick 4, Kick 4 + Kick 5...etc. Might end up with a muddy kick but i think if you work it right, can end up with something raw sounding, expecially if you're incorporating analogue sounds into their, and paying attention to frequencies.

Also using wider eq boosted humps on drum hits gives it a less crisp boost.

Yeah, this is great advice. If you're only using dirty sounds you may lose punch and clarity. To get the punch and character at the same time, layering is your best bet.
It's the same principle as parallell compression. The clean drum kit has the most dynamics and punch, while the distorted kit adds grit and fills in the spaces in between hits.
If you want to heavily distort a sound it's generally a better idea to either resample (add little distortion many times) or use parallell distortion on either a send or make a distorted version of the original.

[dublerium]

I think what you say about simplicity is exactly on point. I think my favourite artists for simplicity are szare, their tunes are so subtle and simple yet they have such groove and flow. Would like to hear what some of you think on some of the techniques used in their songs (just in general).

Soundcloud

Well, in this track, Szare's using another common technique not only in techno, but for most genres. The technique is called "call and response". I'm sure some of you know about it or have heard it before.

The idea is that one element in the mix (stab hit, any percussion, melody, whatever) makes a sound and then another element answers. The two elements keep going back and forth against each other over the track. In this track, it's the two stabs. One of them is higher and comes in early in the mix (comes in at 35sec). After a while, this stab gets an answer from a higher pitched chord stab (51sec). They then bounce of each other in a rhythmic way. The elements are swapped a couple of times throughout the track, for example the higher stab is replaced by some hi-hats (1.57).

I know what call and response is and I know how the elements work together it's pretty self explanitory, I was talking more on the lines of percussion processing and synths. Maybe not that song in particular outlines it best but their percussion always sounds so tight and together. I may not have been clear, I meant the more technical side of things.

[q-t]

I think what you say about simplicity is exactly on point. I think my favourite artists for simplicity are szare, their tunes are so subtle and simple yet they have such groove and flow. Would like to hear what some of you think on some of the techniques used in their songs (just in general).

Soundcloud

Well, in this track, Szare's using another common technique not only in techno, but for most genres. The technique is called "call and response". I'm sure some of you know about it or have heard it before.

The idea is that one element in the mix (stab hit, any percussion, melody, whatever) makes a sound and then another element answers. The two elements keep going back and forth against each other over the track. In this track, it's the two stabs. One of them is higher and comes in early in the mix (comes in at 35sec). After a while, this stab gets an answer from a higher pitched chord stab (51sec). They then bounce of each other in a rhythmic way. The elements are swapped a couple of times throughout the track, for example the higher stab is replaced by some hi-hats (1.57).

I know what call and response is and I know how the elements work together it's pretty self explanitory, I was talking more on the lines of percussion processing and synths. Maybe not that song in particular outlines it best but their percussion always sounds so tight and together. I may not have been clear, I meant the more technical side of things.

Haha, it's quite self explanatory. That's why I said that most people probably already know about the technique. I wrote it out because some guys with less experience in producing might learn something out of it. Not just talking to you.
I cannot say much about the technical side of that song.
However, the whole structure of the song is based on call and response.

*Edit - listened to the track again.
The main thing about their percussion that stands out to me is that they're clipped and/or have almost no sustain. This works very well together with the sustained, delayed stabs. The percussion, bounce between the kick and sub and the stabs all cover different areas. The kick and sub stands for the overall groove and bounce to the track. They make your hips swing. The offbeat hi-hat marks the beat. It sounds like a pretty standard short 808 or 909 open hat with no sustain or no tail. Note that this hi-hat is very much pushed to the front. Almost no reverb (as far as I can hear). Off beat fi-hats usually takes this front role in techno tracks. They're driving the track forward and marking the beat.
Then you have the high cowbell (?) perc swinging around over the rest over the track. This adds shuffle and because it is heavily reverbed (by a long bright reverb I think) it also adds top end atmosphere and fills out the space in the track.
I honestly doesn't think there's any special production tricks in this track. There's no extremely cool sounds or jaw dropping effects. It's just minimal non 4x4 techno done right.
Simple sounds compressed and EQd to perfection and then manually placing the on the grid for a nice groove.

The production of Szare doesn't seem very complicated.
It's not like this kind of techno:

Anyone know how to make sounds like this?