Techno & House Production Thread (Not for Feedback)

[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.

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?

Yeah I appreciate your just saying it for everyone was just making myself clear. Yeah it doesn't seem to be too complicated but I'm sure there's more behind the scenes than meets the eye. And I know there's no particularly ground breaking stuff going on was just curious to peoples thoughts on it. None of their tracks sound too complex, that's partly why I find them so good, few elements but doing a lot with them. Good analogy of that tune though. Listening through to one of their mixes though theres so many atmospheric sounds they use that work well, I've made some similar stuff just through experimentation, like at around the 3.20 mark... sounds just like noise and possibly a few other layered sounds that just build up the atmosphere...

[q-t]

Another trick for getting that lo-fi quality for your techno tracks is to bitcrush your reverbs. This may sound crazy but I know that the Berghain crew (Ben klock, Shed, Marcell Dettmann) does this. If you think the effect is to harsh, try using heavy distortion instead.
This will make your reverbs a lot dirtier, more dense since distortion add harmonics, and a lot more synthetic sounding. Since distortion makes it thicker and louder, you have to lower the level of your reverbs. Otherwise your track will be drowning in a cloud of noise.
Realistic sounds is usually something you want to stay away from when making techno. Think drum machines, metallic percussion, harsh filtering and weird effects.
This technique also works great on delays.

[AxeD]

When you talk about using distortion on reverbs do you mean running the reverbed synth through a distortion?
Just trying to apply it to Reason a little

[q-t]

When you talk about using distortion on reverbs do you mean running the reverbed synth through a distortion?
Just trying to apply it to Reason a little

No, I mean you distort the reverb on the send.
Set up a send with a reverb on.
Roll of the lows as needed with a hp filter.
Insert a bitcrusher or distortion after the hp filter.
(Extra alternative: Compress. This really makes the reverb something special. Not for everyone, of course)
Shape with EQ.

Now send your instruments and all that stuff to this reverb as you like.
Go back and adjust the reverb, distortion and EQ settings on the reverb send.

[AxeD]

Ah okay I'll try that this weekend.

[dublerium]

Another trick for getting that lo-fi quality for your techno tracks is to bitcrush your reverbs. This may sound crazy but I know that the Berghain crew (Ben klock, Shed, Marcell Dettmann) does this. If you think the effect is to harsh, try using heavy distortion instead.
This will make your reverbs a lot dirtier, more dense since distortion add harmonics, and a lot more synthetic sounding. Since distortion makes it thicker and louder, you have to lower the level of your reverbs. Otherwise your track will be drowning in a cloud of noise.
Realistic sounds is usually something you want to stay away from when making techno. Think drum machines, metallic percussion, harsh filtering and weird effects.
This technique also works great on delays.

I've never done this so I don't quite understand what it means, does it mean putting a reverb on a seperate channel, the bitchrush that reverb then send the reverb to the channel with percussion/synth for example? If so I was totally unaware you could do this, experiment time

[briskisgoodforu]

Another trick for getting that lo-fi quality for your techno tracks is to bitcrush your reverbs. This may sound crazy but I know that the Berghain crew (Ben klock, Shed, Marcell Dettmann) does this. If you think the effect is to harsh, try using heavy distortion instead.
This will make your reverbs a lot dirtier, more dense since distortion add harmonics, and a lot more synthetic sounding. Since distortion makes it thicker and louder, you have to lower the level of your reverbs. Otherwise your track will be drowning in a cloud of noise.
Realistic sounds is usually something you want to stay away from when making techno. Think drum machines, metallic percussion, harsh filtering and weird effects.
This technique also works great on delays.

I've never done this so I don't quite understand what it means, does it mean putting a reverb on a seperate channel, the bitchrush that reverb then send the reverb to the channel with percussion/synth for example? If so I was totally unaware you could do this, experiment time

I believe I undersand what hes saying.
Two parts:

1. Instead of having an individual reverb effect on each individual channel, i.e. synth 1 has its own reverb, drum 2 has its own reverb, etc. you take all your tracks that need reverb or maybe a group of tracks that need reverb, i.e kick 1, snare 1, and hat 1, and send all audio from kick1, snare 1, and hats 1 to a single channel which has a reverb effect on it set all the way to wet.

2. Then you use a bitcrusher or distortion on this sing wet reverb channel, (after eq-ing of course).

This will thicken the atmosphere track (bitcrushers and distortion add harmonics), but make sure you turn down the reverb levels and EQ the reverb as it could easily become muddy.

[q-t]

Another trick for getting that lo-fi quality for your techno tracks is to bitcrush your reverbs. This may sound crazy but I know that the Berghain crew (Ben klock, Shed, Marcell Dettmann) does this. If you think the effect is to harsh, try using heavy distortion instead.
This will make your reverbs a lot dirtier, more dense since distortion add harmonics, and a lot more synthetic sounding. Since distortion makes it thicker and louder, you have to lower the level of your reverbs. Otherwise your track will be drowning in a cloud of noise.
Realistic sounds is usually something you want to stay away from when making techno. Think drum machines, metallic percussion, harsh filtering and weird effects.
This technique also works great on delays.

I've never done this so I don't quite understand what it means, does it mean putting a reverb on a seperate channel, the bitchrush that reverb then send the reverb to the channel with percussion/synth for example? If so I was totally unaware you could do this, experiment time

I believe I undersand what hes saying.
Two parts:

1. Instead of having an individual reverb effect on each individual channel, i.e. synth 1 has its own reverb, drum 2 has its own reverb, etc. you take all your tracks that need reverb or maybe a group of tracks that need reverb, i.e kick 1, snare 1, and hat 1, and send all audio from kick1, snare 1, and hats 1 to a single channel which has a reverb effect on it set all the way to wet.

2. Then you use a bitcrusher or distortion on this sing wet reverb channel, (after eq-ing of course).

This will thicken the atmosphere track (bitcrushers and distortion add harmonics), but make sure you turn down the reverb levels and EQ the reverb as it could easily become muddy.

Yeah, that's exactly what I meant.
You don't need to send all audio from the tracks you want to be affected by the reverb. Just send the amount of reverb you want from, say your percussion, to the reverb send (which is set to 100% wet).
Never limit yourselves to the production "rules" you have read. Experiment and try things that may sound crazy.

If you want that extreme noisy, distorted sound from your stabs or whatever, try to override the gain (into the red) somewhere in the signal chain and then put an envelope follower set to band pass filter at the end. You can get in the red at the source of the sound (vst, sample) or by using an overdrive, for instance. Note that this technique is onlly used to get a very harsh type of distortion. It is not to get more volume out of the sound. It's the digital equivalent of the classic trick of overriding the gain on your outboard analogue mixer.
Make sure you turn the volume down on the monitors prior to doing this or you may destroy them and your ears

If you set the frequency right on the bandpass filter, you will lower the overall volume on the sound and make it a lot smoother while still keeping some of the distortion.
Draw some minor chords and make them velocity sensitive. Let the chords have different velocity values in your loop. The envelope filter is going to make the sound moving since it changes the frequency according to the variations in amplitude of the signal coming in. Add some compression after the filter to avoid jumping volumes when the sound is moving over the frequency spectrum. Place reverbs and delays as you see fit as either inserts or on sends. If you place them as inserts, don't forget to place them before the envelope follower to get that distant sound.

Enough tips and tricks here now for a while.
Merry Xmas to you techno and house heads!

[dublerium]

Another trick for getting that lo-fi quality for your techno tracks is to bitcrush your reverbs. This may sound crazy but I know that the Berghain crew (Ben klock, Shed, Marcell Dettmann) does this. If you think the effect is to harsh, try using heavy distortion instead.
This will make your reverbs a lot dirtier, more dense since distortion add harmonics, and a lot more synthetic sounding. Since distortion makes it thicker and louder, you have to lower the level of your reverbs. Otherwise your track will be drowning in a cloud of noise.
Realistic sounds is usually something you want to stay away from when making techno. Think drum machines, metallic percussion, harsh filtering and weird effects.
This technique also works great on delays.

I've never done this so I don't quite understand what it means, does it mean putting a reverb on a seperate channel, the bitchrush that reverb then send the reverb to the channel with percussion/synth for example? If so I was totally unaware you could do this, experiment time

I believe I undersand what hes saying.
Two parts:

1. Instead of having an individual reverb effect on each individual channel, i.e. synth 1 has its own reverb, drum 2 has its own reverb, etc. you take all your tracks that need reverb or maybe a group of tracks that need reverb, i.e kick 1, snare 1, and hat 1, and send all audio from kick1, snare 1, and hats 1 to a single channel which has a reverb effect on it set all the way to wet.

2. Then you use a bitcrusher or distortion on this sing wet reverb channel, (after eq-ing of course).

This will thicken the atmosphere track (bitcrushers and distortion add harmonics), but make sure you turn down the reverb levels and EQ the reverb as it could easily become muddy.

I understand sends, I just thought q-t meant sending the reverb to say the kick or snare which is why I was wondering about it being the other way round. So even when sending your kick to said channel with reverb on it, and bitcrush, the bitcrush only effects the reverb and not the kick ?

[q-t]

Another trick for getting that lo-fi quality for your techno tracks is to bitcrush your reverbs. This may sound crazy but I know that the Berghain crew (Ben klock, Shed, Marcell Dettmann) does this. If you think the effect is to harsh, try using heavy distortion instead.
This will make your reverbs a lot dirtier, more dense since distortion add harmonics, and a lot more synthetic sounding. Since distortion makes it thicker and louder, you have to lower the level of your reverbs. Otherwise your track will be drowning in a cloud of noise.
Realistic sounds is usually something you want to stay away from when making techno. Think drum machines, metallic percussion, harsh filtering and weird effects.
This technique also works great on delays.

I've never done this so I don't quite understand what it means, does it mean putting a reverb on a seperate channel, the bitchrush that reverb then send the reverb to the channel with percussion/synth for example? If so I was totally unaware you could do this, experiment time

I believe I undersand what hes saying.
Two parts:

1. Instead of having an individual reverb effect on each individual channel, i.e. synth 1 has its own reverb, drum 2 has its own reverb, etc. you take all your tracks that need reverb or maybe a group of tracks that need reverb, i.e kick 1, snare 1, and hat 1, and send all audio from kick1, snare 1, and hats 1 to a single channel which has a reverb effect on it set all the way to wet.

2. Then you use a bitcrusher or distortion on this sing wet reverb channel, (after eq-ing of course).

This will thicken the atmosphere track (bitcrushers and distortion add harmonics), but make sure you turn down the reverb levels and EQ the reverb as it could easily become muddy.

I understand sends, I just thought q-t meant sending the reverb to say the kick or snare which is why I was wondering about it being the other way round. So even when sending your kick to said channel with reverb on it, and bitcrush, the bitcrush only effects the reverb and not the kick ?

It seems it has got a lot more difficult than it is. Maybe I'm using the wrong words?
I am using Ableton and there we have midi, audio and return tracks. You have effects on return tracks. You send your sound from midi and audio tracks to return tracks when you want a sound to have an effect but still remain the dry sound on its own channel. You don't change the audio output from the channels own track to the reverb track, you send an amount of the sound to this "effect channel".
Is it called auxiliary then? I mean, you know this shit. It's like the most common way of using effects such as reverbs and delays only that you add a bitcrusher or distortion unit and maybe a compressor on the effect channel.

And to more specifically answer your question - no it does not effect your kick. Since the distortion is on the reverb channel it's only going to distort the reverb (the reverberations of the sounds you send to this channel). You do probably not want to send your kick to this type of distorted reverb. Probably going to be way too muddy. Works well on stuff like percussion, snares, claps, and synths as far as I've tried. Can't be too much bottom end in the sound though or it will be very muddy.

[djbluedream]

The hardest part for me is the structure of the tune; I want it to sound interesting and not loopy...something you can listen to on headphones. At the same time, when I DJ house, I just want something minimal for as long as possible for mixing.

To try to keep the tune sounding interesting, try writing melodies that span over 16 & 32 beats, as apposed to doing a melody over 4 & 8 beats. If you make a separate set of filler stabs, and melodic sounding noises, it helps too. Audio samples of random vocals or sound FX during those melodies help too. A tip for mixing. Try not to write your song so that it's focused for easy mixing. It will limit your creativity in melody also. DJing is an art of its own that should come after you're done with your track, in my honest opinion. It's tedious, but it's better to spend hours screwing up until you find a way to mix it, and then rehearse that mix again-and-again until it sounds perfect. I hope this helps some people.

[dublerium]

I got one for you people. How do you go about making your tunes more menacing/dark scary? A lot of my synths for example come out sounding quite musical but i'm trying to aim for a more hollow dark sound. So give some tips on getting that darker atmosphere going on. Example



There atmospheric noises in this are spot on, I know theres a lot of reverb/delay on samples but there's some higher synths in there too that still have quite dark sound to them, discuss.

& Merry christmas

[q-t]

I got one for you people. How do you go about making your tunes more menacing/dark scary? A lot of my synths for example come out sounding quite musical but i'm trying to aim for a more hollow dark sound. So give some tips on getting that darker atmosphere going on. Example



There atmospheric noises in this are spot on, I know theres a lot of reverb/delay on samples but there's some higher synths in there too that still have quite dark sound to them, discuss.

& Merry christmas

I've found that when I make my synths sound very clean it's difficult to make them fit into a darker, more ambient focused tune.
Try using band pass filters with narrow Q values and low pass filter with low cut off frequency. This will let them blend into the rest of the tune easier.
You don't want upfront sounds when making ambience, so don't use the same approach as when your making screaming synths and brostep basslines, for instance.
More reverb and delay and more filtering usually does the trick. Try using the the delays and reverbs as inserts rather than on sends to place them in their own acoustic space and making them less dry. Longer attack and release times works too.

In that Pinch tune, notice how the kick and bass stands for all the punch in the track.
There's no huge, heavy snares or stuff like that. The percussion is light (strongly high passed) and riding the rhythm.

[skimpi]

I got one for you people. How do you go about making your tunes more menacing/dark scary? A lot of my synths for example come out sounding quite musical but i'm trying to aim for a more hollow dark sound. So give some tips on getting that darker atmosphere going on. Example



There atmospheric noises in this are spot on, I know theres a lot of reverb/delay on samples but there's some higher synths in there too that still have quite dark sound to them, discuss.

& Merry christmas

I've found that when I make my synths sound very clean it's difficult to make them fit into a darker, more ambient focused tune.
Try using band pass filters with narrow Q values and low pass filter with low cut off frequency. This will let them blend into the rest of the tune easier.
You don't want upfront sounds when making ambience, so don't use the same approach as when your making screaming synths and brostep basslines, for instance.
More reverb and delay and more filtering usually does the trick. Try using the the delays and reverbs as inserts rather than on sends to place them in their own acoustic space and making them less dry. Longer attack and release times works too.

In that Pinch tune, notice how the kick and bass stands for all the punch in the track.
There's no huge, heavy snares or stuff like that. The percussion is light (strongly high passed) and riding the rhythm.

yeah i always stuggled with getting very reverby sounds, but i think im getting into it now, but like i still like to use them as sends rather than inserts, i used to use inserts only, but after getting into sends it just makes sense. still though i can end up using lots of different reverbs, at uni they told us about using like 1 or 2 reverbs so that everything is in the same space, so has more coherence, but i think that works more for band recordings and stuff to give a natural, real room sound. but for techno stuff, i think giving things their own reverb, helps give the tune depth, as you can have an ultra long reverb on something to make it fill out the track, whilst still having some things upfront.

i do think in that pinch tune its more about the sounds though, rather than what you do to them, obviously they have the reverb and delay, that gives it that airy depth, but they arent music sounds, they are just there to give the atmosphere, so you might wanna mess around with using sampled sounds, stretching things out, reversing them etc.

[marktplatz]

A lot of my synths for example come out sounding quite musical but i'm trying to aim for a more hollow dark sound

I second q-t's above response to this vis-a-vis strong bandpassing. I'm currently finding that saws, squares, etc that are allowed to retain their fullish frequency spectrum sound excessively "colorful" and generally inappropriate for that dark/dubby/industrial sound palette that we all seem to be striving for. Severe filtration removes a lot of that "color," in my perception. Also, using enharmonic waveforms constructed with FM or AM with a dissonant relationship between the carrier and modulator pitches will give you darker or at least weirder timbres. Merry Dark/Dubby/Industrial Christmas to all!

P.S. just got the Basic Channel first compilation yesterday (the one that starts with "Q Loop") and, well, now I know why their name is basically synonymous with dub techno. I'm still pretty new to this whole sphere.

[dublerium]

A lot of my synths for example come out sounding quite musical but i'm trying to aim for a more hollow dark sound

I second q-t's above response to this vis-a-vis strong bandpassing. I'm currently finding that saws, squares, etc that are allowed to retain their fullish frequency spectrum sound excessively "colorful" and generally inappropriate for that dark/dubby/industrial sound palette that we all seem to be striving for. Severe filtration removes a lot of that "color," in my perception. Also, using enharmonic waveforms constructed with FM or AM with a dissonant relationship between the carrier and modulator pitches will give you darker or at least weirder timbres. Merry Dark/Dubby/Industrial Christmas to all!

P.S. just got the Basic Channel first compilation yesterday (the one that starts with "Q Loop") and, well, now I know why their name is basically synonymous with dub techno. I'm still pretty new to this whole sphere.

I know bandpassing leads to a leass colourfull sound, I was after some advice a bit more depthfull than that Yeah been experimenting lots last few days and definetely agree with you on FM or AM being the way to achieve what I want. Weird timbres is what i'm after, post some decent results!

And yeah basic channel are a fundemental part of techno. Good place to start, on a note of good music/techno check the bleak - ekko ep that recently came out it's large.

[marktplatz]

Yeah just wanted to reinforce the bandpassing message for the wider audience. The Ekko EP is great, thanks for the tip. Also glad you put up "Croydon House" cuz I didn't know of it before and it's superb, really like that 4x4-halfstep-sub-bass fusion. I'm taking a second close listen thru it... the reverse-envelope, echoing sub in the first minute is something I don't think I've encountered anywhere else. It seems to me like most of the pad-like sounds in it could originate from samples, a lot of them are clearly from voices, and others sound like they could still be from voices even though it's not clear. That gives me the idea that maybe formant filtration (in various places in the signal chain) on a deeply reverbed sound could be pretty useful for these ominous textures, giving a synth waveform a wailing or breathing quality. How about a formant filter on a noise signal, like a whispering voice? Super-creepy possibilities, I bet.

[Ldizzy]

So much dope shit on this thread...

the type of music i love mixing, and love trying to make...

yet..

here's one for the cheezy ones... really i dont want to drift apart from the actual deep ass groove ass techno ass tangent this has taken... but my question is one about the mere overly washed out pop production fads of nowadays...

i often hear very digital sounding, clear tom rythmic patterns reminiscent of the reggaeton snare drum pattern in pop-house productions... and im wondering howcome everybody comes out with that very same sound... is there some kind of preset/sound bank/classic synthesis recipe im not aware of?? Something very Swedish House Mafia Ish... (yeah i know im sorry)...

i just feel like i could apply this very pure sonic texture to a lot of different production ideas.. and still can't get the sound right...

everytime i synthesise it it sounds like shit.. it doesnt have that smack, or that simpleness.. and i doubt these guys spend hours tweaking such simple sounds...

here's an example :

Drums at the beginning :



and here's another example :

1:14 , sorry for the corniness of my references (i respect their creative process.. but that video is hella corny) :




i feel like im gonna eat a nice big bowl of here-get-schooled-and-shut-the-eff-up-now-u-corny-ass-wanna-be-producer straight in the face... i got my umbrella next to me...

but plz consider this question with professionalism chaps

gdday

[q-t]

So much dope shit on this thread...

the type of music i love mixing, and love trying to make...

yet..

here's one for the cheezy ones... really i dont want to drift apart from the actual deep ass groove ass techno ass tangent this has taken... but my question is one about the mere overly washed out pop production fads of nowadays...

i often hear very digital sounding, clear tom rythmic patterns reminiscent of the reggaeton snare drum pattern in pop-house productions... and im wondering howcome everybody comes out with that very same sound... is there some kind of preset/sound bank/classic synthesis recipe im not aware of?? Something very Swedish House Mafia Ish... (yeah i know im sorry)...

i just feel like i could apply this very pure sonic texture to a lot of different production ideas.. and still can't get the sound right...

everytime i synthesise it it sounds like shit.. it doesnt have that smack, or that simpleness.. and i doubt these guys spend hours tweaking such simple sounds...

here's an example :

Drums at the beginning :



and here's another example :

1:14 , sorry for the corniness of my references (i respect their creative process.. but that video is hella corny) :




i feel like im gonna eat a nice big bowl of here-get-schooled-and-shut-the-eff-up-now-u-corny-ass-wanna-be-producer straight in the face... i got my umbrella next to me...

but plz consider this question with professionalism chaps

gdday

Haha, no worries man. As long as it's somewhat production related, all kinds of corny music is welcome here.
I've been thinking about this rhythm for a while too. I actually don't think it's toms. If it is toms, then they're very deep and sustained and maybe sidechained to the kick to get that "oomph".
I believe it's all synthesized kicks with different pitches with the ones marking the reaggeton bounce being the higher ones.
Obviously this kind of electro house is very compressed and to get that snap on the drums try having a longer attack time, from around 15-50 ms, to really let the transients through. The claps an the other percs sounds like their clipped in length and very dry. Very little reverb with short decay time or no reverb at all. Use various stereo techniques to make it seem bigger. Also, do not forget the mighty sidechain for this type of sound, haha.

[Drop_Dead]

Big up everyone who's contributed to the thread there's tonnes of stuff here.

These keys