At first listen, techno might sound like the easiest musical game in the world – but that apparent simplicity belies the deeply nuanced rhythmic structures and cerebral sound design on which the genre is founded. If you fancy trying your hand at one of dance music’s most enduring and influential styles, these tips will set you off in the right direction.
Start with the ‘right’ gear
Techno is a somewhat broader church than it was 30 years ago, with numerous offshoots and subgenres expanding its sonic range; but there are still certain de rigueur instruments that you need to have in your rack or plugins folder. First, the Roland TR-909 – most pertinently, its kick drum, which can be considered definitive. D16 Group Drumazon or Roland’s own TR-909 plugin will more than suffice. Then there’s the analogue synth, and while emulations of techno standards such as the Roland TB-303 and SH-101, and Korg MS-20 are must-haves, there are endless equally viable software originals out there, including u-he DIVA, Synapse Audio The Legend and Togu Audio Line TAL-U-No-LX.
Modular synthesis has also been making its presence felt in techno since the rise of Eurorack, and although the hands-on vibe of the real thing is well worth the investment if you can afford it, the software likes of Native Instruments Reaktor Blocks, Cherry Audio Voltage Modular, and even Bitwig Studio’s integrated Grid system make only minor audible compromises in exchange for unrivalled convenience and affordability. Of particular note here is the completely free VCV Rack, which you should go and download right now.
Less has never been more… more
By its very nature, techno is repetitive, hypnotic and relatively minimal (or overtly so if you’re making actual ‘minimal techno’), so forget those flashy hyper-modulated lead lines, acrobatic vocals and complex arrangements. Once you’ve got the fundamentals of four-to-the-floor kick, backbeat snare/clap, offbeat hi-hat, syncopated percussion and monotonous rumbling bassline in place, you’re 80% of the way there, content-wise. The rest will generally comprise pads and atmospherics, ambience and noise beds, processed vocal snippets, synth chords, arps, stabs, etc, and ancillary ‘spot’ FX, and the real work lies in creating those parts…
Stay true to the technological aesthetic
While most styles of dance music are wilfully formulaic to a lesser or greater extent, the repetitive, pared-back sonic architecture of techno makes adventurous sound design essential if you want your tracks to stand out. Back in the day, techno pioneers such as Kevin Saunderson, Juan Atkins, Jeff Mills, Carl Craig and Richie Hawtin made ingenious use of reversing, timestretching and other now-workaday sampling manoeuvres on the limited equipment of the day to conjure all manner of evocative textures, ear-catching grooves and dystopian soundscapes. The limitless panoply of sound-shaping tools provided by the modern DAW enables you to take your synths and samples as far in any direction as you want to, but nonetheless, those stalwart old-school techniques remain every bit as valid today as they ever were. So, experiment with dramatically stretching and shortening samples and resampled synths (using every timestretching algorithm at your disposal), and flipping parts into reverse prior to further processing.
Syncopation and sequencers
With the core rhythm of the kick, snare/clap and hats combo being so relentlessly four-square, it’s the syncopated placement of percussion hits, synth stabs and other rhythmic elements around that framework that gives the style its characteristically funky, offbeat feel. Keep individual percussion lines minimal in terms of note density, but experiment with layering two or three of them into a cohesive whole. And try shifting the positioning of synth notes from bar to bar within a four- or eight-bar phrase to maintain engagement with the listener.
You can, of course, program or record these sorts of parts in your DAW’s piano roll, but for maximum techno authenticity (and, we would suggest, a more inspiring workflow), do it in a step sequencer instead, ideally hooked up to a suitable MIDI controller – Ableton Push, Native Instruments Maschine, Arturia’s BeatStep Pro or Novation’s SL MkIII keyboard, to name a few excellent picks.
Synthesised and ‘found’ percussion
Following on from that, while ‘real’ congas, tambourines, cabasas and all the other conventional struck and shaken things are perfectly acceptable in techno production (albeit usually filtered and processed for added darkness), synthesised and home-sampled percussion are part and parcel of the genre.
Almost any synth capable of frequency and/or ring modulation should be up to the job of belting out suitably flavoursome electronic toms, clicks and clangorous metallics; but obviously, a drum machine or dedicated drum synthesiser (XILS Lab StiX, Sonic Charge Microtonic, Softube Heartbeat et al) offers a more percussion-orientated feature set and workflow.
When you want to truly personalise your techno rhythms, however, take a wander around your house and garden, and sample the sounds of striking, scraping or shaking pots and pans, plates and glasses, cutlery, doors and windows, fridge elements, food containers (rice, pasta, peas), hand and power tools, and so on. Throw your recorded clips into a sampler and turn them into instruments using filters, EQ, compression, pitch envelopes, transient shaping, etc.
Austere effects
Techno is famously retro-purist when it comes to effects, prioritising the direct, unpretentious lucidity of perennial studio staples over the affectations of more complex state-of-the-art devices. Filtering, compression and distortion are ubiquitous, used to imbue that all-important dark, abrasive tonality; while at the mixing stage, reverb and delay are often all that gets deployed, the first providing carefully considered space and depth, and delay called on for rhythmic extrapolation and drawn-out dub-style feedback washes. Live and manually automated tweaking of effects (as well as synth and sampler parameters) is compulsory, so record those delay feedback filter sweeps in with your MIDI controller, subtly vary reverb send levels as the track progresses, ramp the distortion up and down, and so forth.
Finally, one unorthodox but commonly utilised effects-related technique to be aware of is running a kick drum through a low-pass filtered reverb set 100% wet, then using the result as a bassline, with the timing adjusted via the pre-delay parameter. Instant techno!
Do you have any pearls of techno production wisdom to share? Pass it on in the comments.