Techno & House Production Thread (Not for Feedback)

[marktplatz]

Nice tune. Yeah, the sub-bass frequencies sound pretty constant in that. What if you tried an actual sustained sine sub synth (with Subtractor or Thor) and then put kick samples over that, high-passed just enough to remove their sub-bass? If the two sat well together, you might get that nice subtle "thock" from the kick hits but also get the sustained sub. If that doesn't seem quite right, not enough of a pulse or such, you could try making the sub synth into individual kick-like hits with a long decay, so that there's only a slight diminution of volume when the next kick hits, and then layer the aforementioned high-passed kick samples over those.

[skimpi]

Can anyone explain how I can get a kick/bass like in this Ben Klock track:



I want to get those deep sounding drums. I've tried adding a touch of reverb to kick samples and I tried
making my own kick sound with a synth but I'm not getting the desired effect. To me it sounds like the kicks
are really 'long'. I use Reason btw.

try reverbing the kick, and like EQing the reverb so that the lows are accentuated, and then sidechain the reverb to that same kick, so that the reverb swells in after the kick instead of drowning the kick, or alternatively mess with the initial delay time of the reverb. maybe even like layer a lower kick underneath a designed kick for the low weight and send just that to the reverb.

[AxeD]

I'll try both tips tonight, thanks for the replies.

I've never sidechained anything so I think I should definitely try that.

[skimpi]

I've never sidechained anything so I think I should definitely try that.

get outta hereeee!!

[AxeD]

I've never sidechained anything so I think I should definitely try that.

get outta hereeee!!

Yea I just always make sure my kick comes through the mix normally. But I'll try it.

[AxeD]

Nice tune. Yeah, the sub-bass frequencies sound pretty constant in that. What if you tried an actual sustained sine sub synth (with Subtractor or Thor) and then put kick samples over that, high-passed just enough to remove their sub-bass? If the two sat well together, you might get that nice subtle "thock" from the kick hits but also get the sustained sub. If that doesn't seem quite right, not enough of a pulse or such, you could try making the sub synth into individual kick-like hits with a long decay, so that there's only a slight diminution of volume when the next kick hits, and then layer the aforementioned high-passed kick samples over those.

This works, if you get the right kick sound. Used the little eq unit to make sure it doesn't clash just like you said.
Finally got that dark techno sound down

[marktplatz]

Great, glad that worked. I might have to try it out myself.

[ascent]

Love making techno but its something I really suck at... i think its the synth lines that let me down, don't know how ben klock does it. Need to work on buildups too and general structure.

[dublerium]

I absoloutely love skudge, basically anything skudge related would be cool to learn, I don't want to rip off thier sound but theres some sounds i'd enjoy applying to my own tunes. I know they use a lot of analogue gear and thier synths are too nice. Any tips on getting any sort of skudge sounding synths/percussion anything i'm all ears. Phantom is my LP of the year I reckon.

[marktplatz]

That synth (the quick-attack one) sounds like pretty a simple waveform - maybe saw, possibly square - with a pretty much constant high-resonance filter, check my earliest post up the thread for further talk on that. As for perc, stay experimental, try out all kinds of stuff, maybe focus on sounds of fairly short duration so they sit politely in the loop (as is the case with the sounds in "Realtime"), but that's just another rule-of-thumb ripe for the breaking. The one pretty ubiquitous high-frequency perc element is the offbeat-8th-notes hit, but feel free to use something totally different from a hi-hat for that - its purpose is just to respond to the kick and further accentuate the 4x4 pulse, and there's huge room for variation in its timbre/envelope. Besides that, syncopation is great. I like to experiment with not having a snare on 2 and 4 (inspired by halfstep and garage) and either putting a snare-like sound in more syncopated places or just leaving it out. I really love enharmonic sounds for percussion - metallic or wooden sounds - and FM and AM are, like, THE way to synthesize such sounds from scratch if you want to try that.

I guess those suggestions aren't really Skudge-specific for the most part, but for me techno is completely open-ended outside of the 4x4 pulse, and that's what I love about it, so I recommend just going as far out as you please with sonic experimentation within that bare framework. EDIT: also, as Andy Stott demonstrated this year, techno (or house) can be SLOW without veering into disco, and the slower you go, the more space you have to work with, a great feature if you want your techno to be dubby.

[AxeD]

as Andy Stott demonstrated this year, techno (or house) can be SLOW without veering into disco, and the slower you go, the more space you have to work with, a great feature if you want your techno to be dubby.

Definitely, I sometimes go down to 118 when I'm programming drums. Room for some percussion
that way

I do the synth stuff with the step sequencer and almost always some delay. That way you can
get a nice groove going that doesn't get boring when you repeat it for 2 or 3 mins

[AllNightDayDream]

Ever since the slow house thread, it's hard to make anything but. So satisfying.

[marktplatz]

Ah, thanks for the heads up on that thread (link for reference), looks great. Yeah, I now find sub-120 and especially sub-110 to be my favored tempos for 4x4 - the kicks start to seem too dense in the more traditional, faster range, unless they're sort of smeared together like in that Ben Klock track earlier. So really I like 4x4 down at (upbeat) hip-hop tempos, whereas I like breakbeats at tempos faster than most hip-hop, from ~110 up into jungle territory.

You know what other kind of 4x4 I think is at least as deserving of revival as all the Detroit/Chicago fetishism of the past few years? Speed garage. There's bassline, obviously, but I really like the more junglistic feel of old speed garage - to me it's basically just junglistic house. Big up Mosca for bringing it back to the table some with "Done Me Wrong"/"Bax." (That somewhat undermines what I just said about preferring slower 4x4, but with a lot of speed garage the kick is secondary to the bassline on the sub side of things.)

Oh and speaking of junglistic house, you can't go wrong in that area with West Norwood Cassette Library "Get Lifted." Just can't get enough of those 16th-note shakes:



The Karenn remix is also great in that poundy Blawan way but the original has the edge for me.

[q-t]

One mayor part in creating this sound is to allow your tracks to not have a perfectly clean mixdown.
If you listen to a lot of good house and techno, you will realize that the sound quality often is a bit raw.
The sounds in techno and house have loads of character to them. If you EQ away every single bad frequency on your sounds, your tracks will end up sounding hollow and soulless.
Brostep and techy dnb demands a lot of the producer in terms of mixdowns. House and techno does not. Just listen to some old ghetto house tracks - the tunes bangin but the mixdown's shit.

That said, the best way to get the authentic sound is to buy lots of hardware and sample your own stuff. Stay away from the latest sample pack you got for free with a magazine and sample shit straight from vinyl, VHS and shitty tracks on youtube.

I don't have any hardware myself but I only use old drum machine samples (think 808, 909, and so on) for drums and simple analogue emulations for synths. I use light to heavy distortion on pretty much every channel in my mixes. Not to make stuff sound angry, but rather to make them sound a little less like they're coming from a computer. The sounds in techno and house is in most cases very simple. No need to add 6 different filters and resample 12 times just to create a bassline.

Distortion, harsh filtering and compressors with a lot of character are your friends here.

[dublerium]

That synth (the quick-attack one) sounds like pretty a simple waveform - maybe saw, possibly square - with a pretty much constant high-resonance filter, check my earliest post up the thread for further talk on that. As for perc, stay experimental, try out all kinds of stuff, maybe focus on sounds of fairly short duration so they sit politely in the loop (as is the case with the sounds in "Realtime"), but that's just another rule-of-thumb ripe for the breaking. The one pretty ubiquitous high-frequency perc element is the offbeat-8th-notes hit, but feel free to use something totally different from a hi-hat for that - its purpose is just to respond to the kick and further accentuate the 4x4 pulse, and there's huge room for variation in its timbre/envelope. Besides that, syncopation is great. I like to experiment with not having a snare on 2 and 4 (inspired by halfstep and garage) and either putting a snare-like sound in more syncopated places or just leaving it out. I really love enharmonic sounds for percussion - metallic or wooden sounds - and FM and AM are, like, THE way to synthesize such sounds from scratch if you want to try that.

I guess those suggestions aren't really Skudge-specific for the most part, but for me techno is completely open-ended outside of the 4x4 pulse, and that's what I love about it, so I recommend just going as far out as you please with sonic experimentation within that bare framework. EDIT: also, as Andy Stott demonstrated this year, techno (or house) can be SLOW without veering into disco, and the slower you go, the more space you have to work with, a great feature if you want your techno to be dubby.

Yeah I know they are saw or squares just I'm a long way of getting my synths sounding as quality as thiers, (which i don't expect to though for the time i've been producing). Thanks for the response. Lots of artists been doing the slow thing for years without it being proper disco.

Thier shorter length synth stabs have a very distinct sound to them, quite similar to MRSK too and are similair to the type of sounds i'd like to develop. It'll come with trial and error and learning but any more suggestions would be cool.

[q-t]

Anyone here know how to make the muddy, cloud-like sub bass that's in many techno tracks?
Example on the Marcel Dettmann version 2 remix: http://hardwax.com/audio/64/64791/64791_B2.mp3
Right at the drop.

You can also hear it in this track.


It's definitely not a normal sub so don't tell me to fiddle with some sine patch.
I've tried to saturate and filter low saws with a bit of short decay reverb and then compress it really hard but it doesn't even come remotely close.
Totally bad ass sub imo and sounds a lot different than normal sines and 808s on a big rig.

[marktplatz]

The cloudiness of both of those arises from a mingling of bass frequencies, which I can think of three means of creating: reverb; detuning; and bandpassing noise. You're right, they're both very far from a simple sine frequency. The Dettmann kick really sounds just reverbed to me - it sounds like the sub between the kicks is maybe a relatively long-decay reverb tail from the kick but really strongly low-passed so that the initial highest-pitched portion of the kick doesn't ring into the reverb. The pitch of that bass tail also sounds a little bit above true sub frequencies though, so the very bottom end of the reverb might be high-passed away as well, essentially leaving a bandpassed near-sub-bass range of frequencies to ring through. Try experimenting with that kind of reverb on a nice whomping kick sample, or a strongly pitch-bent synthesized kick, to see if you can approximate the sound. I don't think it needs much compression necessarily either.

This comes with the usual DSF Caveat of "don't just imitate sounds, use the knowledge of how they work to create your own soundworlds, etc" but I probably don't need to mention that. Obviously it's still really useful to figure out how to successfully imitate a sound you like because it can help you greatly improve your skill in sound design.

The Panamax kick sounds like it could maybe just be detuned, or possibly it could be emulated with sharply bandpassed noise, so that again all but a narrow range of bass frequencies are filtered out. I suppose you could try generating some low bandpassed noise with a noise oscillator - e.g. in Reason: a Thor Noise Osc on the BAND setting with low BW and set on a low pitch - and if you couldn't manipulate it as you wanted just in the Thor, you could bounce a sample of it and then pitch-bend it as you liked in a sampler. Speaking of which, the tail of the Panamax kick sounds like it bends back up a ways from the lowest pitch. You might also try just a synthesized sine or low-passed square kick, i.e. bent up a fair amount at the start, quickly falling, and then rising a bit toward the end - and put a well low-passed, average-decay reverb on it, play around with that.

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

[jyro]

re structure; totally agree with whoever it was that said listen to tonnes of stuff. simple structural 'tricks' become very apparent after a while

[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.

[q-t]

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.

I feel exactly the same. Much of the stuff from the UK Bass scene is too clean. UK hardcore, Techno, house, ghetto house, juke older dubstep and 90s hiphop all share this raw aesthetic which I really like.

Some advice for techno production:
- 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.
For example, lowpass your kick and link the filter cutoff to the velocity of the kicks. Draw some syncopated hits in between the 4x4 pattern and lower the velocity on those to almost non-existant. Only the lowest sub frequencies of the kick should be let through the filter on these kicks. The kick should barely be audible in the drum loop and probably not audible at all when all tracks are playing. Still, it will contribute to the overall groove substantially and on a big rig you will absolutely feel it.