Ableton Forum

Would like to hear the techniques other producers are using for the really deep minimal techno and house that has been coming out lately. I'm talking about the stuff with the really repetitive hypnotic almost tribal beats and a healthy dose of swing. The Patric Baumel RA podcast would be a good example of this. Obviously reverb and delay are key. Ive been finding abletons resonators useful for this type of music. White noise is also a staple. Wondering about drum techniques. Any advice on compression, EQ, would be much appreciated. Seems like people are maybe using New York compression on some of these tracks, or at least on the snare for that crisp yet sloppy smack.

It comes down to good samples, good drum programming (trial and error), swing. A bit of reverb and filtering to create the cave environment and youre don...atleast for me.

What do you use the resonator for specifically in this type of music?

I was using settings similar to the moscow preset in abletons resonators. Best I can describe this creates a sort of deconstruction of whatever sound you put it on. Neat effect.

How are you using EQ and compression in your tracks? Are you cutting any of the highs for that cave environment sound?

Night Spirit wrote:How are you using EQ and compression in your tracks? Are you cutting any of the highs for that cave environment sound?

I think this bears repeating. The natural tendency is to keep bass in everything, when in reality you should be hipassing most elements in your tracks except for the obvious ones like bass and kick. When most of the sounds in a track are playing outside of the very low frequencies, it serves to accentuate the bassy parts in a really great way.

As a general tip for this kind of stripped-down music, I find it best to think of a track as lots of negative space (similarly to minimalist painting) with subtle but significant chunks of material filling in the gaps.

This is not gospel, just a realization that I and many others have come to while working in these genres.

Thanks for the input guys. I'd love to hear any other detailed techniques or general philosophies anyone might have for this genre. I'm not looking for paint by number instructions, this kind of dialog just really helps my learning process.

kickdrum: four on the flour
hihats: offbeat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncopation

syncopate the kick, with similar sounding things like a low tom.
syncopate the hihats with similar sounding. (i simply use another hihat)

be sure to put an eye on the sounds themselve. how do they SOUND together (EQ!)? how do they bounce together (DECAY!).

with the syncopation added, i usually start to add some swing. (close your eyes to adjust that. don't let your eye "do" the job).

after that you can start to layer that beat with some microloops, reverbed samples and so on.

.... and when you're really done: then think about stuff like compression...