Melodic Techno
Techno tempo, techno drums, and a chord progression that wants to be a film score.
The pattern
2 bars, sixteenth notes. Loops until you stop it.
The hats run eighths, not sixteenths, and the offbeats are twenty points louder than the downbeats, which gives the pattern a lift without adding any hits. The tambourine handles the e and the a of every beat, so the sixteenth motion comes from a different sound than the pulse does. There is one open hat per bar, and it moves from the and of 4 in bar one to the and of 2 in bar two. Bar two also adds a quiet second clap on the and of 4 at velocity 46, which sits where a delay repeat would and drags the loop back to the top.
What it is
The 2010s arrival that filled the gap between progressive house and proper techno, and now fills a great many main rooms. Tale of Us, Adriatique, Mind Against and the Afterlife parties are the centre of it, alongside a slower and darker branch around Stephan Bodzin and Maceo Plex. The drums are techno by tempo and by sound design, but they are deliberately unremarkable, because the arrangement is carried by an arpeggio and a chord change that takes half a minute to arrive. It gets criticised for being techno with the difficult parts removed, which is not entirely unfair and does not stop it working at four in the morning.
What it sounds like
A firm kick with real sub under it, a clap with a long tail, and a hi-hat pattern that runs eighths rather than sixteenths so the top end stays uncluttered. A tambourine ticks the offbeat sixteenths. Over it: a Moog-style arpeggio with the filter opening slowly, huge reverb on everything harmonic, and a bassline that moves with the chords rather than repeating one note. The overall impression is wide and cinematic, and the drums are further back in the mix than in any other techno on this list.
Key elements
- The arpeggioSixteenth notes on a filtered analogue-style lead, usually a minor triad plus the seventh, with the cutoff opening across eight or sixteen bars. This is the hook.
- A progression with distance in itFour chords over sixteen bars, borrowing from the parallel major somewhere in the middle so the return to minor lands.
- Eighth-note hatsClosed hats on the beat and the offbeat only. Running sixteenths would crowd the arpeggio, which is already playing them.
- One open hat a barOnly on the and of 4, ringing into the next downbeat. Putting it on all four offbeats is what makes a track read as house instead.
- Sub that follows the chordsThe bass plays the root of each chord rather than a static pedal, and is ducked hard by the kick so the movement is felt as pumping.
How to get them
- KickA layered kick: a short clicky top for the phones and a sine tail tuned to the root of the key for the club. Keep the total length under 400ms so the sub bass has room.
- ArpeggioSaw or pulse, unison of three voices detuned by about 8 cents, a ladder-style low-pass with resonance around 30 percent. Automate the cutoff from 300Hz to 5kHz across sixteen bars and add a dotted-eighth delay at 25 percent wet.
- ClapLayer a 909 clap with a short white noise burst, then a plate reverb of about 2.5 seconds high-passed at 350Hz. On the second bar, add a quieter clap on the and of 4 that reads as the delay tail.
- Reverb managementOne long hall on a send for everything harmonic, ducked by the kick. Without that duck the reverb fills every gap and the track loses its pulse.
- TambourineOn the e and the a of each beat at velocities in the fifties, panned about 20 percent right, with a short room. It supplies the sixteenth-note motion the hats are not doing.
- The dropTake the kick out for four bars before the main chord arrives and let the reverb tail carry it. This genre lives on that one move.
Reference points
Tale of Us, Adriatique, Mind Against, Stephan Bodzin, Maceo Plex, Massano, and the Afterlife and Diynamic labels. Reference points for the sound rather than endorsements or an instruction to imitate.
The pattern is a starting point rather than a rule. If you want the theory underneath why any of it works, Battuto measures it.