Techno

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Big-room beats, dark synths and brooding bass.

Techno as a genre is wider and more popular than ever. From the dark and industrial aesthetic of Berghain’s Ben Klock and Marcel Dettmann to the chunky, funky sounds of Umek and Sebastien Leger, Techno has shed its minimal obsession of the last decade to embrace elements of electro and tech-house.

In SM27 Techno, we’ve reflected these stylistic evolutions and nuances while staying true to the genre’s core Detroit-derived values.

Beats are the key to this collection: with 180+ big, chunky and pared-back rhythms supplied. We’ve packed in stacks of instant beat backbones, many offered with full, stripped and kick-free variants for full programming flexibility. There’s also a sizeable serving of pumping percussive grooves and top-only loops: delve into the kicks folder, choose one that fits and roll...

The bass loops offer up all manner of low frequency filth, from the dubby and subby through to throbbing acid-burners, ensuring the ultimate bottom-end.

Melodics range from classic house-inspired chords and arps to contemporary tech hooks and atonal leads. On the whole we’ve left these dry, giving you the freedom to add your own reverbs, delays and other effects.

In the FX department, as well as a healthy dose of risers, descenders and tempo-synced glitch loops, we’ve gone the extra mile to offer a selection of morphing melodic beds and lush soundscapes to invoke the more ambient, Border Community-esque reaches of the genre.

For those who build their beats from scratch, there’s a comprehensive one-shot folder packed with kicks, snares/claps, hats and percussion hits optimised for the biggest rooms and systems – and all run through our prized all-analogue signal chain (spank that Fatso!).

Big, punchy and powerful, with subtle melodics and low-end funk, this is the sound of Techno today.

Enjoy.

The Producers

welcome to... /3welcome tothe collection

producer tips01/ All white

White noise is a techno staple; whether it’s used for sweeps in builds and breakdowns, or as pumping ambience in the depths of the mix, it’s a versatile source of atmospherics. An effective pulsing noise loop is achieved using a sustained note on a synth driving a white noise generator side-chained against the kick. Add in a high-pass filter and increase the resonance slighty to sharpen the sound.

Get creative by burying noise loops, found-sound beds and dusty layers deep in the mix – it’s a great way to add an almost subconscious level of depth and detail that gently glues groups of sounds (or the full mix) together. Try adding a gate effect and automating the wet value to create tense builds or simply make the mix breathe with life. Automating the white noise filter cutoff value can be used for obvious effects in builds or to introduce subtle change over time.

02/ The dark with the light

Techno in its earliest guise was a raw, industrial-inspired genre; introducing some grit and dirt to a production is a surefire way to get the classic techno

aesthetic. When it comes to the drums, try keeping some of the key beat elements (snare, hats, claps, kick for example) clean and polished while applying a healthy dose of distortion, extreme filtering and general filth to percussive hits for a sonically interesting contrast. Play around with combinations of clean and dirty elements until you find something that feels right. When applying overdrive or distortion aim for warmer sounds – tape saturated overdrive, or distortion provided by amp and speaker emulators for example – for a more organic sound.

03/ Creative stabs

Vocal snippets, synth stabs and FX impacts are three sources that can be used to create killer techno stabs that penetrate the mix: just get busy with the sample editor to find the part of the sound that works best. Use filters, EQs, reverbs and delays to shape interesting sampler-ready stabs. Experiment with delay times: it’s all too easy to dial in a crotchet or triplet: pushing the value slightly off the tempo grid can bring an uneasy, wonky groove to the mix that can work particularly well during breakdowns.

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04/ Carve out space

Techno is a genre that demands hard work from every sound, and to enable each element in the arrangement to work, each should have its own sonic space. The problem is that inevitably, many sounds – particularly in the rhythm section – will share common frequencies, making it hard to avoid phase drifting or the doubling of frequencies (and the subsequent clouding of the mix).

One remedy is volume ducking. The most well-known incarnation of this technique is side-chain compression, but there are other options that open other creative avenues. You might try using an LFO or envelope generator to automate the volume instead, for example. Another option is filter automation, which allows you to carve out the frequencies of your choice at any given time.

05/ Rhythmical decay

Keep percussion interesting by adjusting the ADSR decay value in select samples throughout the track. If you’re using a virtual drum machine plug-in simply automate the decay value over time to keep the ear engaged.

A common trick is to automate the decay of a closed hi-hat to ‘open out’ a synthetic hi-hat to raise tension as the track approaches a build.

06/ On the bus

Before getting down to the business of writing your track, take some time to optimise the project by creating mix buses for groups of elements. A suggested starting point for a techno track would be to send all drum elements to one bus (either with or without the kick), the bassline and kick to another, melodics to a third, and any vocals or FX to their own respective buses.

This allows you to treat complimentary elements with the same inserts before sending them to the master channel, effectively ‘gluing’ them together in preparation for the final mixdown. Not only does this save time when tweaking levels, it also saves on valuable CPU as you avoid overloading your arrangement with multiple inserts on each channel.

Try routing a send from the bus to a second ‘parallel’ bus and then add a compressor to squash all life from this parallel track. Mix this parallel compression track into the mix low to add bulk and weight.

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folder setup /8accessingthe files

Technofolder

Drum Loops 128bpm

Tops Loops 128bpm

Bass Loops 128bpm

Synth Loops 128bpm

Drum Hits

FX & FX Loops

KicksClaps & SnaresHatsPercussion

equipment list /9inside the Technostudio

Empirical Labs EL7 FatsoMoog VoyagerMoog Slim PhattyKorg MS-10Korg RadiasE-mu E4xt UltraSherman Filterbank 2Arturia SparkArturia OriginAccess Virus TiRoland Juno-60Roland SH-09Roland TD-9Electron MachinedrumDSI Tetra

Waldorf BlofeldNI MaschineMutronics MutatorDoepfer Dark EnergyDoepfer R2MSPL GoldmikePortico 50422x Mhlabs Mio2882Thermionic Culture VultureNeve 8816 Summing MixergSSL Stereo Bus CompressorSmartResearch C2 CompressorWaves MaxxBCLTL Audio Tubetracker

Collection created byMarcus Schmahl, Dual Shaman and Sami Liuski

Audio formatting by Chevy One

Demos by Sharooz and The Producers

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Artwork by IWANT Design Limited

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