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I want to produce Minimal Techno, where do I start?
As the title of this thread says, I want to produce Minimal Techno, Minimal House, Tech House, etc. However, I don't know where or how to begin.
See, crafting catchy melodic hooks comes easy to me since I know Music theory inside and out. However, there's a difference between a catchy melodic hook in EDM and that incredible hypnotic feeling one gets from listening to Minimal Techno. I want to recreate that hypnotic feeling.
So here are my questions. First of all, which artists would you recommend I listen to more of? What's the current cream of the crop?
Secondly, how do I begin to make Minimal Techno? What type of techniques should I use? What's the theory behind Minimal Techno? What's the focus? What's the "song structure"?
Third, any other advice and tips you can give me?
Thanks, and cheers. 
Comments
I may not be helpful, but I would love to see what others have to chime into this topic.
I would say the hypnotic feeling come from repetitions mainly on drums and bass, and modulating the dynamics and effects on them.
Regarding artists, Richie Hawtin (aka. Plastikman), Robert Hood, Gui Boratto, Jeff Mills...
Btw, an example of Jeff Mills on the 909... dude just needs the toms to make the melodic part
A good place to start:
Live setup:
I think it’s less about music theory and more about creating the mood… everyone does it differently…
Plastikman for sure.
Richie Hawtin is God of all things minimal/techno.
https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=Richie+hawtin
Look at Plastikman albums for his more minimal output
Oh yeah... a bonus. Like in Jeff's video, prefer those modulations I mentioned to be tactile. Try to avoid drawing automations. you have something in repetition and tweak knobs and whatnot
this guy is hands down my favorite techno artist. deep, disgusting, minimal techno.
how about some Melodic minimal techno. why not have the best of both worlds! This album by Vril is one of my all time favorite albums of ANY genre.
This playlist has a ton of great techno... maybe more hard hitting...
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4jnQDqhYgv6Q0ZAWAGTIcr?si=3f91f38b762e4836
The Hate channel on YT is my go to for finding new techno. its mostly pretty aggressive stuff, but theres a wide range of genres
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6qQOTx9LuKMC5p2dbjmSRg
as far as technique goes, the most important thing is that rolling bass, and a nice groove. Techno can be quite simple, but getting that groove locked in is super important. first things first lock in that groove and bassline, then add stuff on top. ambient stretched out reverbed pads, evolving modular sequences, a nice found sound sample to layer and accent the groove...Lots and lots of automation goes a long way. try to break out of the typical edm arrangement / structure and go with a constantly building and evolving track. I literally live for techno, and wish you the best on your journey.
Besides the Underdog channel, the Analog Kitchen channel is great for inspiration and techniques. While aimed at ‘dawless’ hardware jamming, I just follow along with Drambo and that works great.
I like this Surgeon video.
This one might be silly but I thought it was well done and it had me entertained for 2 mins :-D
Since you mostly got recommendations for rather live or hardware based workflows, here something for a linear workflow. I really love the tutorials of Yalcin Efe. He does a lot of technique videos with Ableton and usually with Serum but you can easily translate that to Cubasis 3 and SynthMaster One (soon better SM2). He also does reverse engineer several artists and shows how to do a track in their style. I really love his “four producer, one sample” series (which he adopted from Andrew Huang), usually with well known Techno producers like Robert Babicz for instance. I think he is really a great producer himself.
Just do what you normally do, but much less.
Keep only the absolute essentials and process the crap out of them.
+1
And a lot of it depends on sounds.
So much that I sometimes start by designing sounds and let the song grow out of the sonic mood.
Don't overdo with melody. Minimal Techno and House live from short snippets and repetition.
You could start with something like this and have that loop running during the whole track, it's more about what you add and remove as time evolves in order to keep it interesting.
Start with RoxSyn on your kick.
This is great Ableton film about Swedish minimalists ‘Minilogue’.
Despite the idyllic setting, a friend pointed out to me that one of the duo only seems to be producing a kick from his setup... I believe they split up shortly after.
Anyway, excellent film and excellent minimal techno music.
EDIT: the video link is ‘setup’, there’s a live jam that follows it on You Tube.
I like Terrence Dixon. Live set with only a MC-303:
Gonna check all these videos. So much stuff 😜
I was trying yesterday to jam a minimal track on Pure Acid
But sometimes I get stuck with PA and didn't like the results 😁
But just about now, inspired by the Skram thread, I did this uninspired jam, just to recall Skram's workflow
(Which in the other thread I noted that the best option would be to host it instead of trying to do it all standalone)
My Personal Goal is that surgeon stuff. 909 like drums plus a Heavy monosynth. Less is more, so 8 Tracks should be enough 😉
Think I could make this music. Euclidean drums to a controller. x 2 ipad but with some mononoke. Would be cool if the portable turntable I bought were easy to add tracks, when needing a break. It would have link but no cue, def not with just headphones in aum. It would be kind of noisy also maybe. Cant think of synths or sequencing or allocating chords, that give melody, I guess to synths, Like the vermona though. With aum etc. Is it best to use the same synths and just go through presets, instead of launching apps? Does launching apps always generally make cpu go past 100 percent? Even with x2 ipad. If an ipad passed 100 percent would if create crackle if using a mixer? Not sure id use ipads in a dj way anyway but more as instruments as a single aum session but would start to make aum saves then save via app. Drums transposed but also Drambo saves, plus synth saves. So is it best to find a selection of synths with the most range vs loading synths? Maybe it depends on the synth and how much cpu is already used?
Will need to check again how the vermona is allocating chords.
Shed is worth checking out too, especially the EQD stuff, like this beauty: https://equalized.bandcamp.com/album/equalized-009
For actually making it, there's nothing better than Rosetta Rhythm - it's perfect.
For just drums or for everything?
I love this! That’s a brilliant solid groovy foundation in just a few tracks. It’s a bit like Dub Techno, I guess. Once you’ve got a groove going like that, it’s just a case of dropping other sounds in and out for variation and atmos but making sure to leave plenty of space still. I always struggle not to over complicate things, probably because my basic beat and groove is not hitting the right spot. But once you nail a groovy foundation like this one, there’s no need to try so hard with the rest of the parts. I suddenly feel inspired by your groove to have another go at minimal stuff. Nice one, thanks! 👍👏
Just for the drums. But then again, what else do you need?
Step One: Produce maximal techno. Step Two: Delete 90% of the tracks.
You seem to know how to produce electronic music, so really, it's more about knowing the genre. You start off by talking about 3 or 4 genres, maybe focus on one of them, get to know the music you like in that genre and then practice. Make tracks. I have noticed that there's a lot of reuse of samples and mixes by certain artists. Like, the kick and hats are exactly the same in 2 or 3 of their top tracks. I can understand why. When you've mixed something exactly how you want it then why change it? The BPM is the same, the different part is the melody and a few other bits and pieces.
But really, how does anyone learn how to make any kind of music? Listen to lots of it and then reproduce what you like.
Oh and the mix. The mix is everything. None of these people in the vids above have just plugged in their drum machines to a shitty old 4 track and uploaded that to Youtube. No chance.
Thanks @Spidericemidas 😊
PM me if you'd like to build upon this one.
23.10. Sometimes I think. Why have I bought so many synth. I dont even like synths ( obviously I do ) The sound though is amazing. If I could choose to go to a festival on holiday. That would be the tune. Where I dont practice synths. The only thing similar Iv noticed I made is using the envelopes rise/fall in shockwave. Must be how you do cool stuff ( envelopes ) but he got some chordness going on.