You are a producer but you lack inspiration for your techno productions?

You may even be in this situations :

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You are desperately looking to reproduce beats as impactful as Amelie Lens, Paula Temple, Ansome, Dax J, FJAAK and others?

Unfortunately, you can't find the same dynamism that is present in their productions.

Rest assured, all passionate producers go through this period when they want to evolve their musical style.

You should know that 97% of the producers in electronic music start by creating the beat of the song. It is the base of your track and it will give the atmosphere and the mood of your track. Once a beat is well constructed you will see that the rest of the elements that make up your track will come naturally.

In this article, we will see together how to create a beat in 5 steps starting from 0.

Each drums melody will be available for free in MIDI format in the Techno Starter Pack. Moreover, you will find free samples created by us to build your first drums lines.

Before starting, you need a DAW software like Fl studio, Ableton and Logic Pro X and understand that the motto is "Keep it simple".

To make impactful drums and make it easy to identify all the elements of your beat, you need to create simple drum lines, with simple elements. This is especially true in techno where with each arrival of a drum pattern the sound becomes more and more impactful.

Step 1:You have to get quality drums.

to creating a good techno beat is to have quality drums.
You can start your beats with machine drums, such as TR 909 for example or simply use a sample pack created for your style of music.

You can use our free techno starter pack for example, for your first beats it will do the trick.

Once you have quality drums, you can build your pattern. What is a pattern? It's the decomposition of the different drums of your drum kit, for example, you will have a Kick pattern, Hi-hats, Claps, Toms etc. You can play everything on the same pattern but for the mixing it is better to separate them.

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Step 2: You have to choose the BPM of your track.

Depending on the style of techno you are going to play it can vary

For example :

• Melodic techno 120-126 bpm

• Techno : 126- 140 bpm

• Industrial Techno 140-150 bpm

For our example, we are going to build an industrial techno beat so I will choose a Bpm of 140.

Step 3: Pattern Kick.

The first pattern we're going to create is the Kick pattern. We prefer to start with this one because it will give the groove and the atmosphere for the rest of the song.

For this demo, we will use the Kick "NEOS_TSP_Kick_01" from the Free Pack.

As for the melody, we will keep it simple and put a kick on each beat as shown on the picture below.

Step 4: Pattern Hi-Hats.

In the second pattern, we will build the hi-hats line with the sample "NEOS_TSP_Hi-Hat_01" . Same thing, we will make a very simple melody. What we will do in addition is to modify the velocity 1 hi hats/ 2 and to modify the panning (change the side of the sound left and right) to play on the stereo of the beat.

Tips Mix : As for the mix of the hi-hats I added a light reverb and distortion to have more impact.Step 4 : Open hats pattern

Step 5: Open-Hats pattern.

Next, we simply add a line of open-hats against the kick with the sample "NEOS_TSP_Open hats_02".

See the melody shown below in the image. This will add some groove to our beat.

With these 3 patterns you already have a very good techno beat but in order to make it vary properly we will add some more patterns.

Step 6: Pattern Rides.

You can simply take the melody of the open hats pattern and copy it to the ride pattern.

Rides and open hats together will add power to your drums. Very useful to use when your song is going to hit the most. The sample used is "NEOS_TSP_Ride_02".

Step 7: Pattern Toms  

Particularly in industrial techno this pattern consists of a tom with a very fast melody, almost identical to that of the hi-hats but in order to be used to good effect, it is necessary to mix your Tom well. The sample used is "NEOS_TSP_Tom_03".

There are several ways to do it.

For our part, we add some distortion with a camelcrusher or fruity fast dist for example.

Then we use an equalizer to remove the bass and high frequencies, then we add a sidechain to always have an impactful kick.

Step 8 : Pattern Clap  

For this part, we're going to place "NEOS_TSP_Clap_04" every other beat or layered your kick with clap to add power and diversification to your beat.

Mix Tips: We like to add some reverb and distortion to the mix at a low enough volume to keep it low key.

Finally, once you have created all your patterns, you just have to dispatch them as you want during your song and to make them come in little by little to vary your sound. You can bring them in with filters etc.

There are of course thousands of ways to create your drums patterns here you have a good base used in many Techno tracks. You can of course differentiate yourself by using different effects, different melodies, different layering on your drums etc.

To make it easier for you to create your first beats here is a free pack you can download. You will find royalty free drums of very good quality. Moreover the melodies seen previously will be included in the pack in midi format you will just have to drag and drop the melodies in your sampler and use them.

If the free pack has helped you, you can complete your soundbank with the "Inception techno" pack. It contains several different types of samples such as drums, fx, melodies to use freely in your production.

If you need feedback feel free to send me your production via mail.