Advice on how to spice a dull techno track up

Elektronauts Our Music
1

Here’s a quick jam I did last night using MD, MM, OT and Minibrute.

https://soundcloud.com/martin-crowley/1st-rather-dull-arturia-elektron-jam/s-PAubu

As you’ll hear, it’s not that inspiring as there’s no fills/transitions. Also my timing of triggering events is off.and those hats get pretty annoying after a while;) I’ve plenty of practice to do basically.

This is all just one pattern on the three elektron machines and an dirty arp on minibrute, with no scene changes, just muting and unmuting.

I’d like feedback on how to spice a dull track like this up live, as I’m about to go back and re-record but this time use scenes on OT to give it much more depth.

I’d like to ad more elements but I like the stripped down feel of this. Should it be added to? I think just solid 909 rides and some drum rolls would be fine.

Hit me with feedback/tips… and be brutal! Only way to improve;)

Thanks

Martin

2

Some ideas:

  • A bright pad shimmering in here and there, first of all somewhere in the beginning
  • more impact for those nice hats at about 1 minute, maybe just some bright reverb and later on more and more delay, maybe also some layering
  • A 909 ride later on, as you said
  • Some fat, short chord stabs that punch in to give the groove even more drive
  • A break, where you tweak the hell out of ctr-al and stuff
  • Toms!

Cheers

3

I think it sounds pretty good, maybe some more variation in the perc.
Really like how the kick and bass work together gives it a good groove.
How did you do that BTW :wink: Were both the kick and bass done on the MD.

4

Blasted exam study is holding me back, but when I do get a chance I’ll use your points as a guide, MK7.

Very good tips. The ctr-al fooling could give it a wholly weird character, I’m not sure that’s what I want but I’ll have a go. Anything to give it a bit of life I guess;)

Thank you for your help:)

5

It’s only so so… I do agree that the kick and bass are nice however, though the low end might be way too prominent in the track.

The kick is just a low pitched TRX BD2 MD kick, routed separately to my mixer where it gets compressed by the inbuilt compressor.

The bass is not bass but a chopped up kick loop on OT. It’s both hi and low pass filtered with a strong Q setting to emphasis the subbyness of it. I think the swing setting gives it the nice groove you speak of… swing is somewhere around 56% on that OT track.

Plenty of work to do:)

Thanks buzz

6

@Marinukai: you’re welcome. Regarding CTR-AL: I don’t mean going crazy with all the parameters, maybe just highpass filter, decay, delay, reverb, and if you like just a little LFO depth and speed. You can also use just subtle variations.

What also worked great for me was to prepare some nice (not so crazy) CTR-AL combinations on a CTR-AL track and unmute, mute sometimes to give some slight variations. this method is inspired by the famous “Machinedrum IDM in a box video”. you can also add slide trigs to make it mor continuous, and I just used 1-4 trigs per bar, not 16th notes as the guy in the video. you can use this for some slight, subtle variations of your kit, which are just a short unmute away.

I’m wandering off the point. Nice groove. My other suggestions were more relevant than this one. Good luck and have fun!

7

Hmm I do live a bit and I think maybe you should take your time with it like in the sense of less is more and k.i.s.s. So bring in sounds slowly rather then simply mute un mute. Watch try to think of the of it as a piece of a larger 2 hr track. Live pa I think sounds nice when you take it deep and you pace your sounds. I mean live pa is like what DJ’s wish they can do when it comes to control so yeah it maybe be dull to some but I rather like hood and Dax’s stuff very very much.