If you have any gear that will allow it, let the bpm fluctuate. I know the evolver and the microfreak can both have bpm set as a mod destination, there are probably others. It doesn’t tend to feel like techno when the tempo is constantly changing.
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Techno beats are good, what’s bad in that groove?
But if you are sad about it, try to forbid kick drums. If you fall in techno again, forbid drums at all and make drones instead or enjoy pure synths textures.
And in the end make techno again, who cares! It is not a sin.
“Tell me your sins son.”
“Excuse me father… I made techno again”
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Such a good thread title
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Yeah, familiar problem😂 you start out with something mellow and an hour later you gravitated towards utter brutality. Doesn’t have to be bad though🤔
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This title still makes me laugh. Did you find some peace (or sleep) yet?
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I’ve not turned the hardware on since, I’m just playing piano. Training myself to do melody. Also playing in Ableton, again with melody.
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Then you did really stick to it, the change of pace. Good on you. Although I’ll miss the mental image of you frantically making techno without eating or sleeping.
Why through Ableton? To use for different piano’s, or?
Yeah, and to play with mangling samples to then pay over. It’s very fun.
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Since this thread started I now only make techno.
I blame you, OP.
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Learn an instrument, stop putting a kick on every beat and an open hi hat on the off beats. Learn an instrument. I might have been drinking.
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I used to have this problem during my early years. I wanted to make deep House or tech House, but everything turned into progressive House and I hated that 
I just keep doing and doing and critically listening to music I wanted to sound like and eventually I was able to get out of the progressive House prison 
can’t stress enough the importance of listening, finding what makes what you want to make.
By the way, what do you want to make? It must have passed by me if you mentioned it.
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I have the opposite problem. Dropped back in on a minimal techno DN project for some tweaks and 3 hours later I ended up with a resampled, syncopated DT+DN track with lush pads and flutes…oops.
I guess the answer is to get a decent sampler and turn your techno tracks into fodder!
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Sometimes I am able to stop making techno for long enough to realize that I should be making techno. Can’t stop won’t stop.
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same… i often make a extended melody but what the point, i chop it down to one bar and just loop it in the end anyway
Avoid 4 kicks to the floor
Use syncopated rhythms
Use triplets
Add swing
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This is so very much me…,
We should collaborate and do some fine Techno together. 
We could help each other to stay focused.
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Love the vibe in both of your music, would definitely be an interesting collab!
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I’m actually having a different issue - I have only just started making what I consider to be a form of techno and I love it! For years I toyed with making hip hop in various flavours, then I began appreciating four to the floor with Slavic house-type music, and now I’m enamoured with the gritty techno and breaks of many of the artists on the Ilian Tape label. I’m fascinated by the juxtaposition of heavy drums and evolving pads. So I’m going to continue to follow my heart until eventually my music becomes polished enough for me to reach out to a label.
Long story short, keep doing what makes you feel something!
In the words of Enigma:
'The principles of lust are easy to understand - do what you feel - feel until the end.
The principles of lust are burned in your mind - do what you want, do it until you find - love’.
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I can help. Went through the same thing.
Use LESS Notes. Two to three different notes are enough, sometimes u need just one.
Don’t always stick to a chromatic scale. Tune your sounds using your ears, you don’t really need music theory for techno!
Shorten your sequences. You don’t need 64 step patterns. Especially for basslines 4-16 Steps are enough most of the time.
Fuck snares on 5 and 13. (well you can use them sometimes but if you wanna do darker stuff, try going without backbeat snares/claps for a while. You will come up with more interesting percussion stuff that way.
Distortion. All kinds of Distortion/ Drive/ Fuzz/ Saturation.
Less is more. You don’t need alot of different elements all the time. A Kick+Sub+Lead(can also some be pulsating percussion)+Hi-Hat/Cymbal can be enough. If that “foundation” of your track sounds good enough you will find that you don’t need alot of elements- also its alot more easy to mix that way.
This one is super important: Don’t start with a Kick. You can put a Kickdrum to get a groove going, but don’t process and commit to a Kick when you start making a track. Even if its a huge part of a track, a Kickdrum is there to SUPPORT the track/groove.
I had the best results when I finished my sound design/ arrangement, and then shaped a kick to fit in the mix nicely, instead of making everthing else to fit the kick.
Edit:
If you do the oppisite of my first two points you will probably get something less “technoish”
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Do nothing but play the tuba for two or three years. You’ll never be the same after, one way or another.
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