Coming from an experimental background, I’m finding it difficult to compose/write/mix Techno music. I can get a solid kick/bass groove going, but I can’t seem to compose the rest of the song well, I feel like my tracks are missing something. I can get some decent dub chords out of the Analog Four, and a nice drone sound, but besides that, I’m finding difficulty creating leads for Techno.
I make patterns and in song mode i auto mute patterns. This forces me to make changes that always sound good; although i dont know what to expect.
Then i make perf settings for Akeys and ar and i play with it. While muting, unmuting, plating with perf pads (ar) and perf know (akey)and messing around in Song mode. This brings me in a groove for a while and i learn to know what i dan do with what i have created.
Then on AR i use scenes (the blue ones) to make brakes and extra intens stuff…
At the end i record a set of like 6 minutes where i build up and let go and break down.
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Also one rytm pattern with perf and scenes on ar and akeys with perf knobs… Then play for a long time and record a 6 min build up let go and break down works Well.
Sometimes i make something within 10 minutes… Perf and scenes can create a lot of tention… That is what it is all about
Copy the sound your washing machine makes
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Haha, I want to hear it!
I did that once, quite literally. Sampled stuff from a washing machine and used the OT to make a techno track out of those.
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Here it comes :
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Gosh, this is too … smashing! 
Ha ha SAMPLE RINSE AND REPEAT !!!
nice thread! here’s my 2 cent
not mentioned before but: get the acoustic in your room right!
My 'studio" is in my living room, so I don’t wanna hang ugly diffusers and absorbers in there. I got used to the shitty sound too quickly and got my eyes opened again after I got some reference headphones.
now I try to listen to on as many speakers as possible. at the studio in our company, shitty samsung headphones, dj headphones to find a good balance for the mixing.
other than that I must say removing some frequencies on the low end doesnt make that much difference for me, it rather removes some happy accidents and most of the time I like whats happening without cutting the low freqs, but I usually remove the very low ends from my field recordings.
I find layering a bit hard as well, especially with lead sounds but I usually layer my kicks as i get way better results, some of my favorite artists do it as well and their tracks sound massive live e.g. headless horseman
But since I got the roland jp 8000 and there are many layered presets on it I wanna force myself to layer sounds more often as I think its really beneficial. see the deepchord stuff for example.
the silent parts are very important as well. I tend to overload my tracks and usually during the process I remove sometimes half of the elements. So I think simplicity is the key and focus more on making the few instruments sound great.
I wouldn’t mind if people posting to this thread would links some of their tunes to get an idea!
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yeah man! my washing machine has some damn nice tribal loops going on dishwasher works wonderful as well!
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ahh, the classic “ritari pesee pyykkiä” (semi-commonly used description for schranz techno) !