Make Techno

Make techno online with a personal music producer beside you, for free. Tell Veena's CoProducer the tempo and the mood and it builds a 125–135 BPM kick with a rumble under it, rolling hats, an acid line and dark texture, each on its own editable track, then changes one layer at a time, which is how techno moves.

Techno came out of Detroit in the mid-1980s and found a second home in Berlin's warehouses, and its method never changed: one loop, played long enough to hypnotise, with something small shifting every few bars. It is also the genre CoProducer delivers best. In Veena's own data, 91.7% of new users whose first request asks for techno get a first result on day one, the highest rate of any genre.

Techno at a glance

The peak-time bar

This is the bar most techno is built around. X is an accent, x a normal hit:

Peak bar  1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a
Kick      X . . . X . . . X . . . X . . .
Rumble    . . x x . . x x . . x x . . x x
Hat       x x X x x x X x x x X x x x X x
Ride      . . x . . . x . . . x . . . x .
Clap      . . . . X . . . . . . . X . . .
Rim       . . . . . . . x . . . . . x . .

Three things make it techno rather than house. The 16ths are straight, not shuffled. The low end rolls: two short sub notes after every kick, on the "and" and the "a". And one small part, here a rim on the "a" of 2 and the "e" of 4, sits off the main grid, so the loop repeats every bar without ever quite settling. That tension is the hypnosis.

Veena's drum clips open in the Beat Maker step sequencer, and CoProducer's AI drum generator writes grooves like this from a sentence. Start with the TR909 kit for classic techno, Electronic for a cleaner modern kit, or Chaos for industrial: it is Veena's heavy, distorted kit. More grooves live on the techno drum pattern page.

Kick and rumble: one instrument in two parts

In modern techno the kick and the bass are designed together, so they never fight for the same moment. Two ways to build the low end in Veena:

• A rolling sub. Techno Sub is a pure, weighty sub with almost no tone, built for exactly this job. Write short notes on the last two 16ths of each beat, on the root, and the kick and sub interlock into one rolling engine. Its MOVEMENT knob adds glide between overlapping notes.
• A reverb rumble. Copy the kick onto its own track, put a Reverb on the Cathedral preset at full mix, then cut the top with the 8-Band EQ's high shelf and two peaking bands until only a dark boom is left. Ask CoProducer to duck it under the kick so every hit lands clean.

For a kick that sits on the key, layer Veena's 808 Classic Kick under the drum kit. It is a synthesised bass drum with TUNE, TONE, DECAY and PUNCH knobs; TUNE runs from 40 to 65 Hz, so in F minor you can set it to F, about 44 Hz, and the kick and sub stop beating against each other. The techno bassline page has more rolling patterns.

Acid: the 303 line

Acid is a bassline that talks: a single sawtooth through a screaming filter, with some notes accented and some sliding into the next. Here is a 16-step line in F, with a Phrygian G flat for menace:

Step    1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10  11  12  13  14  15  16
Note    F2  F2  F3  F2  Ab2 F2  C3  -   F2  Eb3 F3  F2  Gb2 F2  C3  Eb3
Accent  A   .   .   .   A   .   .   .   A   .   A   .   .   .   A   .
Slide   .   .   S   .   .   .   S   .   .   S   .   .   .   .   S   .

The notes are written for Veena's synth basses, which sound an octave below the note you draw, so this line plays in the classic 303 register. Veena's Acid Bass is built the way the original works. A louder note opens the filter further, so the accents are just higher velocities in the piano roll's velocity editor. A note that overlaps the next one glides into it, so a slide is just a longer note. Its four macro knobs map to the classic controls: BRIGHTNESS is the cutoff, MOVEMENT the length of the squelch, BODY the drive and EDGE the resonance.

The acid move is a slow filter build. Split the acid clip every 8 bars with the cut tool, then turn BRIGHTNESS up a notch on each piece: every clip keeps its own knob settings, so across 32 bars the line opens from a murmur to a scream.

Texture: stabs, drones and dub

Techno uses melody sparingly, so texture does the talking. The sounds that carry it in Veena:

For the dub chord, try Fm7 voiced F–Ab–C–Eb, played on the "and" of 1 every other bar. With the Dub delay's long, dark repeats and a Cathedral reverb, one chord fills eight bars.

The rule of one change every 8 bars

A techno track is one loop, arranged by subtraction and addition. Every 8 bars, change exactly one thing:

• bring in a hat layer or take one out;
• open the acid filter a notch;
• mute the kick for the last beat of the phrase;
• add the ride, or move the clap to a rim;
• let the dub chord repeat, or hold it back;
• start a percussion loop, or drop the rumble for 8 bars and bring it back.

Change two at once and it sounds like a new song. Change nothing for 32 bars and the room gets bored. CoProducer's arrangement moves, dropouts, staggered entries and duplicates with variation, are built for exactly this, so "take the hats out for 8 bars at bar 97" is a request it understands.

Techno arrangement map

That is 208 bars, about 6 minutes 24 seconds at 130 BPM, the length a DJ expects.

Make techno with CoProducer

1. Open daw.veena.studio in Chrome or another modern browser and sign in with Google. No install and no graphics card needed: the AI runs on Veena's servers.
2. Give it the brief:

Make a 130 BPM peak-time techno track in F minor: TR909 kit with a four-on-the-floor kick, accented 16th closed hats, an open hat on every offbeat, a clap on 2 and 4 and a ride on the offbeats in the peak; a rolling Techno Sub on the last two 16ths of every beat, between the kicks; an Acid Bass line in F minor with accents and slides; a Dark Pad and a Drone for texture; a short Stab Lead minor-seventh chord every two bars with a dub delay; a percussion loop from the sample library. Intro 32 bars of kick and hats only, groove 32, acid 32, break 16 with the kick out, peak 64, outro 32 for DJs.

3. Watch the loop assemble. CoProducer sets the tempo and key, plans the six sections, and writes the kick, sub, hats, acid and textures as separate tracks. The sub reads the kick part actually placed, so it rolls in the gaps.
4. Pick your takes. Three options arrive for each new part; the percussion loop comes as ten preview cards. Anything built on a part waits until you have picked it.
5. Shape it. Open the Acid Bass clip and turn EDGE up for more scream, or ask in words.
6. Export a 24-bit/48 kHz WAV for your DJ software, or every track as stems for a live set. No watermark, no cap on exports, and the track is yours.

Requests that move a techno track forward:

• "Make the kick harder and move the clap to a rim for the first 32 bars of the peak."
• "Add a second hat layer on the offbeat 16ths from bar 129."
• "Put the Stab Lead chord through more dub delay and only play it every fourth bar."
• "Swap the kit to Chaos and push the whole groove to 138 BPM."

Mixing techno in Veena

Effects in Veena live on each clip, from ten built-ins plus your own plug-ins through the Veena Bridge. A techno chain, low end first:

• Kick. The Compressor's Drums preset tightens it; for industrial weight add Distortion on the Drive or Heavy preset and pull its Mix back until the kick crunches without losing its thump.
• Sub and rumble. Put Utility with Mono on both, so the low end stays centred in any club. On the 8-Band EQ, keep them below about 120 Hz with the high shelf down.
• Hats and ride. Accent with velocity, not volume. If the top end gets tiring, dip a peaking band around 8–10 kHz by a few dB.
• Acid. Leave it dry for bite, or add a Delay on the Ping Pong preset in the peak for width.
• Space. Long reverb belongs on the dub chord and the textures, never on the kick or sub.
• Balance. Ask CoProducer to measure the mix and even out the levels: it reads loudness and spectrum on any clip, track or the whole mix before it touches a fader.

Common techno mistakes

1. Too much melody. A full topline turns techno into trance. Keep hooks to a bar or two, or leave them out.
2. Changing too much at once. Two changes in one phrase break the trance. One change every 8 bars.
3. Kick and sub on the same 16th. They fight, and the kick loses its punch. Roll the sub after the kick.
4. Harsh hats. Loud, bright 16ths wear the ear out in a six-minute track. Shape them with velocity.
5. No intro for the DJ. Start with 32 bars of kick and hats.
6. Reverb on the low end. A washy kick or sub turns to mud on a club system.

Techno terms

Rumble: a dark, reverb-soaked low end tied to the kick. Rolling bass: short sub notes after each kick, filling the gaps. Acid: the squelching, resonant 303-style bassline. Accent: a louder note that opens the filter. Slide: a note that glides into the next. Dub chord: one short chord echoing into a long delay. Peak time: the hardest, busiest part of a club night, and the style made for it. DJ tool: a long, steady track built for mixing. Phrygian: a minor scale with a flattened second, G flat in F, the darkest colour in techno.

Techno styles to try next

• Detroit techno: 125–132 BPM, soulful chords on Filter Sweep or String Pad over a TR909 groove.
• Minimal: 125–128 BPM, sparse clicks, short Snap Pluck blips, almost no low end outside the kick and one sub note.
• Dub techno: 120–126 BPM, a Stab Lead chord into the Dub delay and a Cathedral reverb, soft hats, deep sub.
• Acid techno: 130–140 BPM, the Acid Bass line as the lead, EDGE near the top.
• Peak-time techno: 128–135 BPM, the rumble, the ride and the rule of one change.
• Industrial and hard techno: 135–150 BPM and up, the Chaos kit, Distortion on the kick, noise textures.
• Melodic techno: 122–128 BPM, a Reso Lead or Bright Saw Lead riff over Dark Pad, closer to how you make trance music.

Techno and house share a kick and a history; the difference is swing and chords, and how you make house music shows the other side. For every other style, see make music by genre.