PLP 081: How to Make a Tech House Track

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Today on the podcast we’re going to focus on tech house, a subgenre of house music that combines the minimal influences of techno with the grooviness of house music.   We’ll be picking apart what that means, providing some examples, and giving you a sneak peak of a work in progress.   Also, make sure you listen through to the end of the episode because I want to tell you about a terrific free opportunity you’re not going to want to miss.

The Producer Life Podcast is, “A must listen for music industry insight.  Great host that keeps things entertaining with intriguing questions and topics!”

GIO TN’s review on Apple Podcasts

You’ll Learn

  • How to use a reference track
  • Basics of the tech house genre
  • A philosophical perspective on shared samples

Resources

Transcript

What’s up Heroes, welcome to the Producer Life Podcast, episode 81.   Today we’re going to focus on Tech House, a subgenre of house music that combines the minimal influences of techno with the grooviness of house music.   We’ll be picking apart what that means, giving some examples, and giving you a sneak peak of a track I’m working on.   Also, make sure you listen through to the end of the episode because I want to tell you about a terrific free opportunity you’re not going to want to miss.

But first, cue the intro music.

Tech house is a subgenre of house music that take on some of the minimal influence of techo . You can hear some great examples by listening to Green Velvet, Fisher, Solardo, Patrick Topping, and Jamie Jones, or the playlist I’ve embedded on the show notes page. 

Start by finding a song you love from a popular commercial artist… maybe one of the ones I just listed..  Use that as your “reference track.” This is a critical step because that track will help with your arrangement, mixing, and finally mastering. 

Start by breaking the track appart. If you’re using Ableton live, drag the track into your DAW and then listen carefully to 8 bar sections at a time and label what’s going on with Locators.  You can also right click on the locator and add additional notes as needed in the info-text box.   Alternately, you can create an empty audio track under your reference track, then use empty audio clips to take notes.  For example, your empty audio clip might say, “Filtered kick & snare only” in a breakdown section.   Obviously you won’t copy their arrangement entirely, but it can give you ideas for which instruments to select, how they bring instruments in and out, how much reverb to apply, etc.  This process of breaking down their arrangement is a great way to learn and applies to any genre. 

For today’s podcast, we’re going to focus on three main elements: the percussion, the bassline, and the vocals. I’m going to make a bunch of generalizations… but remember that music is an art not a science so there aren’t many “right” or “wrong” answers.  Get creative and use your favorite artists for inspiration, not imitation.

Like house music, tech house is based on a “four to the floor” beat with 1 kick per bar.   Unlike House Music which frequently features boomy 808 kick drums, tech house likes the tighter, shorter kicks which sound more like this 

To make the kick pattern more interesting, you’ll frequently hear a skipped kick on the final bar of an 8 bar loop followed by an extra kick in the first bar of the next 8-bar loop. It sounds something like this.

Basically you move the last kick of the 8 bar loop into the first open 8th note of the next bar. You could also make that extra kick a “ghost kick” by dropping the volume about 5db and see how that sounds.  Doing this breaks up the monotony of a constant kick drum, without throwing the dance floor off too much.   Adding little flourishes like this every 4, 8, and 16 bars of a musical phrase works a bit like punctuation in a sentence: it helps the listener make sense of what you’re saying. If I were to keep talking with a continuous sentence and no punctuation like this it becomes very monotonous and difficult to listen to don’t you think this would be easier if I added some commas or perhaps a period at some point?

Once you’ve got your kick start to think about your bassline since they’ve got to work together. Tech house basslines often have shorter leaps between notes and are more minimal, and might feature quarter notes, 8th notes, dotted 8th notes (where you extend the note an extra 50%… or an 8th note plus a 16th note).   One quick way to get started is grab a tech house bassline from your favorite sample pack, pitch it up 12 semitones in Ableton, then right click and convert melody to MIDI.  This should give you a pretty good approximation of the notes. Slow the tempo down and ensure you get the notes right… then try adjusting the notes a little to taste. Add a little variety to several 8 bar loops so your baseline doesn’t get stale throughout, and pick a good synth bass patch from your favorite synthesizer.   Here’s a sample I selected from Loopcloud…… and here’s the final bassline I created using it as an example….

Make sure you’re listening to your bassline in conjunction with the kick and remember you’ll probably want to use some sidechain compression to move the bassline out of the way of the kick. 

Picking your samples is important to any genre.  I talked Loopcloud back in episode 28 which is my favorite place to get samples.  Loopcloud makes it super easy to find the right sound, organize your library, and most importantly audition every sound in the mix  using their VST.     Try sorting by genre and you can pick up plenty of ideas.  Or… don’t sort by genre just sort by key and see what crazy combinations you can come up with. Maybe your Tech House track needs Kazoo. I don’t know. Almost a decade a go who would have thought that some of our biggest chart topping EDM hits would combine country and folk elements like “Avicci’s Wake Me Up.”  Maybe polka-techno is next. 

So, I sorted Loopcloud for the Tech House genre and looked in percussion then picked a hi hat pattern which I felt complimented the track. I high-passed it to cut out the low frequencies so it didn’t conflict with the bass. I also added a hi-passed clap on the off beat.  When you’re adding claps or snares on top of a kick, sometimes those frequencies will pile up and trigger your limiter during mastering too early meaning you can’t get your mix as loud. Try offsetting the clap or snare a little before or after the kick. 

Vocals are some of the hardest things to get right in a mix, and unless you’re in a position to hire a vocalist to record an entire track for getting a whole song with multiple verses, chorus, backing vocals, and more is hard. Most sample packs don’t offer that.

Which makes Tech house easier in some senses. The vocals are often short and repetitive featuring simple phrases… just right for material from sample packs. I found one that immediately got stuck in my head, which is always a good sign, and I’ll try pitching it around and adding some automation to keep it from getting stale in the track.

Ok, philosophical tangent here: part of me felt bad about using vocals from sample packs. I felt like it was un-original, and I wonder what my audience might think if they heard the same sample on one of my tracks that they hear on someone else’s track.  Last week I was listening to some Tech House tracks on Spotify and I came across Get Down by Low Foam.  There’s an immediately recognizable sample (at least to me) that says, “And we’re all in this together, and you know that” which I remembered from a Yewz track called Unity. Did they both use the same sample? Did one of them sample the other? I have no idea but the point is it doesn’t matter.  The minute I heard that sample I felt an instant connection with the new  song and “liked it.”  Sampling other people’s tracks is a time-honored tradition (ideally legally by licencing the material through a site like TrackLib https://www.tracklib.com/ ) so on further reflection I don’t know that it’s a big deal if you wind up using the same vocal sample as someone else… it may even be helpful because it creates a connection in your listener’s minds with your song.  I’m all for originality, but I also love sampling, mashups, and remixes and all of those are based on using other people’s work creatively. 

One caveat: if you’re using samples and especially vocal hooks that are easily recognizable by algorithms, you shouldn’t be turning on YouTube or Facebook monetization with  your distributor as you’re likely to cause some copyright claim headaches as the algorithms struggle to figure out weather a song is yours or another artist’s when you’re both using a familiar hook. 

Ok, enough with the philosophical tangent. 

So, I’ve got a kick, bassline, percussion, and a vocal all in an 8 bar loop. Those are the core elements of a tech house track.  From there a lot of this is analyzing your reference track for arrangement and thinking about when you want elements to come in and out.  You could also add some chords and a melody, although those seem less important in Tech House than in something like Progressive House.   This is still a work in progress for me, but I’m liking it so far. 

Don’t forget to add some automation to keep thing interesting. Perhaps some EQ sweeps or filters opening and closing as a section of the song progresses, and add in some risers to signal the dance floor when you’re about to change things up. 

For the mixing part, the big thing is your reference track.  Listen to each element of the original track and see how loud the different elements are. Starting kicks off about -6db as the loudest part of the track is a good starting point, an then balance everything off of that.   Don’t forget to check how it sounds in mono, and ensure you’ve got some higher-end sounds distributed across the stereo spectrum for width.  Kick and bass should be right in the middle of your mix.  This should get you started. Throw a limiter on the master track to bring the volume up and you’re probably about 75% of the way there. 

I’ll probably have my track done this month and then try to schedule a release at the end of September, so make sure you follow me on Spotify or whatever music platform you prefer. 

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Ok, I promised a free opportunity and here it is: CD Baby’s DIY music conference is all virtual and entirely free from August 26-28… fewer than two weeks from now.  You can find details and register at diymusician.cdbaby.com.   I attended in person back in 2018 and really learned a lot, but I had to pay for a hotel, transportation, and drive to Nashville.  This is going to be cheaper and convenient.  Some of the topics include a spotify masterclass, pandora for creators, a talk on artist management, best practices for facebook and instagram, release strategies, building your brand with Amazon Music, artist randing, YouTube strategies, how to book yourself without an agent, and more. So… check it out. 

I also wanted to share some recent listener feedback which I REALLY appreciate:  Over on Apple Podcasts GIO TN says the Producer Life Podcast is , “A must listen for music industry insight.  Great host that keeps things entertaining with intriguing questions and topics!”

Thanks so much GIO TN, I really appreciate you listening and the time you took to leave a rating and review.  Reading stuff like this help motivate me to keep these episodes coming, and also helps other people find the podcast.    I’d love to feature YOUR review, just leave one wherever you’re listening to the podcast. 

Oh, last announcement: I’ve got a new mashup dropping on YouTube in two weeks and I released a remix of Tiesto’s the Business two weeks ago, so make sure you subscribe to my yhou Tube channel at YouTube.com/HouseNinjaMusic. It’s the best places to listen to all my originals as well as my remixes, mashups, and livestreams. 

Until next time, this is the House Ninja reminding you to be somebody’s Hero today.

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