Dub techno takes techno's steady four-on-the-floor pulse and buries it in dub's echo and space: a muted kick and soft hats, a deep warm sub-bass, and one short chord stab pushed through long delay and reverb until it echoes, repeats and slowly evolves. It is deep, foggy, patient and minimal. Here is what each part is and how they fit together.
Works in any DAW, with any synth, delay and reverb. Nothing here needs a particular plugin.
Dub techno is a deep, hypnotic, minimal style that fuses techno's steady four-on-the-floor with dub's space and echo, usually running around 120 to 130 BPM. It keeps techno's relentless pulse but slows the movement right down, then soaks everything in the long echo and wide space that dub is built on. The result is deep, foggy and patient, where a single chord stab echoing through delay can carry a whole track.
Set next to straight techno it is deeper, slower-moving, echo-soaked and minimal. Where a techno track drives forward on its groove and its stacked layers, dub techno mostly holds still and lets tiny changes in a filtered, echoing chord do the work. If you want the driving parent style first, there is a full guide to how to make techno; dub techno is what happens when you take that pulse and bury it in echo and space.
The sound is usually traced to the early 1990s and the Basic Channel and Chain Reaction circle in Berlin, though as with most genre origins the story is retold loosely and many hands were involved.
Most of what defines dub techno lives in a small set of parts:
| Element | Typical | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Tempo | 120 to 130 BPM | Steady and hypnotic, slower feeling than most techno |
| Kick | Muted four on the floor | A soft, steady anchor on every beat, never harsh |
| Hats | Soft and understated | Light offbeat ticks that keep time without pushing |
| Chord stab | Short, filtered, echoing | The signature: one stab sent through delay to repeat and evolve |
| Sub-bass | Deep and warm | A round low note that fills the bottom under everything |
| Space | Vast and foggy | Reverb, hiss and emptiness that make the track feel huge |
| Arrangement | Endless and minimal | Long and patient, moved by tiny changes not new sections |
The chord stab is the signature of dub techno: take a short, muted chord, usually a simple minor or seventh voicing, play it as a single stab on an offbeat, and send that one stab through long delay and reverb so it echoes, repeats and slowly evolves. It is not a held pad and not a busy riff, it is one short hit that the effects then stretch out into a living, breathing texture.
Keep the chord short and soft. A muted minor chord, a seventh, or a simple two or three note voicing is plenty, played staccato so it reads as a pulse rather than a sustained sound. Place it off the beat, often on the offbeats between the kicks, so it pushes against the steady four on the floor instead of landing with it. On its own it should sound almost too simple; the movement comes later, from the effects and the filter.
Most of the character comes from filtering the stab heavily and letting it sit low in the mix, buried in hiss and crackle. Roll the top off so it sounds warm and distant, lay tape noise, vinyl crackle or a bed of hiss underneath, and sweep the filter slowly open and closed across many bars so the same stab feels different each time it comes round. The grit and that slow filter movement are as much a part of the sound as the notes themselves.
Send the chord stab into a long tape or analog style delay with high feedback and a wide reverb, so a single hit turns into a train of echoes that repeat, blur together and trail off into the distance. In dub techno the delay and reverb are not a polish over a finished mix, they are where most of the sound actually lives, and the way you set and move them is the real instrument.
Echo is a delay effect: it repeats a sound a moment later, again and again as you raise the feedback, so one short stab becomes a rolling pattern of repeats. Set the delay long, often timed to the beat so the echoes fall in step with the groove, and push the feedback high so the repeats ring out for bars at a time. A tape-style delay is the classic choice, because each repeat comes back a little darker, warmer and more worn than the last, which is a large part of the dub techno feel.
Ride the feedback so the echoes build up and almost run away, then pull it back before it swamps everything. Put a filter on the delay or reverb return and sweep it slowly as the repeats ring, so the echoes get darker and stranger as they fade and never clutter the low end where the sub-bass sits. Because the same stab keeps coming back through the effects, small moves on the filter and the feedback are enough to make the whole track feel like it is slowly evolving.
Every change you make to the filter, the feedback or the reverb wants to happen slowly, over eight, sixteen or thirty-two bars. The stab and the echo stay the same; what moves is how open and how wet they are. That patient, barely there movement is what keeps a nearly static loop feeling alive instead of stuck.
Lay down a steady, muted four-on-the-floor kick with soft hats, a deep warm sub-bass and the echoing chord stab, then leave the loop running and let tiny changes carry the track rather than writing new sections. Dub techno arrangements are long, patient and minimal on purpose: the parts barely change, and the interest comes from slowly opening a filter, riding the echo, or dropping a layer out and back in.
The kick is a soft, muted four on the floor, one hit on every beat, felt more than heard and never harsh. Over it sit light, understated hats, usually a quiet offbeat tick that keeps time without pushing the groove. Underneath, a deep, warm sub-bass fills the bottom, a round low note or short pattern that locks to the kick and gives the track its weight. These three stay steady and simple; they are the bed the chord stab floats over.
Leave a lot of space. The emptiness, the reverb and the hiss are part of the sound, and the track should feel vast and foggy rather than full. Build the arrangement by adding and removing one element at a time over long stretches, sweeping filters slowly, and letting the echo and reverb do most of the moving. A dub techno track can run for many minutes on almost the same loop, and it works because the ear settles into the groove and then follows the tiny changes.
Loop the kick, the sub-bass and one echoing stab on their own and leave it playing for a few minutes. If those three lock together and pull you into the fog without boring you, the track will work, and everything else is small movement on top. If it bores you quickly, no amount of reverb will save it, and the fix is in the groove, the sub and the stab.
Most of a dub techno track is decisions you make by hand: the muted kick, the offbeat stab, the long echo, the slow filter sweeps. The genuinely fiddly part is making that chord stab sound worn, tape-soaked and slowly drifting rather than clean and digital, the aged echo texture the whole style rests on.
SILT is a generative tape-loop instrument. Feed a chord, a stab or a short phrase into it and it smears the sound with tape wow, flutter, echo, hiss and dropout, turning it into the deep, dubby, slowly evolving texture that dub techno is built on. It runs in the browser, or as an Audio Unit, a VST3, an AAX and a standalone.
It works on your own material, so the character comes from a sound you are allowed to use. It does not lay down your kick or write your sub-bass; it makes the aged, drifting chord layer that the rest of the track is arranged around.
Free to hear in the browser, no signup. Everything above still works by hand in any DAW, which is rather the point of writing it down.
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