Techno is a small number of parts locked to a relentless beat: a driving four-on-the-floor kick, a sub or rumble underneath, off-beat hats and syncopated percussion, a rolling or stabby bassline, and long pads and drones over the top. It is built on hypnotic repetition and slow evolution rather than big song changes. Here is what each part is and how they fit.
Works in any DAW, with any drum sounds and any synth, hardware or software. Nothing here needs a particular plugin.
Techno is a driving four-on-the-floor kick, usually around 125 to 135 BPM, built on hypnotic repetition and slow evolution rather than verses and choruses. The mood tends to be darker and more mechanical than house, and the movement over a track comes from gradual changes to a few looping parts, not from new sections arriving. Take the atmosphere and the slow builds away and you have a plain kick pattern; put them back and it reads as techno.
The ingredients are consistent from track to track. Get them locked together first, then the style you build on top is mostly a matter of which parts you lean on:
| Part | Typical | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Tempo | 125 to 135 BPM | The techno range, driving but not frantic |
| Kick | Four on the floor | One hit on every beat, the relentless anchor |
| Sub or rumble | Under the kick | A low tail or sub that gives the kick weight and drive |
| Off-beat hats | Between the kicks | Closed hats on the offbeats to push the groove forward |
| Percussion | Syncopated | Toms, rims, shakers and noise for movement and swing |
| Bassline | Rolling or stabby | A short low figure locked to the kick |
| Pads and drones | Long and evolving | Sustained textures that set the mood on top |
Techno is really a family, not one sound, and the branches differ mostly in mood and in which of these parts they push forward. A few of the common ones:
| Subgenre | What changes | Feel |
|---|---|---|
| Dub techno | Heavy echo and reverb on stabbed chords | Deep and spacious |
| Minimal | Stripped to very few elements, tiny changes | Hypnotic and sparse |
| Industrial | Harsh, distorted, noisy and metallic | Aggressive and mechanical |
| Melodic | Emotive pads and arpeggios pushed forward | Warm and atmospheric |
| Acid | A squelchy TB-303 line over the kick | Raw and hypnotic |
| Detroit | Warmer chords and machine funk, the original strain | Soulful and futurist |
If the harder, squelchier end is the sound you are after, there is a full guide to making acid techno, which goes deeper on the 303 line that defines it.
Start with a relentless four-on-the-floor kick and let a sub or a low rumble sit under it, add off-beat hats and syncopated percussion for the groove, and write a short rolling or stabby bassline that locks to the kick. The kick and the bass share the low end, so most of the work is keeping them out of each other's way.
One kick on every quarter note is the engine of the track. In techno it usually wants to be weighty and a little longer than a house kick, with a low tail or a separate sub that rumbles underneath and carries the drive. Keep it steady and do not let it change much; it is the anchor everything leans against, and the reason the groove feels relentless rather than busy. If the low end turns to mud, shorten the tail or duck the sub slightly under each hit.
Put closed hats on the offbeats, the sixteenths between the kicks, to drive the groove forward, and an open hat on an offbeat when a section needs lift. The character then comes from syncopated percussion around the core beat: toms, rims, shakers, claps and short bursts of noise, placed off the main beats so they add movement and swing without crowding the kick. A little swing or a slightly late offbeat keeps it from feeling stiff and gridded.
A techno bassline is short, repeated and locked to the kick, sitting in the gaps around it rather than on top of it. Two common shapes: a rolling bass that runs steady sixteenths under the groove for momentum, or a stabby bass that hits a few syncopated notes and leaves space. Keep it in one register so the low end stays clear, and place the notes just off the kick so the two interlock instead of colliding. There is little harmonic movement, so the bass often sits on one or two notes and lets rhythm do the work.
The atmosphere comes from long pads, drones and industrial textures laid over the groove, with very little harmonic movement so nothing pulls the ear away from the loop. This layer is what gives techno its darker, mechanical mood, and it is where a lot of the identity of a track lives.
Techno usually stays on one chord or one drone for a long time, so the harmony is a bed rather than a progression. A drone is a single sustained note or chord held under everything, and it is a large part of that bed of sound; the guide to making a drone sound covers how to build one that keeps moving slowly without ever really changing key. Pads work the same way: hold them long, filter them slowly, and let them evolve over many bars instead of resolving.
Over the top of that bed sit the noises that make techno feel machine-made: metallic clangs, distorted hits, filtered noise, field recordings and short atmospheric stabs, often drenched in reverb and delay. These do not need to be in tune or on a scale; they are texture, placed to add tension and space. Distortion and saturation on the drums and the textures are a common way to push the harder, more industrial mood, and reverb and echo on a stab are the dub techno move that opens the sound out.
Techno tracks are long and repetitive on purpose, so you arrange by building and stripping elements with automation and filter sweeps over many bars, rather than by writing new sections. The core loop mostly stays the same; what moves is which layers are playing and how open the filters are.
The repetition is the point, not a problem to solve. A loop runs long enough that the ear stops counting and settles into the groove, and that hypnotic state is what the slow changes then play with. If everything moves at once there is nothing steady to hear the movement against, and the track reads as fidgety rather than deep.
Loop the kick, the rumble and the bassline on their own and leave it playing for a minute. If those three already lock together and pull you in, the track will work, and the pads and textures are what you build on top. If it bores you before the minute is up, no amount of filter sweeping or reverb will save it, and the fix is in the groove and the bass.
Everything above is a set of decisions you can make by hand, and it is worth learning to make them. The slow part is the writing itself: finding a rolling or stabby low figure that locks to your kick and grooves, then getting it into the track as notes you can still edit.
REHEAT is a writing tool that generates the part for you. It writes the rolling basslines that drive a techno track, and the hypnotic acid lines the harder end is built on. Find a pattern you like and you have two ways to use it: drag the MIDI straight onto a track in your DAW, or play it live through your own synth with the REHEAT MIDI DRIVER, locked to your kick. Either way the notes are yours to keep, to change the key, the sound or the timing later.
That is the point of writing the part rather than printing the audio. A bassline is worth more as notes than as a recording, because the notes survive every later decision about the sound and the arrangement.
Free to hear in the browser, no signup. It runs as an Audio Unit, a VST3 and an AAX. Everything above still works by hand in any DAW too, which is rather the point of writing it down.
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