Genres
What defines each genre sonically, and the techniques that get you there in Live 12.
Deep Techno
Hypnotic, low-lit 4/4 at 125–132 BPM — rolling kicks, sub-rumble, filtered stabs and long evolving textures built for the dark room.
Dub Techno
Chord-and-delay techno at 118–128 BPM — soft kicks, deep sub, one filtered minor chord fed through endless tape-style delays and reverb, built from Basic Channel onward.
Industrial Techno
Distorted, noisy, broken-machine techno at 130–145 BPM — crushed kicks, feedback rumble, metallic percussion, noise sweeps and screaming resonances built with Roar, Saturator, Corpus and feedback loops.
Hard Techno & Hardcore
145–200 BPM kick-driven music — distorted, pitched, tonal kicks, off-beat bass, screeching leads, rave stabs and hoovers, from schranz and modern hard techno to gabber and uptempo.
Minimal House
Stripped, swung, micro-detailed 4/4 at 122–128 BPM — tight kick, rubbery sub, clicky percussion, one hook and a lot of negative space.
Deep House
Warm, jazzy, chord-led 4/4 at 118–125 BPM — soft kick, round bass, Rhodes-style 7th and 9th chords, swung hats, filtered pads and soulful vocal fragments.
Tech House
Rolling 125–130 BPM club music built on a tight kick, a sub that answers it, shuffled percussion and one hooky bass or vocal phrase — how to build every part in Live 12.
UK Garage
2-step and 4x4 garage at 130–138 BPM — shuffled drums, pitched vocal chops, organ bass and sub that skips — built from Live 12 devices.
Dubstep
140 BPM half-time with a snare on 3, a sub that is the lead instrument and mid basses that growl, wobble and tear — the full Live 12 toolkit from Operator sines to Roar feedback.
Deep Dubstep
Sound-system dubstep at 140 — sine sub as the melody, slow FM wubs, phrygian lines, skanks, sirens, reverb-drenched snares and space as the main tension device, built in Live 12 for dubplate-style dynamics rather than loudness.
UK Bass / 140
The 130–140 BPM zone between garage, grime and dubstep — swung drums, square-wave subs, percussive bass riffs and dub space — with Live 12 recipes for the hybrid "UK bass" and modern 140 sounds.
Grime
140 BPM, 8-bar switches, square-wave subs, eski stabs, gunshot snares and empty space for an MC — the grime toolkit in Live 12, from Operator squares to Drum Rack one-shots.
Trap
Half-time 808-driven hip-hop at 130–160 BPM (65–80 felt) — booming tuned 808s, rolling triplet hats, snappy snares, dark pluck/bell melodies and sparse, wide atmospheres.
Drill
UK/NY/Chicago drill in Live 12 — sliding 808s, triplet hats, the 3-3-2 kick/snare skeleton, dark minor-key melodies and the half-time swagger that makes it sit at 140.
Phonk
Memphis phonk and drift phonk in Live 12 — cowbell melodies, distorted 808s, chopped-and-screwed vocals, lo-fi tape grit and the clipped, overdriven master that defines the modern sound.
Drum & Bass
Drum & bass in Live 12 — the 2-step kick/snare skeleton at 174, layered breaks, Reese and sub basslines, liquid chords and the mix discipline that keeps 170 BPM clean.
Jungle & Breakbeat
Jungle and breakbeat in Live 12 — Amen/Think chopping with Simpler Slice and Drum Racks, re-pitched breaks, ragga stabs, dub sub bass, timestretch artefacts and the 160–170 BPM breakbeat science.
Neurofunk
Neurofunk in Live 12 — resampled Operator/Roar/Shifter bass chains, layered sound-designed drums at 174, the resample-chop-resample loop and the mix discipline that keeps a wall of mid-range from eating the snare.
Halftime & Footwork
Halftime and footwork in Live 12 — 160–175 BPM drums that feel like 80, 808 subs with long decays, triplet hat programming, footwork sample chops with Simpler Slice and Recombine, and the arrangement logic of two genres that share a tempo but not a groove.
Ambient
Long-form, slowly evolving sound: drones, granular clouds, generative sequences and huge spaces — how to build them in Live 12 and keep them alive for twenty minutes.
Dub Reggae
The mixing-desk-as-instrument genre: one-drop and steppers drums, heavy melodic bass, skank, and the spring/tape-delay performance that turns a riddim into a version — built in Live 12 with sends, Echo and the performance rack.
Trip-Hop & Downtempo
Slow, dusty, cinematic beats: lazy swung breaks, vinyl-worn samples, sub-heavy bass, noir chords and dub space — the Live 12 recipes for the Bristol-to-everywhere sound.
IDM & Glitch
Micro-edited drums, digital artefacts as instruments, melodies that are too pretty for the beats under them — Live 12 recipes for the Warp/Rephlex/Mille Plateaux lineage, from Beat Repeat abuse to generative MIDI tools.
Electro
Electro in Live 12 — 808-style drum synthesis with Operator and Drum Sampler, syncopated 16th-note programming at 125–135, vocoder and robot vocals, Analog/Drift basslines, and the dry, mono-centred mix of the Detroit and European electro lineage.
Breaks & Big Beat
120–140 BPM chopped breakbeats, layered and crunched through Drum Buss, with huge distorted basses, rock-sized snares and sample-stabs — nu skool breaks and 90s big beat as Live 12 recipes built on Simpler Slice and Drum Rack.
Lo-fi Hip-Hop
Dusty, swung, pitch-wobbling beats built from degraded samples, soft drums and tape-style processing — the full Live 12 recipe set.
Boom-Bap
Hard, swung, sample-driven hip-hop drums and chops — MPC/SP-1200 grit recreated with Drum Rack, Simpler, Redux and Groove Pool in Live 12.
Hyperpop
Maximal, pitched-up, clipped-to-death pop — Auto Shift vocals, Roar-crushed 808s, glitter arps and brutal transient contrast in Live 12.
Synthwave
80s-inspired analog nostalgia — gated-reverb drums, Analog/Drift basslines, brass stabs, arps and chorus-drenched pads built entirely in Live 12.
Psytrance
138–148 BPM full-on and progressive psytrance — the rolling 16th-note bass that is the whole genre, its exact relationship to the kick, FM and acid leads, squelches, risers and the 8-minute arrangement, as Live 12 recipes.
Afro House & Amapiano
110–124 BPM South African and pan-African house — the amapiano log drum from Operator and Drift sines with a pitch envelope and Saturator, layered tribal percussion, shakers, jazzy piano chords, and the long, patient arrangements, as Live 12 recipes.
Post-Punk, Darkwave & Coldwave
Melodic high bass, cold drum machines, gated separated drums, chorused guitars and square-wave synths, baritone vocals in slapback — the Live 12 recipes for post-punk, darkwave, coldwave and the modern revival.
Shoegaze, Dream Pop & Post-Rock
Walls of fuzz and reverse reverb, glide-bent chords, buried vocals, washed cymbals and 12-minute crescendos — how to build shoegaze, dream pop and post-rock in Live 12, with or without a guitar.
Industrial, EBM, Noise & Power Electronics
Machine rhythm, metal and voltage — Live 12 recipes for sequenced EBM bass, body-music drums, sampled scrap-metal percussion, stacked distortion, harsh noise walls, distorted-megaphone vocals and safe mastering of content designed to hurt.
Experimental, Musique Concrète, Drone & Sound Art
Schaeffer’s tape techniques mapped onto clips and Simpler, Reich-style phasing, granular and spectral composition, just-intonation drones, generative and aleatoric systems, extreme time-stretch and the practicalities of installations and fixed-media performance in Live 12.