Tech House

Short, dry, punchy kick (Drum Sampler + Drum Buss)

The tech house kick is shorter than a techno kick and tighter than a house kick: a clear click, a fast pitch drop and a body that is gone by the time the offbeat sub arrives. Start from a sample, not a synth; the Drum Sampler (12.1+) gives you decay, pitch and transient control without leaving the Drum Rack.

1. Drop a clean 909-style or acoustic-ish kick sample into a Drum Rack pad; it becomes a Drum Sampler. Set Decay so the tail ends around 200–250 ms at 128 BPM (one 16th is 117 ms, so the kick should be silent before the second 16th note after it).
2. Use the Punch control for the click; if the sample is dull, add Noise at a few percent with a short decay instead of boosting highs with EQ.
3. Tune the kick with Pitch so the fundamental lands on the root or fifth of your track (check with Spectrum: a 55 Hz fundamental is A1). Keep the Sub module off; the offbeat sub bass will provide low end.
4. EQ Eight: high-pass at 30 Hz (24 dB/oct), a gentle 60 Hz bell to define the fundamental, a −3 dB cut around 300 Hz to remove boxiness.
5. Drum Buss: Drive low (5–15%), Transients +15 to +25 to sharpen the attack, Boom left at 0 because the sub handles that range.

Offbeat sub bass (Operator sine + Note Length)

The defining tech house move: the sub plays on the offbeat 8ths, between the kicks, so the low end bounces instead of smearing. It should be nearly pure sine with a tiny bit of harmonic colour so it reads on small speakers.

1. Operator, algorithm with A and B in parallel (rightmost). Osc A sine at 0 dB, Osc B sine with Coarse 2 at about −30 dB: a whisper of second harmonic so the note has a locatable pitch.
2. Amp envelope: Attack 3 ms, Decay 400 ms, Sustain 0.6, Release 60 ms. The release is short so notes never overlap the next kick.
3. Program notes on every offbeat 8th (steps 3, 7, 11, 15 of a 16-step grid). Keep them one octave below the kick's fundamental region, typically F0–A0 (44–55 Hz).
4. Add a MIDI Note Length device before Operator set to a fixed length so you can tune gate length from one dial without editing clips; 160–200 ms is the pocket at 128 BPM.
5. Saturator Soft Sine, 3–5 dB drive: adds the 2nd/3rd harmonics that let the sub exist on a phone speaker.

Rolling mid bass hook (Drift)

Above the sub, tech house often has a 16th-note rolling bass in the 90–300 Hz zone with a filter that opens and closes to make the hook. Drift's MS2 filter and its built-in drift give the slightly unstable analogue feel without any extra devices.

1. Drift, Mono voice mode, Legato on, Glide 20 ms. Osc 1 Saw, Osc 2 Rectangle one octave down at about −8 dB for weight. Drift amount 15–25% for analogue wobble.
2. Filter MS2, 24 dB/oct, cutoff around 300 Hz, resonance 20%. Envelope 2 to cutoff +40%, Decay 180 ms, so every note has a small "wah".
3. Amp envelope: A 1 ms, D 150 ms, S 0.3, R 30 ms. Short and plucky; the groove comes from gaps, not from sustain.
4. Program a one-bar riff of 16ths with 3–5 rests and velocity between 70 and 115; map velocity to filter cutoff in Drift's mod matrix (+20%) so accents open the filter.
5. Place the riff an octave above the sub and high-pass at 70 Hz: the sub owns everything below.

Variations: use Analog with Quick Routing "Osc → Filter 1 → Amp 1" and Filter 1 set to the OSR-ish 24 dB low pass for a warmer, more Chicago-leaning tone; or swap Drift for Meld's Dual Saw engine with a slow LFO on the Scrambler for a modern, slightly grainy version.

Layered clap with 909 snare body

Tech house claps are a layered object: a 909 clap for the spread, a short snare for the body, a filtered noise burst for width. Build it as a single pad in a Drum Rack with nested chains so one note triggers all three.

1. Three samples in one pad: 909 clap, 808 or acoustic snare body at −6 dB, a noise burst. Group them into an instrument rack inside the pad.
2. Tune the snare so its ring sits around 180–220 Hz, under the clap's 1–2 kHz spread.
3. Noise chain: Simpler with a white noise sample, amp decay 80–100 ms, filter HP at 2 kHz, Utility Width 140% so this layer widens the clap while the other two stay centred.
4. Glue Compressor after the rack, 4:1, attack 1 ms, release 100 ms, Range off, soft clip on: glues the three layers into one transient.
5. Short, bright reverb: Hybrid Reverb Quartz, decay 0.8 s, pre-delay 10 ms, 10–15% wet, with the low cut in the reverb's EQ at 500 Hz.

Rolling percussion loop (shaker, conga, rim) with Groove Pool

Percussion is where tech house earns its "rolling" adjective. The method is a 2-bar loop with three or four percussive voices at different velocities, a Groove applied at 50–60%, and a few notes deliberately off the grid.

1. Shaker on every 8th with accents on the offbeats (velocity 100 vs 60). Apply a groove from Live's Groove Pool (MPC 16 Swing 58 or Logic 16 at 55%) at Timing 100%, Random 5%, Velocity 30%.
2. Congas: two pitches, mostly bar 2 variations. Use Impulse rather than a Drum Rack when you want the per-slot transient/decay/filter controls in one view; Impulse's Stretch and Decay per slot are perfect for tightening conga samples.
3. Rim: ghost notes at velocity 25–40, panned 30% left. They should be felt, not heard.
4. Ride or open hat on the offbeat doubled with the sub so the top end mirrors the low end bounce.
5. Group all percussion, apply a Drum Buss with Drive 15%, Crunch 10% and the Damp control around 8 kHz, then a very short Hybrid Reverb (Convolution room, 0.4 s, 8%) on a send for cohesion.

Pitched vocal chop hook (Simpler Slice + Auto Shift)

The one-word vocal hook (a shouted "yeah", a spoken phrase, a filtered diva line) is the tech house equivalent of a lead. Chop it in Simpler's Slice mode, play it as a pattern, and use Auto Shift (12.1) to pin it to the key.

1. Drop an a cappella phrase into Simpler, Slice mode, Transient sensitivity around 60%, so each syllable gets its own pad. Playback mode Mono, Fade 2 ms.
2. Play 2–4 slices in a 1-bar rhythmic pattern, mostly offbeat 16ths, with one slice repeated as a stutter at the end of bar 4 (use Note Echo or draw it).
3. Auto Shift set to your track's scale, Amount 70–90%, Speed fast, so random pitch chops snap to notes without becoming a robot; add a little LFO vibrato for the house-diva feel.
4. High-pass at 180 Hz; the vocal sits above the bass. A −3 dB bell at 2.5 kHz tames harshness after the chop.
5. Echo on dotted 8ths with the Ducking engaged so the echoes only appear in the gaps.

Filtered organ/chord stab (Electric or Analog)

Tech house stabs are short, filtered and mostly there to mark the bar. Electric gives you an organ-ish bite with its Fork/Tone controls; Analog gives the classic M1-style saw stab.

1. Analog: Osc 1 Saw, Osc 2 Saw detuned +6 cents, both into Filter 1 (LP 24) at 900 Hz with the filter envelope at 40% and a 120 ms decay for a bite at the start.
2. Amp envelope A 2 ms, D 200 ms, S 0, R 150 ms. Play a minor 7th or sus2 voicing, root doubled an octave down, and trigger it on the offbeat of beat 2 and the 16th before beat 4, nothing else.
3. Chorus-Ensemble in Ensemble mode at 20–30% for that chorused rack-synth width; keep the width below 100% so it does not collide with the percussion.
4. Compressor with the kick in the sidechain input, 4:1, attack 1 ms, release 80 ms: the stab ducks hard against the kick so it never competes.

Variations: Electric with Fork set bright and a Drum Buss in front of the Auto Filter gives a gritty organ stab; for the "filtered disco" variant, load a chord sample into Simpler and automate the Simpler filter over 16 bars.

Transitions: noise risers, reverse crash, tape stop

Tech house transitions are restrained: a white-noise sweep over 8 bars, a reversed crash, a filtered loop with increasing delay feedback. Overdoing them pushes the track toward EDM.

1. Wavetable with a Noise category table on Osc 1, amp sustain 1. Hold one note for 8 bars.
2. Automate Auto Filter high-pass cutoff from 100 Hz to 8 kHz over the 8 bars with an exponential curve, then cut the note on the downbeat.
3. Auto Pan-Tremolo (12.3) in Tremolo mode at 1/16 synced, 40% depth, so the riser pulses with the grid.
4. Reverse crash: bounce a crash with reverb, reverse the clip, place it ending exactly on the drop. Resample instead of using a stock sample.
5. Tape stop: Simpler with a 1-bar loop of your own drums, Warp off, automate Transpose down 24 st over one beat.