Ableton Techno Drum Sound Design with Operator

In this lesson we will look to build a kick drum, which is the foundation of techno, this will provide the heavy pulse that help drive tracks forwards, getting the kick right can make the production process a lot easier.

We will be looking at the key components of some classic kick drums and from there looking to create our own from scratch using Ableton's operator which is an amazing FM synth perfect for drum synthesis.

Also, we will look at some processing, creating instrument racks and adding effective macros, so you can just load this preset in and make some quick tweaks and you have the perfect kick drum for any track.

Claps are one of my favorite sounds, I think from an early age we learn clapping to be a good thing and every time I hear one it makes me smile. Moving away from recording a natural clap there are many effective ways to create a clap. And we will see how an electronic clap like the classic, 909 and 808s differ from you just clapping.

To add some support to our other drums the snare is a perfect choice, either as part of your main beat on the 2 and 4 or fill.

For the snare, we will be looking at the classics and looking to recreate these sounds using operator and instrument snapshots. We will also look at programming our midi, to compliment our idea. We will also look at using Ableton’s audio effect to further enhance the sound.

We will look at creating two types of hihats across two videos. In the first video we will make a noise hihat, and in the second video a metallic hihat. Operator is perfect for this as it has a few noise options.

With our simple noise hat in place, let's look at using more modulation to create a metallic hihat. Both these sounds will be the basis of our cymbals in a later video.

Lets start adding some nice percussive hits. We will look to create some classic drum percussion as well as some more outlandish sounds.

Toms are a great way to add a bit off bounce to your groove, there are many different classic toms that we look to recreate using similar methods to our kick but this time we can go a bit more experimental with it.

At this stage we are starting to build our kit, we will also see what is missing from the general midi

When loading our sounds into the drum racks we noticed that we are missing two key componants of a drum kit, and that's a ride and crash cymbal. We will use a mixer of techniques from our previous videos to recreate the hardest sound to make on this course.

With our ride and crash sorted we can finish loading in our final sounds. We will also look at recreating some drum rack macros to make it really easy to tweak and morph our kit.

To finish our drum rack we will look to mix each element using a range of audio effects.