Techno Chord Sound Tutorial

Techno is a genre that emerged during the past decades as a part of a growing electronic music scene. Well known for its repetitiveness and strong accent on the rhythm, it quickly captured the attention of a worldwide audience. We could say that this genre originated in Detroit - USA, in the late 1980s through a palette of artists, including Carl Craig and Derrick May, to mention a few. The rhythmical structure of techno is commonly based on a 4/4 beat, where time is marked with a bass drum on each quarter note pulse, a backbeat played by snare or clap on the second and fourth pulses of the bar, and an open hi-hat is sounding every second eighth note.  

Techno Chord 101

Generally speaking, a famous techno chord or stab is a cautious sound used a lot in early techno tunes, as well as in the present; one of the trademark characteristics is its use of jazz-influenced minor and major seven chords, helping to give tracks a strong chord-led feel. In the following tutorial, I will show you how to create it with little effort in Massive by Native Instruments.  

Let's Start Creating

After inserting a new instance of Massive into a MIDI channel in SoundBridge, I will select a new preset. Our sound will be based on a Saw-tooth waveform. It will also consist of 3 oscillators so that I will engage all 3 of them. I won't change the pitch of the first oscillator. However, in the second one, I will increase it by three semitones. Also, the pitch will be increased by seven semitones on the third oscillator. Let's listen to what I've made so far.

~ 3 raw oscillators

Let's engage a filter and modulate its cutoff parameter with an oscillator envelope. I will do this by dragging and dropping the cursor icon of the envelope section onto the first empty modulation slot under the cutoff parameter in the filter section.

Lastly, let's add a built-in Reverb to our chord sound. Consequently, it will be accompanied by a reasonable amount of Delay. I encourage you to experiment not only with different waveforms of the oscillators but also with filters and perhaps even distortion. In the end, let's listen to the results first on solo and then with the previously made rhythm section.

~Techno Chord solo

~Techno Chord with Rhythm