OK, so I have a tenancy to be the type that gets lost in a projects, over complicates things, layers tracks upon tracks, til I get to the point of not being happy and too far down the rabbit hole to fix it, so projects get abandoned more often than not.

Having recently had this moment of self reflection and realisation, I am looking to uninstall tons of plugins to the bare bones, and I am looking for some inspiration on a stripped down but functional approach.

I use Ableton to make electronic music, mainly techno, but sometimes stray into tech house. I am just looking for some inspiration on a solid, minimal setup to focus my attention and limit my procrastination and/or my seeking perfectionism.

For the producers who make techno and/or tech house, what are your setups or recommended setups?

I am mainly seeking some inspiration on things like instruments and effects, but primarily stripping down track counts, how many of what type of track, how you set up your tracks, and so on.

Cheers in advance you awesome community!

 

You need deadlines. Your issue is not with tech house, it has everything to do with lack of experience. Read this, is pretty much the explanation and offers the solution to your problem:

https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/rnra11

 

Deadlines really pushed me into following my gut feeling and feeling happy with "good enough" stuff, so much I went from over perfection to utter simplicity, than finding perfect balance, realizing how much I really know and how much I suck, than patch things I feel I'm missing so I can work with my gut feeling. I don't mind to spend whole day categorizing my presets, samples and whatever I need to work like that, demo tools that I can pull out and be happy with the outcome.

I'm aware some of the genres sound over polished and you don't feel excited to work on your track if it doesn't really excite you, but if you are aware you can reach that level, put the track to it's paces, it's not like putting cart before the horse, it's going there, finding perfect reverb doesn't really take much from it if you know you will eventually nail it, but demo-ing plugins on the go can ruin your creative process, priorities.

You are artist first and foremost, not mixing engineer, in organized work place you are not going to do everything there, so pick your hats as you go, first make music, than arrangement, than focus on production, there you can jump between mixing and production, I know modern music break all the rules of the pop music making craft, but it's not that far off, if you don't have main theme or motif or whatever, making some ultra groovy beat is just going to leave you with some loop that doesn't have anything to work with, pick drums that doesn't annoy you and write your music with it, than go back into rabbit hole if you feel track needs it, finding perfect hi hat right away is really useless if you don't have anything valuable there.

Bitwig was the tool to get me in right mindset, would mess with clips until I have idea for the the arrangement, than would just play live with it, trying to get right flow of the track, think everything I did last few years was recorded live and than edited in arrangement, I do make melodic techno and progressive, getting into live zone is the key, simple breaks, transitions, I would even put Endless Smile as end all effect and never replace it at all, pick one algorithm and focus on getting most out of it, if there's need for Simplon, map that to my controller and just do as much as I can live, I don't hear majority are doing anything different, simplicity is the key.

 

Last edited: Mar 10, 2023

we all know that "producer" is the only hat one needs to wear in 2023, as it encompasses ALL AND EVERYTHING involved in making music....according to little kids on youtube

 

all you need is copy your boss. I mean listen listen and listen major artists in your target genre and try to reproduce the cake with your mind and your hands (not the feet of course). You can do it and it's not easy but all is posible in this fucking planet so please enjoy!

This is one of my playlist for peace and freedom in the world for INSPIRATION bro' and it's free 'n no issues:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/05eC3fRUaaP8UJw3X0CFLI?si=3253a334b4ec4b6a

*$*