Producing Hard Techno in Ableton

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About Course

Producing Hard Techno in Ableton gives you a complete workflow for building release-ready tracks. Learn to craft the core elements: punchy kicks, locked-in bass, layered percussion grooves, and the signature sounds that define the genre. Classic Hoover stacks, 303-style acid lines, aggressive midrange, and processed vocals all get detailed breakdowns. Structure your tracks using proper hard techno arrangement techniques with 4, 8, and 24-bar blocks. Use fills, risers, reverses, and automation to control tension across intros, breakdowns, buildups, and drops.

Mix and master for commercial loudness. Carve space between kick and bass, balance your buses, and use saturation and limiting to hit competitive LUFS while keeping clarity. By the end, you’ll have a finished hard techno track and a repeatable system for producing hard techno that works on every release.

What You’ll Learn
  • Shape a hard techno kick and glue it with bass using EQ, saturation, compression, and sidechain
  • Layer hats, rides, claps, and breakbeats for momentum and grit
  • Design a lead in Serum, then build classic Hoover stacks and variations
  • Create a cutting 303-style acid line with filtering, distortion, and delay
  • Produce atmospheric opera pads, gated rhythms, vocal tags, and chops
  • Arrange intros, breakdowns, buildups, first and second drops, and an outro that lands
  • Mix for impact by carving kick vs. bass, balancing buses, taming mids, and adding width
  • Master for loud, club-ready results while watching gain reduction and distortion
Meet Your Instructor

Proper Villains, also known as Jonathan Shulman, is a New York based DJ, producer, and multi-instrumentalist known for an aggressive yet accessible sound rooted in NYC club culture. His catalog spans releases on labels such as Southern Fried, Nightshifters, Flamin’ Hotz, and Play Me, plus official remixes for artists including Enrique Iglesias, Dev, Havana Brown, Pitbull, Lil Jon, Far East Movement, Roger Seventytwo, and Childish Gambino. He has shared lineups with LA Riots, 12th Planet, Nadastrom, Borgore, and Caspa, and brings decades of real-world experience to his teaching at SoundCollective.

Is This Course for You?

If you want a start-to-finish system for modern hard techno that actually translates in a club, this course is for you. You should be comfortable with basic DAW navigation and eager to build heavier sounds, stronger arrangements, and louder, cleaner mixes. Producers from adjacent styles such as techno, breaks, bass music, or electro will also find a fast path to bigger drums, tighter low end, and aggressive but musical synth work.

What’s Included
  • 20 structured lessons from kick design to mix and master
  • Practical sound design for Hoovers, acid, and midrange bass
  • Vocal workflows for tags, chops, and atmospheric layers
  • Arrangement playbook for intros, buildups, drops, and outros
  • Mix and loudness strategies for club translation
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What Will You Learn?

  • Build a hard-hitting techno low-end by designing a professional kick, rumble, and bassline that work together without muddying the mix.
  • Create expressive synth leads (Hoovers, acid lines, supporting leads) through sound design techniques using oscillators, filters, envelopes, distortion, and modulation.
  • Shape and process drums with transient control, saturation, EQ, and bus processing to achieve a clean, punchy, club-ready rhythm section.
  • Work with vocals creatively, from atmospheric pads to rhythmic chops and fills, using warping, slicing, delays, and filtering.
  • Arrange a full techno track, including drops, buildups, breakdowns, transitions, and high-energy moments using call-and-response techniques.
  • Use automation effectively to evolve synths, bass, filters, reverbs, and transitions throughout the arrangement.
  • Perform a full mixdown by balancing levels, carving frequency space, managing stereo width, and ensuring clarity between the kick, bass, and leads.
  • Apply simple, modern mastering tools (limiters, tonal shaping, saturation, multiband compression) to achieve commercial loudness and finish the track.

Course Content

Drums and Bass
Building the foundation of the track by designing a powerful kick and bass combination from the ground up. You’ll shape low-end tone, punch, and weight while learning how to layer drums, control dynamics, and lock the groove before moving on to melodic elements.

  • Kick
    07:57
  • Bassline
    11:57
  • Drums
    09:17
  • Breakbeat
    06:30

Synths and Leads
Develop the main musical identity of the track by creating aggressive leads, acid lines, and supporting synths. Covers sound selection, synthesis, distortion, filtering, and modulation, showing how to design bold, evolving sounds that cut through the mix and drive energy.

Vocals and Pads
Explores texture and atmosphere through vocal processing and pad creation. You’ll learn how to chop, warp, gate, and filter vocals, build harmonic pads, and use EQ, effects, and automation to add movement and depth without cluttering the mix.

Arrangement
Assemble all elements into a complete techno track. You’ll structure buildups, drops, breakdowns, and transitions, then finish with a practical mixdown and loudness-focused master, preparing the track for club play and professional release.

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