How to make Birmingham techno… a tutorial on making a ‘Birmingham Techno’ style detuned techno stab in Ableton live with native plug ins only. Influenced by Surgeon, Oscar Mulero and early Jeff Mills.
See also: Chord Sequences inspired byJeff Mills, Industrial Techno Ableton Racks, Techno Drum Patterns and Programming Tips, Studio Brootle 909 Sample Pack, and our full Operator Tutorial. You can find all the free Ableton presets here. Also: Ableton Wavetable Tutorial, Ableton Wavetable Presets.
How To Make A Birmingham Techno Stab In Ableton Live
Here’s a run down of the patch, including the midi effects, instruments and audio effects I’ve used to make this detuned sound in Wavetable…
You want a thick detuned sound, we’ll make this in Ableton’s Wavetable. The sound is thickened though detuning in a few different ways: it is detuned with midi notes, with the oscillators and unison. And it is processed with lot of different distortions too.
So to start with, a use the Chord unit to make a nasty ‘off’ chord holding down the wrong notes basically! Then the unison is really important and you want to tweak it until it sounds good.
The unison is set to Classic mode with 8 voices – set the Amount to taste.
All three oscillators are on, the sub osc, and then and the main two are out by 15 cents, one up and one down. If you like, detune these more, for more nastiness!
I put the Oscillator FX on both (on FM), just slightly. I’ll modulate these later.
I use the Beating 3 waveforms, they sound good for this type of stab, but experiment with any you like.
The stab is cut short with a short decay filter envelope (Env 2). And then distorted with the PRD algorithm (I like this one as it doesn’t dull the resonance like some of the other distortion types do).
I use LFO 1 and 2 to move the wavetable and wavetable effects slowly over time to the keep the sound moving very slightly. It’s a repetitive sound and this keeps it evolving.
Then it is distorted with Amp, then processed with Echo and Reverb..
Then a Drum Buss at the and for more distortion and to bring out the reverb and delays with Drive. Then it is EQ’d.
You can download the patch below and watch the video too.
The Macro Controls For The Techno Stab
Here’s a quick guide to what the macros do and how to tweak the sound with them:
Filter 1 Freq: Filter cutoff – turn it up to open the sound
Filter 1 Res: Filter resonance – turn it up for top end squeakiness
Amp Env Release: Turn this up for a longer note length, good for building tension – obviously the filter will need to be up a bit too or the effect will be hidden.
Env 2 Decay: Open up the short gated sound of the stab to be a bit longer.
Hi Pass Filter: Takes the bass out of the note – use it for build ups and smack it back in to bring the bass back.
Osc 2 Effect 2: Use this to make sounds change slightly – automate it slowly over time to keep movement.
Dstrtn Dry/Wet: Amp Distortion mix.
Reverb Decay: Elongates the reverb – good for building tension.
Wavetable Techno Stab – Video:
Here’s a video tutorial and run down of the rack on our Youtube channel….
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Downloads
You can download this pack by subscribing to the mailing list here, you’ll get a link to download all the free presets, samples and racks we’ve ever made:
