Chord Sequences inspired by DJ Bone, Jeff Mills, Detroit techno

I’ve long been a fan of artists like Jeff Mills, DJ Bone, Octave one and those detuned Detroit techno tracks, especially the more ‘alien’ sounding sequences like the Something in the Sky series. Here I’ve made 3 Ableton racks that use chords through sinewaves and filters to get those bleeps, as well as velocity for movement in the sequence. Make sure you use velocity in your midi for more modulation! There’s a full rundown of the racks in the video below.

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See also our other free techno presets: EBM Techno Bass in Ableton (with free rack), Ableton Wavetable Techno Stab, ABL Pro Patches, and our Techno Drum Patterns and Programming Tips page, and the free 909 techno sample pack. See all our Free Operator Presets here.

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How To Make Detroit Techno

These racks are heavily influenced by Jeff Mills’ bleepy Detroit Techno…

Here’s how I set up the first patch, there are 3 others to download too, which are fairly similar too (see the downloads section below to get all these)…

I’ve added a ‘Chord’ midi device so you just need to play one note and it turns it into a chord.
Detroit techno is characterised by minor chords like this.

Then there’s an Operator for the sound generation, which is great for FM synthesis, but here we are using it for analog modelling. I’ve set the Operator routing (the Tetris-like icons) so that there is no FM and each oscillator goes to the output. The sound is made up for 4 sine waves all tune differently, with all fine tuning knobs move slightly off for a thick detuned sound.

Then after the Operator is an Overdrive unit for drive distortion, then Echo and Reverb for spacial effects, these can also be used for building tension by ramping the feedback and decays up.

The Macros:

I’ve assigned the macros for playability and for opening and tightening the sound, to create tension and build ups.

Time: This macro controls all envelopes on Operator – making them all longer or tighter. It’s really good to automated to keep the sound moving and open and close it.

B Fine Tuning: The fine tuning of oscillator B – turning this will drag it out of tune and makes for a nasty, thicker, more alien sound.

Sustain x5: controls the sustain of the oscillators and filter envelope so they go from really tight to open.

Pitch Env: this is the pitch envelope amount, dragging it down into negative values can sound quite good for these sounds.

Echo Fdbk: the feedback amount of the delays – turning this up is good for builds, especially when used with the Echo Mix…

Echo Mix: the wet/dry mix of the delays.

Reverb Decay: makes the reverb long and can be used for build ups too.

Reverb Mix: The wet/dry mix of the reverb.

You can get this rack in the downloads section below plus some more patches.

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Video On Detroit Techno Style Racks in Ableton…

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