Welcome to our guide to making Industrial techno sequences with the Ableton 12 SQ step sequencer and Operator.
Here’s the sequence I’m making (you can get the rack for it in the downloads section below too):
See also: our Ableton Operator Tutorial, Industrial Techno Ableton Racks, How To Make Lo-Fi House, and all our other drum pattern articles. See also our guide to Granulator. You can get all our free Ableton racks here. See all our Free Operator Presets here. And our guide to VCV Rack.
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Making Industrial Techno In Ableton 12…
You can get the rack for free in the downloads section below.
This rack is made with the new SQ sequencer in Ableton Live 12, Ableton Operator, the Roar distortion unit, a Reverb for a bit of spacial effect and a Drum Buss at the end to distort the chain one last time.
The most important controls are set as Macros so you can tweak them upfront.
The main characteristics of this are that the sequence length is set to 5 steps only, which gives it a rolling/polyrhythmic effect as it is much shorter than the bar.
Then I use velocity in the SQ sequencer to modulate different parameters in the synth (like you would route a modular sequencer with a cable to modulate a Eurorack synth). On Operator I set the filter cut off and envelope time to be modulated by velocity, so they then can be controlled by the sequencer, and also on Oscillator D (which is the FM source) I set Osc<Vel and Time<Vel so that these are modulated by the sequencer too.
The Operator Patch is 3 detuned saw waves (like you would get on an analogue synth) but then the 4th oscillator is providing FM which gives it an EBM-like metallic sound.
The Industrial Techno Rack
What the Macro Controls Do
Vel steps 2 and 4 – This increase the velocity on steps 2 and 4 in the step sequence. There are 4 parameters mapped to velocity, in Operator, so these in turn will be modulated.
D Freq<Vel – This is the how much the Frequecy of D is affected by velocity.
Filter Freq – the cutoff frequency of the filter in Operator.
Fitler Res – the resonance of the filter.
Time – this controls all envelopes in Operator, cutting it short will make everything short and gated and turning it up will elongate the sounds.
Roar Shaper – the mix amount of the Roar shaper.
Roar Feedback – the feedback amount.
Reverb Decay – the length of the reverb.
Reverb Mix – the wet/dry mix of the reverb.
Drum Buss – the wet/dry mix of the drum buss unit to distort everything at the end of the chain, even after the reverb
Making Industrial Techno 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:
