Minimal Microhouse Drum Pattern – Ableton Tutorial

A ‘minimal’ drum pattern, influenced by early 2000, 2010s minimal techno / micro house / click house / click-no, whatever you call it! influenced by the things that Richie Hawtin, Marco Carola, Magda, Marc Houle, Ricardo Villalobos etc were playing at that time, you know, that Minus, Perlon sound.

Here’s a preview of the loop we’ll be making in Ableton with just 808 samples and tweaking them…

See our other drum pattern guides here: Techno Drum Patterns and Programming Tips, UK Garage Drum Pattern, Drexciya Electro Beat Tutorial. And our free sample packs and free Ableton Racks.

---

This uses my Roland 808 sample pack which you can get in the downloads section below. It also includes the Ableton file that I used in the video so you can get it all set up in Ableton without having to make it yourself.

Here I’m using only 808 samples, Ableton’s Sampler and built in effects. The reason for this is that at the time minimal came out Ableton was just starting to get popular and the genre developed due to using (an deliberate over using) of Ableton’s features. I wanted to show here what was possible with just drum samples from an 808 with creative sampler techniques and use of Ableton’s effects. Obviously you can use synthesis as well, but here I’m doing this as exercise in sound design too.

---

Full Minimal Tutorial Video:

Here’s a video showing how I made the beat and how the processing and how the modulations and effects work in Ableton.

Please subscribe to the youtube if you haven’t yet: youtube.com/@studiobrootle 

---

Basic Principles for Making Minimal…

There are some basic principles and techniques that are used a lot in Minimal:

• Loads of Shuffle.
• Plentiful use of Ableton’s effects, especially Grain Delay and Ping Pong Delay and automating them into insanity and back! You are squeezing a lot out of a little.
• Putting every note on in a 1/16th note grid (or most of them on), this shows off the shuffle too.
• Switch the grid to triplet mode and add some hits that sound ‘off’ – use 1/16 and 1/32 triplet grids.
• Use of clicks, glitches and bleeps etc.
• Bitcrushing

I’ll go into more detial below…

---

How To Make Minimal In Ableton Live

Watch the video for a full guide to making the click house beat in the preview above, and here’s the basic ideas behind it…

Here’s the steps to make Minimal and Click House in Live….

Set Up Lots of Swing and Shuffle

First of all I set the BPM to 127 BPM. Add shuffle at 35% or so, I use SP1200 16 Swing-71 shuffle preset in Ableton. Add more swing if you want, whatever sounds good.

Glitch Samples in Ableton’s Sampler

I’ve use sampler modulation envelopes to get the weird pitch effects on some of the drums, you can hear it in action on an 808 cowbell here:

This is how I did it: I’ve pitched a cowbell down an octave (using the pitch device) and then looped the sample – by using the middle sustain mode. You can see this in the image below…

It sounds like this before the modulation, just a pitched down 808 cowbell with delay and reverb:

I then add the modulation in: a slow attack envelope that is moving the loop length tighter and the pitch up. This is so that as you hold the key down the cowbell will loop and the loop gets shorter until it’s a tone, and at the same time the pitch rises. You can tweak the envelope and settings to taste. I’ve used this on a few drum sounds in this beat (you can get the file in the downloads section below). You can automate the settings too for big build ups. Here’s the modulation settings for the cowbell sound above:

Add Lots of 1/16th Notes

A key feature of minimal is lots of 1/16th notes on, especially for hit hats or congas. You can even put them all on like in the image below. It gives it that really shuffled feeling when you’ve added some groove or swing.

Using Triplets

You can add triplets too by switching the grid to 1/16th or 1/32 and triplet mode and adding some hits, use triplets and normal hits together so it feels weird! I’ve done this with the 808 clave in this beat. You can hear it in the video above. You can add these to the 1/16th notes above, like I did in the video.

Heavy Automation Of Effects

You want to automate effects like ping pong delay and grain delay, upping the feedback for a build, but also experiment with playing with the time settings can make it go nuts!

Bitcrushing

I didn’t do this in the example, but at the time this music came out it was used a lot. Keep sounds fairly clean in general with little distortion, but if you’re going to distort them, then digital bit crush fits the sound really well.

Hope you found this useful, please see the video for more detail and you can get the Ableton file and sample pack in the downloads section below.

---

---