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Pro tips
Producing minimal house
How do you get the techy pared-down sound? The Sample Magic team offer some choice production pointers
Drums
Generally the key with Minimal House beats is to keep the kick nice and
deep without too much mid or high-end energy so the high frequency
elements can ‘breathe’ and inject life into the groove. Choosing drum
sounds that fit each other well is also extremely important - if the
kick is heavy the snare should feel light and toppy. For this reason
808 and 909 sounds can work particularly well. It is always advisable to keep the kick (and other bass elements) in mono as these backbone elements of the track are often the most prominent and many club systems are still wired in mono. Having a stereo spread on hi-hats and other percussive elements helps keep the beat interesting and merges the rhythm nicely with synth loops or fx patterns.
Bass
Minimal basslines need to work well rhythmically, musically and in the context of the mix. Kick and bass frequencies should be carefully mixed and matched so that one of the two is more prominent than the other – a common trick is to carve an EQ ‘notch’ in the kick for the bassline to sit in.Rhythmically the bass pattern should complement the drum loop so the two move together as a solid foundation to build other elements on. When composing original minimal basslines less is usually more. Experiment with 32nd notes and make fine edits with your sequencer step-editor.
Ultimately your bassline needs to be good enough to listen to over and over without causing the listener to tire.
Stabs
When choosing a sample as a raw sound, look for complexity; something which is rich in harmonics and overtones – an obscure jazzy chord is the classic example. Vocals and organic sounds also work well. Try running your sound through a bit-crusher to add some dirt, then apply a low pass filter controlled by an envelope to give the sound some shape. Saturation and compression will really start to bring the sound alive and give it the classic punchy-techy sound.Assign tone-shaping parameters to various controls to get as much variability in the sound as possible – the velocity mapped to the volume, cutoff and decay for example, and the mod wheel to a pitch LFO and reverb send. Some 3/16th delay will help give a strong rhythmic emphasis to the stabs.
Complex rhythmical textures
Take a vocal sound, set it looping but with a relatively short loop size. Now, map the loop start position to a rhythmical step sequencer. This means the start point of the loop will jump around in sync with the steps in the sequencer, by however much you set on each step. Immediately you will notice your sound has transformed from a stuttering sound, to something much more complex.Try sending the cutoff to the step sequencer also, and maybe the sample rate too – you’ll quickly start to see how incredibly rich complex sounds can spring out of nowhere.