8 Mistakes When Making TECHNO

Hello, I'm Juan Ignacio from Idem Creativo, and in this episode, we're going to look at eight mistakes when making techno. This is more common than you think. It might be happening to you, so stay tuned because this will help you achieve better techno production. Let's get into it. Look, the first mistake I commonly see is not smoothing the highs. What do I specifically mean by this? For example, let's say we have a techno line, something like this. And the idea is? I'm going to focus on the hi-hats. Right now, they are already very smoothed out. Possibly yours might be sounding something like this, which at first glance might not seem like a problem, but the moment you turn your headphones up to a considerable volume, you'll start to notice harshness, and that harshness hurts the ear. This shouldn't be underestimated because if you hurt your audience's ears, they won't come back for more, and that's a huge mistake you need to know how to fix. For this, the first thing I advise to slightly smooth out the hi-hat line is to use reverb at 4% around 5% reverb for about 1.5 seconds, approximately, with a low cut of 1000 Hz. That's pretty good, and that's all you need to do to slightly smooth out the spectral aspect as such. For example, I'll show you without the reverb. With the reverb, it sounds more spacious, more subtle. Now, the next step is very important, and this is about side-chaining the kick itself. If you don't have it side-chained, you're not only breaking the groove, but you're also giving too much power to the kick's punch as such, and that will cause you to have resonances you don't want in the hi-hat line. So, for example, I'll put it on the whole track. without the sidechain. How does it sound? with the sidechain. And the last thing I advise doing to shape the sound a bit, obviously, is to filter a bit, but accentuate a bit in the area of about 2000 Hz with an EQ bell of about 3 dBs. This will bring the atten