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d16's Drumazon does a great job of emulating Roland's TR-909 drum machine.

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Techno is back in a big way – and it’s funkier than ever. So, dig out your 909 (or your 909 emulation) and allow MusicRadar to advise you on how to start producing in this classic electronic genre…

1. A great way of sourcing percussion is to make it yourself. If the idea of sculpting hats and snares out of pure waves doesn’t appeal to you, try processing and applying amplitude envelopes to random samples and bits of percussion.

2. Plenty of the more esoteric techno artists, such as the legendary Future Sound of London, take noises from real life and twist them up. If you’ve got a microphone, record anything and everything you can and send to it in your soft sampler.

3. It’s possible to emulate the reversed tape effect from early techno classics such as Derrick May’s Strings of Life by exporting a section of your track as audio, then reversing it and placing it back in your tune.

4. Applying a tasteful delay effect to a synth riff can add depth to the sound and create complex little melodies if done right. Try setting the delay time to a quarter of a beat with a low wet level and high feedback. Experiment with the delay time until it sounds sweet.

5. Although chopping up percussion loops is a relatively quick and effective way to create techno beats, you can achieve much more flexibility and a more authentic sound by using one-shot percussion sounds. The Roland TR-909 kit is very much the standard, but try exploring other drum machine sounds, such as those from the Roland R8, when you need a little variety.

6. Though it’s tempting to constantly break out your most flashy effects plug-ins, techno demands proper understanding of core effects, particularly reverb and dynamics. Get to know your software’s native effects inside out. Most software samplers also feature their own effects, so make sure you check out all your available options.

7. If you’ve got a delay effect that gives you the option of turning the delay time all the way down to zero, make sure you experiment with these extreme times. Chorus, reverb and flange effects are all created with near zero delay times, so there’s plenty of mileage to be had from this particular effect.

8. At the more minimal end of techno, each sound needs to be as strong as you can possibly get it. If your synths feel a bit on the weedy side, try adding a sub-oscillator (ie, an oscillator an octave or two below the route key). Sine waves are ideal for this – other shapes may require filtering.

9. For that classic hard techno sound, place a clap on every other beat and stick it through a reasonably large reverb effect. Start at 100% dry and increase the wet level until the sound becomes a mangled shell of its former self. Experiment with the damping and reverb length controls until you're happy with how things sound.

10. Increase the pre-delay on your reverb unit to create interesting rhythmic textures. For maximum impact, use a short reverb. Longer times create more ambient effects.

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