in 2023 techno means anything, from LadyGaga to Weeknd to Skrillex: Everything apart of the real meaning of techno
Not in my house!
this is welcome in my house!
No one ever called any of these techno
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scale?!
vast majority of techno i ever heard avoids tonal sounds.
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Lyra 8 enters the room: what is a scale?
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it’s not techno unless you get rid of your furniture too
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Unfortunately that’s exactly how it is. Try asking your non-musician, non-producer friends “tell me the names of 3 techno artists” and listen to their answers
Locrian, in order to eliminate or at least delay a feeling of closure.
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Colundi. Its decided.
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You end up stacking fundamentals in the low end and create yourself a muddy mix that needs a fuck ton of side chaining and other bollocks to fix it.
Don’t tune your kicks. Dont side chain, dont worry about scales.
Dont tune anything, Make noises, if they sound good, it is good.
Oh and lastly @Claid, incorrect, the Dorian mode is the best mode, in particular F Dorian.
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Why D? I would’ve thought C?
I would use the Dotted Delay and Filter Open/Close scales first, and then consider adding in a pentatonic, minor, or maybe Dorian scale to spice it up
D minor, the saddest of all keys
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I only know 2 scales: C major and whatever the group of all the black keys is called.
The black keys make a great scale because it’s pentatonic without any really bad disonnances, and they sit proud of the white keys so they’re easy to play - no having to slide my fingers in between the black keys to finger certain chords (and I’m over 190cm tall with giant monster hands to match so my fingers really don’t fit in between the black keys to finger certain chords).
I’m not kidding when I say that one of the most exciting things about Osmose for me is that every key is a black key on that one.
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I can’t speak for techno, but if go back a bit further in time, Kraftwerk used a lot of natural minor (“Metropolis”) and Mixolydian (the jam section in “Neon Lights”. Major (“Autobahn”) and Phrygian (“Home Computer”) were occasionally used as well. Some of their songs were largely pentatonic, especially the melodies (“The Robots”, “Computer Love”). And many of their songs used key changes. Some of their more spacey or out there moments involved the whole tone scale (the intro to “Space Lab”) or stacks of 4ths (the intro to “Trans Europe Express”).
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I think it depends a lot on the type of techno you’re making, which is where a lot of the variation in response is coming from IMO.
If you’re creating Dub, Progressive, Minimal etc. Then you’re going to be in some kind of Minor key - but then there are subgenres where you absolutely want discordance. The main thing is to avoid Major I think…
Dub techno I always find interesting as I feel like it sort of uses its own scale - the chords are often fairly specific and don’t play by the usual rules - I’m fairly sure it’s not a traditional scale you’re normally working within? I’m no musicologist. But it’s definitely not what I would describe as chromatic or discordant - its a limited palette that if you stray from you lose the flavour. Of course breaking rules can be as important as following them.
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With dub techno chords you often hear notes stacked over multiple octaves like 1,4,6,7,9,13,19 etc. You can actually do this in any scale, as the omission of the 3rd leaves it pretty open.
Also you get close grouping like a flat 7 with a major 6 within chords which is often a no no, but as they’re heavily filtered it works quite well and just adds extra texture.
Its a funny topic this whole ‘forget about scales’ as some people are more sensitive to harmonic dissonance than others and one size doesn’t fit all. I am eternally thankful that not everyone who makes techno applies to the same rules.
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…all minors will do…if u want it moody…the more a scale involves halfnotes, the more u can “cheat” via the “black keys only” trick, where all possible combos can interlink and interact with each other more harmonically fluent…but be aware of the fact, that the lower u go, ur root note, ur lowest octave defenition, needs more shaping efforts to really translate, since all sorts of modern music and techno in particular, no matter what ur overall top harmonic content might be, needs this lowest octave in constant clear reference and underlaying but obvious overall presence for that “feel”…
if u miss that, u might wanna consider to transpose up a half note, since that’s always a first sign that u ended up too low…
while there is no “best” for real and all rules should be bend from time to time, u can’t produce against the laws of physics, that simply define, there’s no real world harmonic low end underneath 40 hz while no speaker on this planet can still make any sense once u end up beyond 20 hz…
and all techno can’t live without some certain solid low end definition…root is always key…