How to Make Techno Top Loops and Drum Loops

A top loop consists of different things. First a hi-hat loop, with very tight hi-hats that are a bit faster. The second one is a cymbal loop, which is there to really fill up the offbeat with big cymbals. Then a percussion loop, a clap on the offbeat and a top kick. Sometimes I add a background, which just helps fill up the spectrum a little bit.

A percussion loop could be anything, so just have fun with it. Just remember to focus on two bars or four bars and make something in there that loops well. Let the special stuff happen in those bars, then loop that part. Don't overcomplicate this.

You want to work organized. I route the hi-hats into one channel and call it hi-hats. Same for the cymbals, the top kick and the percussion, each in its own channel next to it.

That also makes it easy to use loops from a sample pack. Drag and drop the hat loops into the hats channel, the cymbals, percussion and kick into theirs, and they all go through the final processing. It makes your top loop so much easier.

With mixing, in general you want to keep all your sounds very low. You can always add more volume, but if you have a lot of sounds with a lot of volume already it gets really hard to mix. Leave headroom. Then clean up everything. No bass on the percussion, the cymbals or the hi-hats. For the top kick we do want a little bit of bass, but not the sub.

For the big cymbals I add a sidechain. You can use Kickstart, but if you don't have Kickstart, just add a Fruity Limiter and get a gain automation going, so the volume is cut in the beginning. Now you made room for the kick.

For the percussion I want the spice, and this is where it really starts getting better. I add a Fruity WaveShaper for distortion. The percussion really pops in the mids, so before the distortion I add the mids with an EQ. After it one more EQ where I cut the sub again, because the distortion generated a little bit of sub.

Then compression, a very nice way to get your sounds more tight. I put the threshold at 20 dB and the ratio on four, which is always a nice mode, and don't touch anything else.