How to Create Indie Dance Like Mita Gami & Adam Ten (Maccabi House)

This tutorial breaks down the signature psychedelic house sound of Mita Gami and Adam Ten, the label founders behind Maccabi House - a label that has earned over 15 Beatport top 10 placements in the past three years. Niek from The Producer School dissects a full project from the After Hours sample pack, covering the hypnotic bass layers, organic drum programming, and arrangement techniques that define their distinctive style. Whether you are aiming for clubs or festival stages, this guide gives you a complete production blueprint.

What Is the Maccabi House Sound and Why Does It Work?

The Maccabi House sound blends organic textures with live instruments and funky grooves to create something that sits comfortably in both club and festival contexts. What sets Mita Gami and Adam Ten apart is their use of dissonant harmonic tension - choosing bass notes a semitone apart to generate a hypnotic, slightly uneasy feel. Their releases on labels like Crosstown Rebels and Drumcode have brought this sound to a wide audience. The key production signature is layering: a main bass, an acid layer, and a metallic wavetable layer all working together with bit-crushing and fast vibrato to give the track its recognisable character. Understanding how these layers interact is the first step to recreating this style.

How Do You Build the Layered Psychedelic Bass?

The bass in this style is built from three separate layers that create a dynamic, hypnotic whole. Here is the process:

1. Start with a saw wave pitched down two octaves - the "Bomba" preset from the After Hours pack is a good starting point. Disable oscillator A, leaving a simple default saw wave.
2. Add an LFO set to 1/8 rate linked to the fine-tune parameter. This creates the signature vibrato effect central to this sound.
3. Route the signal through a Moog filter with significant resonance. Removing this resonance immediately strips the character from the bass.
4. Apply asymmetrical distortion to beef up the sound, then add a downsample or bit-crush effect for a distinctive high-end edge.
5. Layer an acid sound on top using a square wave with the LFO also linked to PWM warp mode. Use a short envelope on the filter for an attacky, acid character. Keep velocity linked to the cutoff for dynamic variation.
6. Copy the bass pattern into a wavetable synth using an additive wavetable. In the Serum matrix, link the note-on random source to the wavetable position at around 90% - this makes the sound slightly different on every note hit.

When layered together, these three elements produce a richly dynamic bass that shifts subtly throughout the track.

How to Use Bit-Crushing and Vibrato for That Hypnotic Edge

Two processing techniques define the Maccabi House aesthetic more than any other: bit-crushing and fast vibrato LFOs. Bit-crushing - also called downsampling - adds a distinctive high-frequency grain that separates these sounds from a clean synthesiser output. It is applied to the main bass, the acid layer, and the wavetable layer. Fast vibrato, achieved by setting an LFO to 1/8 rate and routing it to the fine-tune, adds constant pitch movement that gives the track its hypnotic quality. Bypassing either of these effects immediately makes the sounds feel generic. A short slap delay on the acid layer adds subtle width without cluttering the stereo field. For the wavetable layer, the Serum splitter section is used to apply tube distortion heavily on the mids only, leaving the highs and lows unaffected - a targeted approach that adds warmth without muddying the mix.

How to Program Organic, Groovy Drums for Psychedelic House

The drums in this style are organic and groove-focused rather than rigid and mechanical. Here is how the pattern is constructed:

• Kick: Keep it relatively gentle so the bass and other elements have room to breathe in the mix.
• Toms: Use two tom sounds from the pack, placing them on offbeats to create syncopation. At the end of a phrase, play a lower tom rapidly to get a rolling fill effect into the next bar.
• Acoustic hat loops: Essential to this style. Layer these over the programmed drums for a live, organic feel.
• Snare and clap combination, plus hats with a long tail to fill the frequency spectrum.
• Congas, a shaker loop, and a texture loop add drive and variation at lower volume levels.
• A percussion loop and a cowbell with slight reverb contribute rhythmic interest.
• Fill elements between sections help glue arrangement parts together.

The goal is to build a groove that feels like it breathes rather than loops robotically.

What Is the Lead Sound and How Does It Relate to the Bass?

The main lead in this style closely mirrors the bass pattern with only slight rhythmic variations. Despite being labelled as a bass in the project, it functions as the lead element. It is built using three Model D oscillators, each covering a different octave range with no unison - just subtle fine-tuning offsets between them, which is how a hardware instrument like a Minimoog would handle it. All three oscillators are modulated by a 1/8 rate LFO, adding the same hypnotic vibrato present in the bass layers. The signal then passes through an envelope-controlled Moog filter, followed by asymmetrical distortion, a low-mid EQ boost, chorus, ping-pong delay, and a bit-crusher. A sub-reverb with a 0.9 second decay at 30% wet adds depth without washing out the sound. OTT at a subtle level adds final crispness.

How to Arrange a Psychedelic House Track for Maximum Impact

Arrangement in this style is about strategically withholding elements to build tension before releasing them. Follow this structure:

1. Intro: Apply a filter to the kick for a subdued entry. Use a drone ambient layer for space. Introduce the tom only occasionally at first, then build to the full sequence gradually.
2. Tease lead vocals and synth elements without fully committing to them - let them appear briefly, then pull back.
3. Bring in the cowbell further into the intro to add forward momentum.
4. For the buildup, remove the bass entirely and push the lead to the front. Add a gate effect on stretched vocal samples for a psychedelic, hypnotic transition texture.
5. Use fills, risers, and uplifters to signal the move into the drop.

The key principle is strategic postponement - never give away all your elements at once. A small variation every few bars keeps listeners engaged without requiring constant new material.

How to Use Harmonic Tension to Create a Hypnotic Feel

One of the most distinctive harmonic techniques in this style is playing bass notes a semitone apart to generate tension. In the main bass pattern, when the root note shifts to a D sharp, the acid layer continues playing the F - a semitone above. This creates a cluster of harmonics that sounds subtly dissonant and hypnotic. The effect is reinforced by velocity-linked cutoff on the acid layer: at low velocities the cutoff stays nearly closed, muting much of the vibrato effect, while higher velocities open the filter and expose the full character of the sound. This velocity-to-cutoff mapping gives an almost infinite range of variation within a single MIDI pattern. Combined with the wavetable note-on randomisation, each playthrough of the pattern sounds slightly different - which is exactly the quality that makes psychedelic house feel alive and evolving rather than static.

All the sounds used in this tutorial - including the Bomba bass preset, the acid layer, the wavetable synth, the lead, drums, toms, congas, percussion loops, and vocal samples - are part of the After Hours sample pack. The full project file demonstrated in this video is also included, giving you a ready-made starting point to study and adapt these techniques in your own DAW.

Tutorial by Niek, co-founder of The Producer School. For more production tutorials, subscribe to The Producer School on YouTube (280K+ subscribers).