How to Make Indie Dance Like Luch

Luch is a DJ and producer from Mexico City who makes indie dance with a lot of melodic house in it, with tracks like The Future and support from Keinemusik and Solomun. A lot of you asked for this one. In this video I make a track in his style: indie drums with afro percussion, a drone that runs through the whole track, and melodic synths with a few small tricks. The sounds are from Fiction and Envision.

The groove: a short kick and two toms

The kick is short and tight. That leaves a lot of room for everything else while still giving the track a solid foundation. I turned it down a little for headroom.

Two toms make the groove. The first is a high disco tom played much lower than it was made for, so it turns into a texture instead of a laser tom. Decapitator brings out its harmonics so you hear it in the mix, EchoBoy adds a slap delay and width, and a short room reverb puts it in a space. The second is an 808-style tom on F, the root note of the track. Toms this tonal work best in the key of your track. I varied the velocities so it feels less static.

Live loops and metallic percussion

On top go loops, mostly from Fiction. An acoustic hat loop: I think Luch likes live samples, and they give his drums a human touch. A natural hand clap loop for the same organic feel; listen closely to his tracks and you hear a lot of these claps. A tight indie drum top loop gives the claps more body, and a vocal breath loop adds a bit of his character.

Then an open hat for drive, shakers, a texture loop and a metallic percussion loop. Those metallic sounds are typical for Luch too. A noisy hat loop sits very low to bring in noise and texture.

Fills do a lot in this style: an 80s tom before the drop, a tribal percussion hit at the start of every two bars to accent the drop, a clap fill on the same impact point, a disco tom, a disco laser and an acoustic snare fill.

A drone that runs the whole track

Luch often has drones playing through his whole track that work like a theme. I saw a video where he explains he likes to start from a drone and build the track around it, so I did the same: a drone from Fiction with a perfect fifth and the root note, kept low in the mix.

A second atmosphere from Envision pitches up, which creates a siren-like sound that is kind of in key and kind of not. At low volume it adds tension without clashing.

The synths: a sequence and an unstable lead

The first synth is a sequence, the Sequence Commander preset from Envision. You hold one note and it plays the sequence for you; I used simple 8th notes, made legato.

The main hook uses the Lead Independent preset from Fiction. It has a very unstable character: a fast LFO on the fine tune of the first oscillator, a second LFO at 1/16 adding vibrato, and a noise oscillator doing FM on the saw, so turning it up lets more noise through and makes it even more unstable. The noise also modulates the filter, blended in with a macro. It is a really nice trick in Serum.

The melody is in F minor and the first three bars are almost the same. That repetition is what makes it catchy. The fourth bar keeps the rhythm but climbs higher for more suspense.

Open in the build-up, filtered in the drop

In Luch's tracks the main hook often builds up before the drop, opening more and more, and then filters right down once the drop hits. You get a strong contrast between the build-up and the drop. I automated the Serum filter to do exactly that, and let it open again in the second half of the drop.

Bass and the bass stab

The bassline is the Bass Hold preset, a deep saw bass, with some space between the notes. Bass is not something I want listeners to focus on here; it is there to feel the low end and support the rest.

The drop still needed impact, so I added a bass stab you hear in quite a few Luch tracks: a simple saw from a digital wavetable through a low-pass filter with a little release. Some distortion, then a splitter with chorus only on the highs to widen the top. The MIDI starts with sustained notes and later switches to short chopped notes, which is what makes it interesting.

For more power it goes through Textra with clean white noise at about 50%, which works a bit like Ableton's Erosion and makes it dirtier right away. Then OTT, an EQ that only cuts the very lowest end (cut too much and it loses its power), some reverb for width and Kickstart on the low end so it does not clash with the kick.

Frequently asked questions

Who is Luch?

Luch is a DJ and producer from Mexico City making indie dance and melodic house, with tracks like The Future. His music is supported by Keinemusik and Solomun.

What makes the Luch sound?

A short, tight kick with tonal toms, live hat and clap loops, metallic percussion, a drone that plays through the whole track, and a repetitive lead that opens up in the build-up and filters down in the drop.

How do you make an unstable lead in Serum?

Put a fast LFO on the fine tune of a saw oscillator, add a slower 1/16 LFO for vibrato, and let a noise oscillator frequency-modulate the saw. Mapping the noise amount to a macro lets you dial in how unstable it gets.

Should toms be in the key of the track?

Tonal toms work best tuned to the key. In this track the main 808-style tom plays F, the root note, with varied velocities so it does not sound static.

Related reading: how Brunello makes indie dance, 5 indie dance sounds in Serum 2, and indie dance sample packs.

The sounds in this video come from Fiction and Envision. The Indie Dance Bundle has both, plus Afterhours.

Explore the Indie Dance Bundle