Making an Indie Dance Track in 1 Hour: Full Ableton Process
This one is made with no preparation at all. Niek opens an empty Ableton project and builds a Maccabi house style indie dance track from the first kick to the final arrangement, narrating the decisions, including the ones that get undone. All the sounds come from Fiction, our indie dance producer pack.
Starting with the groove
The BPM goes to 126, which is about average for the genre, and the first decision is the kick: relatively soft, not overly punchy, because the groove has to feel loose rather than aggressive. On top of it go an old-school top loop and an acoustic hat loop, the two loop types that immediately place a track in this style.
A groove template is applied across the project early, which is worth doing before writing anything melodic, since the same MIDI feels completely different with and without swing.
Two bass layers, not one
The bass starts as a single preset from the Fiction pack, and the important note is the intent behind it: keep it simple, but give it a hook you can repeat for the entire track, because in this genre the bass is what carries everything. Octave jumps and glide notes are what make a two-note idea interesting.
Halfway through it becomes clear the sound works better as a top layer than as the foundation, so a plain sub bass goes underneath and the sub frequencies get stripped out of the top layer. Sidechain goes on the sub; the top layer barely needs it. Later, vibrato automation is drawn onto the top bass, a hard, fast automation of the fine tune built into the presets, and that is where the Maccabi character enters the track.
Percussion is the arrangement
The percussion is chosen for placement as much as for sound. A bell, shortened and pitched into key, is dropped into a syncopated spot specifically because nothing else is playing there. A tom is added, then a second tom layer playing a complementary rhythm rather than the same one, pushed back in the mix so the groove blends. Conga loops are auditioned and eventually hybridised from several loops, pitched to sit in tune with everything else.
A cowbell one-shot, cut from a loop, comes in later in the arrangement rather than immediately. An acoustic hat loop adds drive, and when its transients hit too hard, transient shaping softens them, which is described in the video as a constant habit with these loops. Space delay on a perc, low end removed, and a dual echo on another, are what push the groove from tight to dubby.
Textra on the drum bus
Once the groove is together, Textra goes across the drum loops with an ambience texture, filling out the space in the group rather than adding another element. It shows up again on a clap fill later, where automating the release turns a flat fill into something with a build in it, alongside white noise through a Kashmir reverb.
The drop synth, and knowing when to simplify
The search for the main drop synth takes several attempts, and the video keeps them all in. A first candidate gets a rhythm deliberately different from the bass, then OTT, Decapitator, delay and reverb, then gets judged as all over the place and simplified. Layering it with a short percussion sound is tried, several other presets are auditioned, and the one that lands is chosen for how its groove interacts with the bass, not for how it sounds solo.
Building the arrangement backwards
With the main drop finished, everything else is built by taking things away from it. The kick is shortened so the low end disappears rather than low-cut with a filter, which sounds more natural. The top bass comes in with a high cut, then more elements arrive behind filter automation.
The vocal, a Fiction sample, is chopped and given a delay automation that sweeps into the second half of the drop, with the delay switched on only at that point. It gets reused as a build-up element with heavy filtering, decreasing volume and the low end removed towards the drop. Risers are tuned rather than dropped in raw, a percussion fill and a clap fill handle transitions, and a reversed crash gives a more natural lift into the drop. A second top pluck for the final drop is filtered hard where it clashes with the existing lead.
Frequently asked questions
What BPM should an indie dance track be?
126 BPM is used here and is about average for the style. The genre generally sits between 123 and 128 BPM.
How do you structure the bass in a Maccabi house track?
Two layers. A top bass carrying the hook, with octave jumps and glide notes and its sub frequencies removed, sitting over a simple sub bass that supplies the body. The sub takes the sidechain; the top layer often does not need it.
What is the fastest way to make a drum groove sound less programmed?
Layer old-school top loops and acoustic hat loops over a soft kick, apply a groove template to the whole project, and use transient shaping to soften loops whose hits are too hard.
How do you use a texture plugin on a drum group?
Put it across the drum bus and use an ambience texture to fill out the space between the hits. On fills, automating the release knob turns a static clap fill into something that builds.
Related reading: indie dance production in one hour, Maccabi house like Adam Ten and Mita Gami, and the Fiction indie dance sample pack.
Related: Fiction is our indie dance sample pack, and the Fiction Indie Dance Masterclass takes a full track from first groove to master. See also Fiction, our indie dance pack.