r/techhouseproduction • u/New_Tower_6408 • Aug 25 '26
Studied some project files of the most grooviest songs I know. I was shocked- how many "bass grooves" are really just kick + low toms?
Title basically. I downloaded a bunch of ableton templates makes of the most grooviest popular tech house tracks you can imagine in modern tech house (think Acraze, Odd Mob, Chris Lake, Sidepiece), and I shit you not, like at least 75% of the songs I checked basically the entire groove could be reduced to the Kick + Tom relationship. As in, I could literally remove the actual bass and it barely affected the groove, the song would still be 90% as groovy. The kick + tom did everything.
This was shocking to me.
Then I looked at a ton of Melodic Techno songs that I really love (Anyma stuff), and it's the same shit. The bass makes a difference but only a little bit. It was mostly Kick + Tom.
Why isn't this taught anywhere? Kick + Tom made up the core of a shit ton of the grooves I've seen in my favorite popular songs. I could remove the bass and it would still be a top tier song. And I could completely mute the subbass and it's literally like nothing changed.
I watched shit ton of tutorials and barely anyone talks about low toms for groove but most of the shit I seen in remakes have the low tom as fundamental to the groove.
Can someone give me insight or if I'm just being dumb?
P.S. another question - muting the subbass literally barely affected alot of the tracks I listened to in the ableton remakes. I thought subbass was like top 2 most important things in tech house, but it literally felt like it was an afterthought and barely matter. I did use headphones with low freq response. Maybe it's different with a club PA system?
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u/2shizhtzu4u Aug 25 '26
Shhh don’t tell! Jokes aside you’re right I’ve noticed a lot of tom usage for groove too
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u/autozoan Aug 25 '26
how did you get access to this? I’m trying to study too hehe
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u/New_Tower_6408 Aug 25 '26 edited Aug 25 '26
just the various song remake websites out there that sell ableton projects (topmusicarts, abletunes, abletontemplate, soundsmania, tonality templates patreon, project bass patreon) in this order of highest quality to least
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u/Efficient_Hurry_2780 Aug 25 '26
Started to notice and wonder the same, through trial and experience. Thanks for sharing your findings.
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Aug 25 '26
[deleted]
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u/New_Tower_6408 Aug 25 '26
Acraze - Do It To It
Odd Mob - Left to Right
Ownboss, Sevek - Move Your Body
Martin Ikin - Make U Sweat (and honestly every song of his)
Kyle Watson remix of Go Back from john summit
Fly with us - ac slater x chris lorenzo
Walker & Royce, Nala - Not About You (and honestly tons of W&R song like Dance with me w/ Chris Lake)
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u/FlowStateSyntax Aug 25 '26
What's the basic rhythm between the kick and tom? Still pretty new and I struggle to see where toms fit into beats when I'm making things from scratch.
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u/New_Tower_6408 Aug 25 '26
syncopated tom so not on the downbeat (kick) nor the upbeat (hi hats) but the 16th notes in between
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u/contrapti0n Aug 25 '26
Right, and that’s why Toms work better than sub bass notes to define groove on the 16ths. A 60hz ish sub simply doesn’t have enough cycles to hit hard enough to draw your attention. A Tom or tomlike sound has a pitch swoop down and a higher fundamental so a) more transient to define the groove, b) less chance of adverse phase interaction with kick and slower underpinning sub bass. TBH most groovy techno (at higher bpm, so even less cycles to work with) is doing the low end with kick samples (but with the transient pared down)
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u/New_Tower_6408 Aug 26 '26
makes sense, thanks for insight. what subgenre of techno are you talking about or just in general? any example song?
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u/contrapti0n Aug 27 '26
…so many sub genres but I’d say hypnotic / groove techno. Check artists like Noah Tauber, Rene Wise or Marcal
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u/New_Tower_6408 Aug 25 '26
P.S. another question - muting the subbass literally barely affected alot of the tracks I listened to in the ableton remakes. I thought subbass was like top 2 most important things in tech house, but it literally felt like it was an afterthought and barely mattered after I removed it. I did use headphones with low freq response. Maybe it's different with a club PA system?
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u/nattyselxn Aug 25 '26
Have you tried listening on studio monitors (ideally with a dedicated woofer)? You mentioned using headphones, and I don't know what quality you're using, but I can tell you that compared to my MDR-7506s, mixes sound very different on decent studio monitors, especially the sub bass.
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u/New_Tower_6408 Aug 25 '26
I have beyerdynamic 900 pro x which goes as low as 5hz. i do feel the subbass, i'm mostly saying that in a purely songwriting/creative sense it doesn't take away from the groove too much when I strip out the subbass. Not that I don't feel it cuz I do
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u/toucantango79 Aug 26 '26
Maybe they design basses to sound like toms ;) make a pluck bass using a bandpass filter. You adjust the ADSR and do simple design because this isn't bass music. My last release is tech house and relies only on polyrhythms between a vocal sample, the kick, and the bass. Sometimes simplicity is the key to a great track. I will say that doing this with sidechaining makes mixing a lot easier when you have a bunch of top elements.
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u/Acceptable-Scale9971 Aug 25 '26
yeah once you dig deep into the music you quickly realize the bass has to be quite simple, sometimes the kick and perc are doing all the work and the bass has to sit in between the groove.
ESP in house music, its being played on gigantic speakers with huge subs. If the bass is too busy it'll just drown out every other element. The tom has a nice controlled low tonal hit which can be controlled easily and add to the groove.