Regardless I'm hoping to find a few of you out there that might know a thing or two about the genre or tried their luck at producing some. Outside of harderstate it is rare to find discussions on tek production as well, so I'm hoping this thread might fill the gap.
I have only been experimenting with the genre for a few months and so far have had pretty good results on my screeches and leads as design wise they don't vary too much from hardstyle. If anything I've found those parts even easier than hardstyle seeing as most tek midintros/outros rely more on percussion and layering simpler sounds versus having a massive lead that takes up most of the space by itself.
I have yet to crack making an acceptable sounding tek kick though. I'm starting to figure out some of the key differences between it and a hardstyle kick however and can point out the little bits I do know.
Wavform of my hardstyle kick
Wavform of my tek kick
- First thing would be the bit of space that the hardstyle kick has during the first few milliseconds. This is here to leave room for the punch so that when played together the dynamics stay consistent throughout the whole kick. This didn't sound quite right with the tek kick so I left out the space similar to how hardcore kicks are layered straight onto the punch without this gap in the beginning.
- Second would be the type of distortion. The hardstyle kick has more jagged peaks which give the kick a crunchier sound. Tek kicks seem to lack effects like bitcrusher and xciter which I would say give that crunchier distortion. Instead I relied primarily on tube distortion which results in the kick maintaining a smoother waveform.
I had no outside material or guides to work off of, so my ideas are just from experimenting. Please correct me on anything that is wrong in my design analysis and share your own tips for tek kicks and tek design in general.
Clips would be cool as well!
