How to make techno in your browser

By Tongkit Leong · August 10, 2026 · 8 min read

Techno is built on a driving four-on-the-floor kick, a hypnotic repeating bassline, minimal percussion loops, and long filter builds instead of chord changes — and you can program all of it from scratch in the Tracks browser studio in an afternoon, with no software to install and no account to create.

The anatomy of a techno track

Techno shares its four-on-the-floor foundation with house, but it gets its identity from repetition and restraint rather than melody. A few traits separate it from other four-on-the-floor genres:

• A driving, sustained kick — heavier and longer than a house kick, often carrying most of the track's low-end weight on its own.
• Minimal, looping percussion — a handful of one-bar patterns repeated for long stretches rather than constantly varied fills.
• A hypnotic bassline — usually just one or two notes, locked tightly to the kick, valued for groove over melody.
• Filter builds instead of chords — techno arrangements move by opening and closing a filter over many bars, standing in for the chord progressions other genres use to create movement.
• A dark, functional mix — techno is made for club systems, so low end and punch usually matter more than polish or brightness.

Tracks has everything this needs built in — the 808/909 drum machine for the groove, a subtractive synth with a resonant filter for the bass and acid lines, a piano roll for writing patterns, and automation for the slow filter builds that carry a techno arrangement.

Step 1: Set your tempo

Open the Tracks studio and set the BPM in the transport bar. Techno covers a wider tempo range than house:

• Deep / dub techno: 120–128 BPM. Slower, spacious, more atmosphere than aggression.
• Straight-up club techno: 128–135 BPM. 130 BPM is a dependable starting point.
• Hard / peak-time techno: 135–145 BPM. Faster, harder-hitting, built for a packed room.

Pick a tempo before you write anything else. Techno's groove lives in the tight pocket between the kick and the bassline, and that pocket feels completely different even five BPM apart.

Step 2: Program the driving kick

Add a track and open the drum machine. On a 16-step grid, place the kick on steps 1, 5, 9, and 13 — one hit on every quarter note, same as house. The difference in techno is in the sound itself: reach for a longer, punchier kick sample with more sustain, since it's usually carrying the low end on its own without much help from the bassline.

Loop the kick alone and listen at your working volume. It should feel heavy and relentless rather than snappy. If the tail is too long and starts to blur into the next hit, shorten the decay slightly until each hit stays distinct.

Step 3: Build a minimal percussion loop

Techno percussion is deliberately sparse. On the same drum machine, layer in just a few elements:

• A closed hi-hat on the off-beats — steps 3, 7, 11, and 15 — to keep the groove moving.
• A short shaker, rim, or metallic percussion loop across the sixteenth notes at low velocity, for texture rather than rhythm.
• A single stabbing clap, rim shot, or snare on beat 3 (step 9) instead of a full backbeat — this is one of the clearest differences from house, which usually claps on both 2 and 4.

Resist the urge to fill every gap. A one-bar loop repeated for 16 or 32 bars, with small velocity variation, is the standard techno approach — the hypnotic effect comes from repetition, not variety.

Step 4: Write a hypnotic bassline

Add a new instrument track and open the subtractive synth. Set the oscillator to a sawtooth or square wave and pull the low-pass filter cutoff down until the tone feels dark and rounded rather than bright.

Open the piano roll on the bass track and write a short, repeating pattern using just one or two notes — techno basslines are valued for lock and groove, not melodic movement. Gate each note tightly so it stays out of the kick's way, and quantize it to sit right on or just after each kick hit. Let this pattern loop unchanged for long sections; techno rewards a bassline you can disappear into.

Keeping the low end clean

If the kick and bassline start to smear together, open the mixer and pull a narrow EQ cut on the bass track around the frequency where the kick peaks. This keeps the kick's punch intact and lets the bassline sit underneath it as weight rather than mud.

Step 5: Add a looping stab or acid line

On a second synth track, add a repeating melodic element to sit on top of the groove. Two common approaches work well in Tracks:

• A stabbing chord: voice a single dark, minor-leaning chord as a short, rhythmic stab, with a fast attack and short decay so it punches and disappears rather than sustaining.
• An acid line: write a fast, repeating sixteenth-note pattern and route it through a low-pass filter with high resonance. Automate the filter cutoff sweeping up and down over several bars for the classic squelchy acid movement.

Either works as the track's main hook. Keep it a single repeating loop rather than a full melody — in techno, the interest comes from how the loop is filtered and processed over time, not from new notes.

Step 6: Automate a long filter build

Techno doesn't rely on chord changes to create movement — it relies on slow, patient filter automation. In the Tracks timeline, open the automation lane on your bassline or stab track and draw a gradual rising curve on the filter cutoff over 16 or 32 bars, so the sound slowly opens from muffled to bright.

Pair this with the drums dropping out for a section, then returning right as the filter reaches full brightness — that return is the track's drop. Because techno arrangements often run 6 to 8 minutes for DJ use, plan for two or three of these build-and-release cycles across the track rather than just one. See How to use automation to make your mix move for more on drawing automation curves in Tracks.

Step 7: Arrange the full track

A club-ready techno arrangement is long and gradual, built for continuous DJ mixing rather than a verse-chorus structure. A common shape looks like this:

1. Intro (32 bars): kick and minimal percussion only, giving a DJ room to beatmatch and mix in.
2. Build (16–32 bars): bring in the bassline, then the stab or acid line, filtered down and slowly opening.
3. Main section (32–64 bars): full arrangement at full intensity — kick, percussion, bass, and the lead loop.
4. Breakdown (16–32 bars): drums drop out, filter closes down, tension builds back up.
5. Second main section (32–64 bars): full arrangement returns, sometimes with a small variation or added layer.
6. Outro (32 bars): strip back to kick and percussion alone so a DJ has room to mix out.

These lengths are conventions rather than rules, but keeping sections in multiples of 8 or 16 bars makes the track far easier for other producers or DJs to mix.

Step 8: Mix and export

Before you export, spend a few minutes balancing levels in the Tracks mixer:

1. Balance the kick and bassline first so they share the low end without masking each other — techno lives or dies on this relationship.
2. Apply a compressor on the drum bus with a fast attack and moderate ratio to glue the kick and percussion into one tight groove.
3. Keep reverb and delay sparse and dry. Techno generally sounds tighter and more functional with less space than house or melodic genres — a small room reverb on percussion is usually enough.
4. If the bassline and kick are still fighting for room, try sidechain ducking on the bass track triggered by the kick — see Sidechain compression explained for how to set it up.

When the balance feels right at a comfortable volume, export to WAV for a clean master file or MP3 to share online — see How to export your song to MP3 or WAV for the full walkthrough. Your project stays in your browser the entire time; Tracks never uploads it anywhere.

Frequently asked questions

What BPM is techno?

Most techno runs between 125 and 145 BPM. Deep and dub techno tend to sit lower, around 120–128 BPM, straight club techno sits around 128–135 BPM, and hard or peak-time techno pushes toward 135–145 BPM. 130 BPM is a safe, versatile starting point if you're not aiming at a specific subgenre.

What's the difference between techno and house?

Both use a four-on-the-floor kick, but techno leans darker, more minimal, and more repetitive, with movement driven by filter automation instead of chord changes and melody. House usually carries more harmonic content — chord stabs, pads, vocal hooks — and a warmer, more song-like feel, while techno is built around groove, texture, and long, hypnotic loops.

Do I need a resonant filter for an acid-style bassline?

Yes, that's the core of the acid sound. Set the subtractive synth's low-pass filter to high resonance so it emphasizes the frequencies right around the cutoff, then automate the cutoff moving up and down over a repeating note pattern. The squelchy, vocal-like quality comes from that resonance peak sweeping through the notes, not from the notes themselves.

How long should a techno track be?

A club-ready techno track typically runs 6 to 8 minutes, with long intros and outros built for DJ mixing. For a shorter version aimed at streaming, 4 to 5 minutes with a tighter build-and-release cycle works fine — keep the same slow, filtered arrangement approach, just compressed into fewer bars.

Can I use a MIDI keyboard to play the bassline instead of clicking it in?

Yes. Tracks supports Web MIDI, so if you have a MIDI keyboard connected over USB you can play the bassline or stab pattern live and record the performance directly into the piano roll. See How to use a MIDI keyboard in a browser DAW for the setup steps. Playing a repeating pattern by hand often gives it a subtle timing variation that's harder to get from clicking every note onto the grid.