making hardcore techno with non-school-attenders

Hi guys I do peripatetic laptop-based music/songwriting/recording workshops with youngsters in a variety of community settings, including schools. Rock, pop & hip-hop generally. Got an interesting gig coming up with a small group of 'difficult to reach' teenagers, i.e. they are non-school attenders who are into hardcore techno. Anyone got any advice on how to make hardcore techno??? I use Reaper, Live, Reason and all that good stuff (with MIDI keys and pads connected), but all my attempts to make 'hardcore' in the last few days (as practice) are just coming up with kind of moody upbeat electro noodlings. Need to be a bit more bangin and mental! Where do I find those kinda sounds? Blistering synth leads etc... Any tips on how to approach this one?

lots of distortion and simple simple 4/4 arrangements >>>anything more than +140bpm n u should be right? unless these kids are glue sniffer gabba freaks >>> then wee talking anywhere up to 200bpm replete with chainsaw , machine gun, horror/snuff samples!!! trawl through sonic couturre, and other sample sites , they give away free packs, and if you google "hardcore techno samples " ur bound to find something. ive done similar work in the past making hip hop with indigenous kids in the desert,,,was really rewarding for all involved. all the best man, sounds like good stuff>>>its just a shame the technology leaves when you do. peace

Do you have z3ta in you arsenal? If not use MIDI snippets for meta-recording in Live (basically turning Live into another musical instrument) Steve

i would give the kids a mic and set up an electribe sx sampler/drum machine and a midi keyboard, show them the basics of step programming beats, cos its pretty simple as far as electro goes, and let them just fuck around with them...although i was doing alot in terms of controlling the sounds n stuff. put it into a mixer and hit record on the laptop. I would then go thru the stuff and take out little gem pieces of 4/8/16 beats and then loop it and again mess around on top. these were really challenging programs (mayhem!) but it was all about having fun and getting a final result within just a few days. Sure, i would have loved to have worked longer, but the situation wouldnt allow it. Burn off a heap of cds and there u go. The kids were pretty good with what they achieved too. But theres no way ur gonna show kids how to use a daw and sequence tracks with all the bling in a few days. U have to drive it.

For a budget, some good freebies for this sort of electronic music are the Native Instruments Kore Player, with the Factory Kontakt free sound library. Lots of great drum kits, pads and stuff. Yellow tools Independence free is another great freebie, but it took me a month to figure out how to use it. Once you figure it out, though, it would be easier to teach to someone. You can load your own wav files into this sampler, and it has nice drum kits. Also there is the Yellow Tools/Engine Titan freebie, which is good. These two are good for techno because they have sequencers and arpeggiators which are good. Then there is a big free sound library from One Laptop Per Child, it is hosted on Internet archive, So if you go to Archive.org and do a search for "sound samples" "One laptop" you'll find all of those, they are professional quality samples. The quickest and easiest free thing for me was the Kore Player. z3ta is really nice, FM8 is nice, too.

Propellerhead Reason can be nice to make some beats and lines too... all in one you know... rewire-able to reaper if you want to do a bit more advanced recording/audio editing etc....

One way to give rather instant gratification is to setup a simple project with some drums, a bass synth and maybe a lead synth. Put JS distortion and a limiter on the drums. (isn't it mostly distorted kicks here?) Send some of the lead to a reverb but @ -inf so they can turn it up and hear what it does. Make them change the tempo from something moderate (say 140) and up/down. Loop one bar and create two or three one bar midi items for the different parts. Now they can quickly move items about and get different result. And if they want the can edit the midi items as well. Kind of a loop based way of working, but with midi notes so you can go in and make you own stuff as well. That's what I can come up with right now. Teaching this stuff in a group can't be easy, especially if the pupils are struggling with motivation. I applaud you effort though and wish you all the best.