Pig&Dan's Essential Guide to Tech House Production – Magnetic Magazine

Will Vance • May 23, 2022
Pig&Dan are industry veterans for more chart-topping singles than one can keep track of with releases on labels such as Soma, Plus8, Terminal M, Bedrock, Drumcode and more.
And with such a steady string of hits under their belt comes a wealth of production knowledge, tips, and techniques to get that massive, groovin’ energy of a quality tech-house track.
Dive deeper into the Tech House genre here.   
And with the upcoming debut on Crosstown Rebels, their two-track Rock You All Night EP, later this week, we wanted to pick the production brains of these two masterminds in hopes that you can achieve similar results in your next production. 
We are both very experimental producers so often try writing some notes and see where it takes us. 
It could turn into a baseline or a central melodic part, but the idea is to inspire the rest of the track with the first musical part. Ironically sometimes it’s one of the parts that we end up not using.
We always go with the flow and try to feel it in a natural way, however if you find find it hard to feel it, study how others did it and learn from them.

We don’t use samples as a rule, but we love to manipulate sounds and give them our own touch of spice. 
As I mentioned previously we are all about experimentation and often go for plug ins that have a more extreme edge so we can really manipulating the audio. 
Our go to Plug-ins are Audio Damage “Kombinat” & D16 “Redoptor II”
We make what we use, but if something more organic is needed we look through old records and take from there. 
There’s something about samples that we try to avoid, in that I mean how do you stick out as unique if we all grab sample libraries and sound similar?
Balance is a hard thing, however there’s for sure a sweet spot. 
We often use them to put sounds into their own space within the Spektrum (very little unnoticeable amounts) but sometimes use them to make things sound outrageous. Learning by going all the way..
Use plates and add something more analog to the sound.. 
Also personally I can’t stand pre-delays, so I would always remove them especially in faster BPM music. They’re very much for slower tempo tracks in my mind. 
Take that pre-delay knob to zero!!!

I love AutoFilter in Logic Pro because its very logical (excuse the pun) and can add true warmth to bottom end baselines or kicks. 
Also if you need to clean up a kick I often use this to keep that low end rumble but make sure the Transient is loud and clear.
Less is more, don’t saturate things by giving them no space. Use a Spektrum analyzer to make sure each part has its own range in the Spektrum. 
Kicks, Bass, synths anything and everything deserves its place.
…Autotune (snore)
I look how the kick sits with the baseline both sonically and visually using a Spektrum analyser. 
I also check it on numerous speakers even phones. You never know! You might think its cool to play bass heavy music on a micro speaker…

It’s all about reading the crowd, its your psychology and not just mixing records together like many believe is the root of our work. 
We need to feel where the majority of people want to go and take them there the best we can. We often pick out people in the crowd who we feel are really connected and see if we hitting the right points. 
We are there for them after all and its based on our taste as artists however we need to make sure we all have a great musical journey. Some DJs just play for themselves sadly.
Try to get away from the norm, try things that are wacky and pushing your envelope. Mash things up : )
Concentrate on an element and make it as epic as you can. People love to get lost in music, not to find out how amazing you are at adding a thousand elements that work together. 
Look at our biggest tracks like Growler, Savage or Chemistry, they’re by far our most simple tracks we’ve ever made, however they seem to touch something in people because of that simplicity. 
Take that element and make it shine, don’t complicate yourself.

If more producers were daring and strived to be unique, Dance Music would be in a much better place
You just need to know when to move on
Keep up with Pig&Dan: Facebook / Spotify / Instagram / Soundcloud
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