Techno · Two-bar exercise
Techno drum pattern with a kick pickup
A driving two-bar techno exercise with an extra kick pickup, a sparse snare and offbeat hats. Change the rhythm and take the original MIDI into your DAW.
Two bars · 4/4 · 16 steps per bar. Tap a cell to cycle rest → quiet → medium → strong → rest. Scroll each grid to reach every beat.
The preview uses simple browser synthesis. Your drum instrument supplies the sound after import. Edits stay on this page and reset when you leave; download the MIDI to keep them.
What to listen for
Four kicks keep the pulse clear. A quieter pickup before the last kick of bar 2 changes the turnaround. The snare appears on beat 4, leaving the first half of each bar open.
Change one thing
Move the quiet pickup one step earlier. Listen to how that changes the approach to beat 4 without adding any more notes.
Try an eight-bar arrangement
The MIDI download contains the two bars shown above. Repeat the clip four times in your DAW, then make these changes to build an eight-bar phrase:
- Bars 1–2: start with the four main kicks only.
- Bars 3–4: add the closed hats.
- Bars 5–6: introduce the snare and open-hat turnarounds.
- Bars 7–8: add the kick pickup in the final bar; keep the other bar straight.
Import the notes into monody
In a test with monody 0.9.2, the house offbeat example retained its 21 notes and velocities after MIDI import, but received a pitched Techno Stab preset. That test covered the house offbeat file, not a separate native import of every exercise. It does not automatically create a drum kit. Use the browser preview to hear the rhythm here; importing alone will not reproduce those drum sounds.
- Download the original MIDI, or edit the grid and choose Download this MIDI.
- In monody, choose Project → Import MIDI file… and select the downloaded .mid file. Import creates a new MIDI track.
- Set the project tempo to the BPM you chose here; importing does not set it for you.
- Inspect or edit the notes in the piano roll. To hear them as drums, they need a drum-kit track with matching note assignments. A DAW with a General MIDI drum instrument can also use this file.
MIDI carries note numbers and velocities; it does not carry the browser’s synthesized sounds. This file uses channel 10 and the note map below. Remap notes if your drum instrument uses a different map.
- Kick: MIDI note 36
- Snare: MIDI note 38
- Closed hat: MIDI note 42
- Open hat: MIDI note 46
Download monody for macOS to continue with local editing and export. Free supports up to eight tracks. The built-in assistant requires an account and internet access; this exercise does not require the assistant.
About this pattern
This is an original practice exercise, not a transcription of a particular artist or recording, and not a definition of an entire genre. Use and adapt the MIDI in your own music, including commercial tracks, without attribution. No third-party sample audio is included.
Swing here delays every second sixteenth within an eighth-note pair. 50% is straight; the downloaded note timing includes the selected swing. Changing a DAW’s groove again after import can change that timing further.
For more on rhythmic placement, see Ableton’s linear-drumming lesson. File-format reference: the MIDI Association’s Standard MIDI Files overview. These are background references, not sources of the downloadable note data.