Not all electronic music is dance music. Electronica is a broad spectrum of electronic music that focuses on listenability over danceability. Unlike EDM, which focuses on driving beats and crowd-pleasing drops, electronica leans into artistry. Musicians of this genre blend acoustic and synthetic elements into highly textured compositions. Not all electronica is dancefloor-averse, but its uniqueness lies in its versatility of soundscapes and creative freedom.
This guide will take you through the process of making an electronica track that can sound like this:
We’ll be using plugins from Komplete 15 to achieve a starting point for soundscapes that feel like your own. Go ahead and recreate this track step-by-step or draw inspiration and diverge on a creative tangent.
Jump to these sections:
Follow along with this tutorial using Komplete 15.
What is electronica music?
While electronica is technically a genre, it has a broad spectrum of subgenres within it. That makes its hard-to-define sound more of a creative philosophy than a genre. Electronica emerged around the 1990s. Its move from the dancefloor gave producers space to break away from traditional structures of electronic music and experiment with sound design, textures, and rhythm.
Its influences are wide-ranging, pulling from ambient, downtempo, glitch, and even classical music. This experimental nature makes electronica an evolving genre that continues to transform through producers’ innovations.
To get a better sense of electronica’s breadth, let’s explore three standout tracks:
“Cirrus” by Bonobo is a classic that displays the ability of a producer to combine organic and electronic elements. Bonobo’s use of layered percussion and melodic hooks shows electronica in full form:
“Moth” by Burial and Four Tet is a masterpiece of glitch and sampling. The track demonstrates how electronica can be both playful and deeply emotional. While a steady four-to-the-floor beat ties everything together, you can still hear lots of unconventional rhythms and textures:
Jon Hopkins gives a masterclass in sampling and blending timbres on his landmark track “Immunity”. Piano, sophisticated harmony, and time-stretching are the name of the game on this beautiful piece:
Is electronica music the same as EDM?
It’s a misconception that electronica and EDM are interchangeable terms. While both genres share a foundation in electronic production techniques, they have quite different aesthetics.
EDM is primarily designed for dance floors. Its producers focus on high-energy beats, familiar structures, and explosive drops. It’s made to get people dancing and prioritizes huge euphoric moments.
On the other hand, electronica makes artistic exploration the centerpiece. Tracks often defy traditional structures and lean into experimental arrangements and textures. Electronica producers generally aim to make an immersive listening experience rather than fueling high-energy movement.
Of course, there is a lot of crossover between the genres. Bicep and Clara La San bring breakbeat, EDM, and electronica together on their track “Water”:
How to make electronica music
Now that we have a stylistic idea of what electronica is, we’ll get into some hands-on production. We’ll use plug-ins and expansions from Komplete 15 to demonstrate the tools you can use to create atmospheric textures and rhythmic experimentation.
To give some context, the track will end up sounding like this:
1. Set your tempo
Whereas other electronic music genres have typical BPM areas, electronica is unbound by those conventions. Play around and find the tempo that feels right to you. For this track, we’re choosing 124 BPM — which is around the same BPM as many house tracks. That will help inform what kind of beat we’ll be making later on.
2. Start with melody and atmospheric textures
Electronica is all about mood, so let’s start by selecting a sound that can bring in some texture and a melody. Open Massive X and load a sound called Aluminium Shake from the Fade expansion. This expansion features complex, evolving textures and this preset feels right for the mood we’re trying to create.
The sound has a quick but gentle attack and a long decay, which will help us create a particular vibe. Here’s how it sounds:
We’ll be sending this to an instance of Raum, which we’ll explain a bit later.
3. Program drums with a human touch
Before starting here, we recommend playing in your drums and percussion with a MIDI controller like Komplete Kontrol M32 or similar. Alternatively, you can draw in notes and change their velocity to make your beat sound more human.
For this track, we’ve chosen a kit from the Prismatic Bliss called Fragile Kit.
To bring this kit to life, we’ll add Supercharger GT, as well as a tiny bit of distortion with Trash. The subtle compression and distortion will glue the kit together and give it some character.
We’ll start off with a basic kick and snare pattern, in a breakbeat style:
It sounds like this:
That’s our foundation. We’ll add some hi-hats and rides on top of that to really bring the groove together. If you’re not playing this in, remember to adjust parameters like velocity and timing discrepancies.
Here’s how it sounds:
As you build your drums, think about dynamics and contrast. Get creative and experiment with different sounds and rhythms.
4. Add a bassline with character
A strong bassline anchors your track and sets the mood. For a warm sound, we’ve chosen the preset Analog Friend from Fade. For extra grit and width, we’ve also added on Darken My Day on Trash, with the amount set to 57%.
When programming your bassline, focus on simplicity and groove. We’re using just a few basic notes in a hypnotic, repetitive pattern:
This is what it sounds like:
Something mentioned so often that it has become a cliche is ‘use your ears’. But it is such a common piece of advice because of how important it is. Listen out for whether your bass is filling out too much of the frequency spectrum and equalize it to make things fit. We’ve gone for a hard high pass cut at 50 Hz, and a gentle wide cut at 235 Hz.
5. Introduce melodic layers
Counter-melodies are a fun way to keep the listener’s interest throughout the track. You don’t want it to outshine the main melody though, so keep things simple.
Sound-wise we’ve chosen Antique Typewriter from Kinetic Metal. This sound is very percussive, so it adds an interesting rhythmic high frequency layer to the track, as well as a counter melody.
Here is our basic counter melody which we’ll introduce later in the track:
We’ve added on a basic auto-pan device, and we’re sending it to an instance of Replika XT. We’ll explain that send below.
6. Manipulate sounds with effects
We’ve mentioned that we’re sending some of these tracks to reverbs and delays. To do that, create return tracks in your DAW and load them with your favorite reverbs and delays. We’ve gone with Raum for space and dimension; and Replika XT for rhythmic delays.
We’ve chosen send tracks so that we can keep the full original signal sound, and add the effects in subtly.
Effects add depth and dimension to your track and are an important part of creating a captivating soundscape.
7. Arrange your track
Electronica arrangements often deviate from traditional verse-chorus structures. Fluid, evolving compositions are the name of the game here. You can build your track in sections:
- Intro: Introduce atmospheric melody and percussion.
- Build-up: Gradually layer the bassline and increase the general intensity.
- Breakdown: Strip back the arrangement to some of its core elements. You can introduce the counter-melody here.
- Drop: Bring everything together for an emotional payoff.
Use automation to create transitions, such as filter sweeps or volume fades. A bit of white noise on the drop will also bring everything together. These small details add polish to your track.
This is what the arrangement of this track looks like:
Of course, this is a simple rendition of an electronica arrangement. Take these ideas and expand upon them for a more detailed and polished work.
8. Final touches and mastering
Mastering is the difference between a finished and an unfinished track. It will polish your music into something cohesive across all playback systems. Open Ozone 11 and use its AI-powered mastering assistant to analyze your mix. Adjust the equalization, compression, and limiting to your taste.
Here’s the final version of our track with help from the AI mastering assistant, and some additional tweaking:
Start exploring electronica today
If you’re interested in making electronic music that’s a little bit different, electronica could be the genre for you. Electronica music lends itself to exciting opportunities for experimentation with textures, rhythms, and melodies. With sounds from Komplete 15, you can bring your creative vision to life.
Download Komplete 15, open your DAW, and start creating your own sonic world today.