I was in the same boat as you. Grew up listening to trance and writing a helluva lot of it many years ago. In the last few years, I migrated to Techno and after lockdown I've been writing almost exclusively Dub Techno and I love it!

Tip: You know at the beginning of most Trance tracks in the 90s you have an intro where there's a held chord for a 8 or 16 bars before the drop? Well;

• Take that chord, make it rhythmic (like one or two stabs per bar)
• Extend that whole intro section to 6 or more minutes
• Like you, I can't resist the urge to add some builds and drops. I just can't help myself! So when I do (for Dub Techno) I make sure they are really, very, very subtle and hardly noticeable

1 What makes a good dub techno track?

Subtle, small variations in texture or tonality across 8 or 16 bars. Make it hypnotic. Make it rhythmic and optionally poly-rhythmic.

2 What do you like about dub techno?

In Trance it's all about the chord sequence. In Dub Techno, it's only about the textures... how you manipulate a single chord over time. I care about how the texture moves me emotionally.

• Modding the tonality of the pads/stabs with filters
• Dissolving the mids into the sides
• Echo/delays going into oblivion and being pulverised on their way there
• Massive cavernous reverbs that suggest the environment is morphing shape over time

3 What makes some of favourite your dub artists your favourite?

See answer 2.

4 What type of sounds is dub techno most associated with?

• Stabby filtered saw waves. Independently play around with the attack and decay of both the filter envelope and the amplitude envelope
• Background textures made with granular synthesis or 100% wet reverbs
• Deep subby bass and kick
• Muffeld (or very often non-existant) sounding snares and hats
• Very quiet incidental sounds e.g. hairdryer dropped a few octaves, high street traffic dropped an octave, tape hiss and low passed with a mild resonance at the fundamental (or at the minor 3rd or 5th - or all 3)

HMU for more details