They might have plenty in common (high energy and a solid rhythmic foundation), but rock and dance music are very different animals when it comes to their core mechanics, sonic palettes and engineering. With that in mind, here are some ubiquitous production techniques and concepts deployed in house, techno, drum ’n’ bass, EDM and most other dance styles that every rock producer keen to take their sound in new directions should try.

Electronic Sounds Can Really Rock

While there’s no questioning the wholly appropriate establishment of electric guitar, bass, acoustic drums and vocals as the fundamental components of rock music, synths, drum machines and samplers have had a variable level of involvement since their respective inventions. Indeed, entire sub genres of rock – progressive and industrial, for example – make headline features of them to great effect. Heavily distorted synths (perhaps routed out to your amp and pedals) make excellent alternatives and accompaniments to electric guitars; drum machines can be used to add futuristic interest to rhythm tracks; while samplers are every bit as useful for emulating otherwise inaccessible instruments and flying in loops (see below) as they are in every other modern genre. Don’t be shy about firing up those virtual instruments for your rock projects, no matter how traditional or forward thinking they might be.

Crowds Love A Build And Drop

A staple feature in most forms of dance music, the ‘build and drop’ is an arrangement/mixing technique whereby a track is broken down to just a couple of key elements, post-chorus, which are added to with other parts and ramped up in intensity over a few bars using automated filters and other ‘riser’ effects, then stopped dead for a one-bar drum (usually) break, before a new version of the beat (half-timed, underpinned with a fresh bassline or otherwise changed up) slams back in for that euphoric, hands-in-the-air climax that the clubbers have been waiting for. Of course, the comparatively limited and predictable range of sounds you have to play with as a rock producer will demand real ingenuity to fashion an effective drop with, but through the use of carefully automated amps and effects, double- or triple-tracked guitars and/or vocals, and well-planned instrumental switch-ups and transformations, if your track is of the right flavour to support such wizardry, it can make for a brilliant crowd-pleaser.

Sub Bass Elevates The Low End

Sub bass is a given in much of dance music, but have you ever tried layering a sub underneath the bass guitar in a rock mix, or even using one as a full-on replacement for it? You’ll get a very different character from your bassline this way, and subs have more scope for adaptation than you might think, the differences between sine, triangle and square wave oscillators alone opening up plenty of textual possibilities. Volume and/or filter (unless the wave is a pure sine) envelopes can be used to shape the attack, and depending on the synth you use to generate it, you may have the option to toughen up the sound by distorting the waveform within the oscillator itself. If not, any distortion or waveshaping plugin can be pressed into service to give it the presence needed to compete with all those electric guitars.

Hyper-Processed Vocals Always Grab The Ear

Distorted vocals have long been a mainstay of harder rock styles, but who knows what intriguing sounds you might come up with by instead or also applying extreme Auto-Tuning, vocoding and talkbox processing to the raw output of your singer? The human voice serves as truly inspiring source material for imaginative manipulation, with endless potential for moulding into all manner of organic-synthetic hybrids and overt electronic effects that can absolutely work in an ‘electric’ setting, so don’t let those pesky dance producers keep all the good vocal processing tricks to themselves.

Sampled Loops Add Vibe And Character

Sampling classic beats, vocal cuts and other vintage audio material isn’t just for the hip-hop heads – rise up, rock producer, and lay claim to your archived musical heritage! Try lifting a John Bonham groove or Hendrix riff and mixing it in with your own recorded drum or guitar track for an almost certainly awesome and culturally referential result that the musicologists in your audience will relish. Or take a full rhythm section loop from an AC/DC, Thin Lizzy, Genesis (early, natch) or Nirvana number, timestretch and repitch it, then pile on with your own guitars, vocals and all the rest of it – good artists borrow, great artists steal, after all.

Obviously, there’s a minefield of legal issues involved with this kind of sampling, but if clearance is an issue, you can always make your own version of the loop in question using virtual instruments or the real things, with the objective of sounding as close to the original as lawfully possible.

Be Adventurous With Effects

The creative deployment of effects is central to sound design, arrangement and mixing in dance music – much more, so than is generally the case in rock. Let’s change that…

On the face of it, the exotic likes of Output’s Portal, Sugar Bytes’ Effectrix, Boom Library’s Enrage and Cableguys’ ShaperBox appear to be wholly targeted at purveyors of electronic and dance music, but the next time you’re looking to tart up a humdrum guitar sound, rather than stop at the usual amp sim and studio staple processors – reverb, delay, chorus – fire up one of those instead. Packed with diverse effects modules brought to life by elaborate onboard modulation systems, they and others of their ilk are perfect for taking electric and acoustic instruments, not to mention vocals, into uncharted territory. Approach them almost as instruments in themselves, rather than effects, and you’re thinking along the right lines.

Sound FX And Ear Candy Keep Things Interesting

With a good proportion of dance music eschewing vocals and any form of traditional ‘song’ structure, holding the listener’s attention throughout the course of what is often essentially a cycling eight- or 16-bar loop is done using builds and drops, as discussed, cunning instrumental developments, and a ton of spot FX and ‘ear candy’ – percussion hits, sirens, delay and reverb spins, tinkling synth runs, booms, whooshes, dialogue samples, zaps, pulses, reversals and so on. While we wouldn’t for one moment suggest that any of your lovingly crafted rock mixes need such punctuative intrusions, throwing in the odd synthesised or sampled aural treat can have a surprisingly profound effect on the overall story of a track.

What helpful techniques have you picked up from your dance music brethren and successfully introduced into your rock productions? Let us know in the comments.