How to Make Tech House Basslines Like Max Styler

Max Styler's minimal, bass-heavy sound is built for the dancefloor: groovy, powerful, and engineered to keep the energy high all night. This breakdown takes his bass work apart into five layers, each with a different timbre and role: the main bass, the accent pluck, the response, the phase-distortion refresh, and the wow fill. Keep it minimal and let the bass do the work.

Step 1: The Main Bass Line

The core groove, a simple phrase with a semitone twist and an end-of-phrase figure for movement. The rule of thumb: amp straight, filter plucky.

Key settings:

Amp envelope (ENV 1): straight and clean so the note hits as-is
ENV 2: plucky and short, assigned to the filter cutoff
Oscillators: a pure sine for the sub, plus an ICanHasKick-style wavetable for body and crunch
FM and LFO modulation for movement
EQ Eight boosting the upper mids for presence

Max Styler main bassline MIDI in Ableton with EQ Eight

Step 2: The Deep Bass Pluck

An accent layer that pushes the end-of-phrase melody, sitting deeper than the main bass so the two never fight.

Key settings:

FM-style and ICanHasKick-style wavetables for grit
Filter cutoff mostly closed so it sits deep
ENV 2 to filter cutoff for pluck and movement
ENV 1 shorter and snappier than the main bass
A dimension widener for stereo width, and a low cut to leave sub space for the main bass

Serum deep bass pluck patch for tech house

Step 3: The Response Bass

The response to the pluck's call, with a contrasting, more forward character. A half-step movement gives it that classic tech house low-end motion.

Key settings:

More grit than the pluck, from phase distortion (find the sweet spot) and tube distortion
More forward and audible in the mix
Distinct oscillators, filter and envelopes for a clear contrast against the pluck

Serum response bass patch with phase and tube distortion

Step 4: The Phase-Distortion Bass

A short, punchy bass placed right before the loop restarts, refreshing the loop with a new, narrower character.

Key settings:

A narrower character built on phase distortion
A short, punchy envelope
Placed just before the loop restart as a refresh

Phase-distortion bass placed before the loop restart in Ableton

Step 5: The Wow Fill

A longer-attack bass used as a fill at the end of a phrase, before the next one kicks in. The filter opens gradually for that "wow" lift.

Key settings:

A single note or short figure at the phrase end
A longer attack on the amp and/or filter
The filter opening gradually for the wow effect

Serum wow-fill bass patch with a longer filter attack

Grab the full project

Want the full project? Drift has 8 Ableton project files, 300+ samples, and 50+ Serum 2 presets with matching MIDI, including the bass patches behind this breakdown.