Hive 2 Arps and Plucks for Melodic Techno, Step by Step

Hive 2 arps are one of the fastest ways I know to get a melodic techno idea moving. You hold a chord, the arp starts rolling, and within a minute you know if the track has something. The problem is that most Hive patches you build in a hurry sound either thin and plasticky or smeared and washy. In this walkthrough I'll show you how I build plucks and arps in u-he Hive 2 that stay tight, sit on top of a rolling bassline and still move over eight minutes of a club track.

Why Hive 2 arps work so well for melodic techno

Hive is quick. Two oscillator paths, two filters, clear envelopes, a built in arpeggiator and a 16 step sequencer, all on one screen. u-he built it to be light on the CPU, which matters when you run several synth tracks plus drums in one session. I would rather spend my time on the chord voicing and the groove than on menu diving.

The other reason is the engine switch. Hive gives you three synth engines: Clean, Normal and Dirty. According to u-he's manual, Clean uses linear attacks and a non distorting state variable filter, Normal adds S curve attacks, punchy decays and an oversampled ladder filter, and Dirty uses exponential envelopes with Steiner Parker style filters that distort. Same patch, three different characters. For plucks that has a bigger effect than most people expect.

Step 1: pick the engine before you touch anything else

I start almost every pluck in Normal. The punchy decay behaviour is exactly what a pluck needs, and the ladder filter rounds off the top in a way that sits nicely next to hi hats. Dirty is great when the arp needs to cut through a busy peak time drop, because the filter adds grit as you push it. Clean is my choice when the arp has to stay polite under a vocal or a big pad.

Decide this first. Switch engines at the end and your envelopes and filter will feel different, so you end up redoing half the patch.

Step 2: build the pluck

Start from the init patch and set the voice mode to poly, because you want the arp to play full chords, not a single line.

Oscillators

• Oscillator 1: Sawtooth. Set Unison to 3 voices, keep Detune low (with unison on, it spreads the stacked waves apart in pitch) and bring Width up about halfway. Three voices is enough to feel wide without blurring the transient.
• Oscillator 2: Square, Octave up by one, Unison off. This adds a hollow upper layer that helps the arp read on small speakers. Keep its Volume a bit lower than oscillator 1.
• Phase: set both oscillators to reset. Hive offers reset, random and flow. The manual describes reset as giving a consistent, robotic attack, and for a 1/16 arp that consistency is what makes it lock to the kick. Random is lovely for pads, but on a fast arp every note will hit slightly differently.

Filter

Hive pairs each oscillator with its own filter, so oscillator 1 runs into filter 1 and oscillator 2 into filter 2. Set both to Lowpass 24. Put Cutoff low, around the nine o'clock position, and Resonance at about a quarter. On filter 2 you can sit the cutoff a little higher so the square layer adds air. Now turn up Mod Env on both filters, using the same MOD envelope, so every note opens the filters. That envelope is where the pluck actually lives.

Add some Key Follow, roughly a third of the way. Without it, higher notes in the arp sound duller than lower ones and the pattern feels lopsided. If you're in Normal or Dirty, a little more Input gives the filter some drive. Go slowly, it adds up fast when the arp is dense.

Envelopes

• MOD envelope: Attack at zero, Decay short, Sustain at zero, Release short. At 124 BPM a sixteenth note lasts about 121 milliseconds, so aim for a filter decay in that area. Longer and the notes start to overlap into mush.
• AMP envelope: Attack at zero, Decay a little longer than the MOD envelope, Sustain low, Release short. The amp tail should outlast the filter sweep slightly so each note has a body after the click.
• Velocity: give the MOD envelope some Velocity amount. Now harder notes open the filter more, which lets you program accents in the MIDI instead of automating cutoff.

Play a few single notes before you touch the arp. A good pluck sounds finished on its own: a click, a short bright body, then gone.

Step 3: turn on the arp and set the clock

Switch the arp on and hold a chord. I like minor chords with an added ninth for this style, for example A, C, E and B across two octaves. Then work through these controls:

• Time Base: 1/16 in the Clock section. This is the classic melodic techno rate. For a slower, more hypnotic feel try 1/8.
• Swing: a small amount. Straight sixteenths can feel stiff against a swung hat pattern, so match the arp to your drums.
• Octaves: 1 or 2. Three and four octaves sound impressive solo but usually fight the lead in a full mix.
• Direction: up or up and down for rolling patterns, played if you want the arp to follow the order you pressed the keys.
• Order: serial, round, leap and repeat each walk through the held notes differently, so you get new patterns without changing the chord. Try all four, it's the quickest way to find one with character.
• Restart: Hive can restart the pattern after a set number of steps, between 4 and 32. Setting it to something like 6 or 12 against a 4/4 beat gives you a phrase that shifts against the bar, which is a big part of that hypnotic melodic techno feel.
• ClockDiv: slows the arp down by a factor. Useful for a half speed breakdown version of the same patch.

If you want exact control over each note instead, use the 16 step sequencer. Its REC mode lets you enter notes one by one, and the sequencer can also drive modulation, which brings us to the next part.

Step 4: make it move over a long track

A static arp gets boring after 16 bars. In melodic techno the pattern often stays the same for minutes, so the movement has to come from tone. Here's what I set up in Hive before I ever reach for automation.

• Slow LFO on cutoff: in the filter section, use the LFO amount with LFO 1 set to a slow, synced rate, a few bars per cycle. The arp breathes without anyone touching a knob.
• Filter Spread: this shifts the cutoff in opposite directions for left and right. A small amount gives the arp stereo movement that holds up better than extra unison.
• Mod matrix: Hive has 12 matrix slots with two targets each, plus modifiers like Quantize, Sample and Hold and Slew Limit. I often put the mod wheel in one slot with the cutoff of filter 1 and filter 2 as its two targets. One gesture then opens both layers together, which is exactly what you want in a build, and it's easier to automate than two separate knobs.

If you want to go deeper on this kind of motion, I wrote about how rhythmic modulation shapes energy in techno, and most of it applies directly to Hive.

Step 5: effects inside Hive

Hive has seven built in effects: distortion, chorus, delay, phaser, EQ, plate reverb and compressor. For arps I keep it simple.

• Distortion: a touch, only if the pluck feels too clean next to your drums.
• Delay: fairly dry. Delay fills the gaps between sixteenths very fast, so keep feedback low or the rhythm disappears.
• Plate reverb: short. A long reverb on a busy arp turns into a pad, and you probably already have one of those.

My habit is to leave the big space for a send in the DAW. That way the reverb and delay can be shared with the lead and ducked together.

Step 6: mixing the arp in Logic Pro

Solo, a Hive arp can sound huge. In the track it either vanishes or eats the kick. A few moves fix most of it.

• High pass it. Put Channel EQ on the arp and cut below roughly 150 to 250 Hz, depending on the patch. Your bass owns the low end. The arp does not need it.
• Check mono. Unison and Width sound great until the club system folds it down. Flip your master to mono for a moment. If the arp drops a lot in level, reduce Width or unison voices before you reach for a stereo imager. My post on making melodic techno leads wide without killing their power covers this in more detail.
• Light sidechain. Use Logic's Compressor with the kick as the side chain input and only a couple of dB of gain reduction. You want the arp to step aside for the kick transient, not pump like a house bassline.
• Delay on a send. Logic's Stereo Delay with tempo sync on and different note values on the left and right side, for example an eighth and a sixteenth, spreads the arp without more unison. Use the Low Cut and High Cut on the delay so the repeats stay out of the low end and away from the hats.

Common mistakes with Hive plucks and arps

• Too much unison. Eight or more voices on a fast arp blur the attack. Three is plenty for most plucks.
• Filter decay too long. If the decay is longer than the step length, the notes overlap and the groove goes soft.
• Resonance too high. It sounds exciting solo, then it whistles against the lead. Back it off and use Input for bite instead.
• Ignoring velocity. Flat velocities make arps feel like a loop. Two or three velocity levels in the MIDI bring the pattern to life.

Shortcuts: starting from presets

Sometimes you just want to hear an idea in the track right now. A good preset is also a learning tool: open it, look at the engine, envelopes and arp settings, and you'll see the same decisions I described above. I've written before about how to design techno presets that sound club ready, which pairs well with this walkthrough.

Questions producers ask

Is Hive 2 good for melodic techno?

Yes. It's fast to program, the built in arp and sequencer are made for rolling patterns, and the three engines take you from clean to gritty without changing synths.

Which Hive 2 engine is best for plucks?

I start in Normal because of its punchy decays and ladder filter. Switch to Dirty if the pluck needs more grit in a busy drop, and to Clean if it has to sit quietly under a vocal.

How many unison voices should a Hive arp use?

For fast 1/16 patterns, two or three voices on one oscillator with low detune. Keep the second oscillator mono. More voices mainly blur the attack and cause trouble when the mix is summed to mono.

Should I use the arpeggiator or the sequencer?

Use the arp when you want to hold chords and let Hive generate the pattern, especially with Restart for shifting phrases. Use the 16 step sequencer when you need a fixed melody or want steps to drive modulation.

Build one pluck with the steps above, save it as your own starting patch, and you'll have a solid base for every melodic techno idea that follows. If you'd rather start from finished sounds and pick them apart, have a listen to MOVEMENT for Hive 2.