How to make Melodic Breakbeat Like Gus Gus, Purified | Live Electronic Music Tutorial 331

How to Make Melodic Breakbeat Like GusGus & the Purified Sound

In this live tutorial, Mikas builds a full melodic breakbeat track from scratch at 124 BPM, blending the deep, FM-tinged textures of melodic techno and melodic house with a driving breakbeat groove — a sound he likens to releases on labels such as Purified and Anjunadeep. Working in Logic Pro X, he programs an intricate, long-form drum pattern, designs a bass, builds an arpeggiated chord sequence, and layers pads and leads to round out the arrangement.

What you’ll learn

• Programming a longer 8–16 bar breakbeat pattern with intentional velocity and variation
• Building drums in Logic Pro X’s Drum Machine Designer and splitting hits across MIDI tracks for velocity control
• Designing an analog-style, FM-flavoured bassline and shaping it with EQ
• Programming an arpeggiator sequence in Alchemy and feeding it to a send delay
• Recording and tuning pads with the right low-end control so they sit in the mix
• Layering and blending two lead sounds into one resonant main melody

1. Plan a longer, more complex beat

Rather than looping a short one- or two-bar pattern, Mikas commits to an 8-bar (and ideally 16-bar) beat so he can write real variation into the groove. The idea is that a beat sustaining the whole track has room to evolve — small accents, ghost hits and shifting elements that most listeners feel even if they don’t consciously notice them, the same way a good drummer adds intentional accents to make a part feel alive.

2. Build the drums in Drum Machine Designer

He starts from a Drum Machine Designer kit, taking advantage of Logic’s large library of free content. To keep tight control he divides the kit pieces across separate MIDI lanes — kicks on one track, snares on another — rather than stacking everything in a single region, because that gives far more precise control over each hit’s velocity. He hunts for a snappy, “wacky” snare with character and edits the velocity lane carefully to shape the dynamics of the pattern.

3. Add hats, toms and intentional accents

On top of the core kick and snare, he adds a simple hat on the off-beats, drops in a tom behind one of the snares, and works toward a rolling hat. He notes that rolling hats are where most producers struggle — they tend to come out too loud and are hard to settle properly in the mix — so he keeps them controlled and pulls back where the other hits land. A touch of delay and a little reverb on the snare open up space and reinforce the breakbeat feel.

4. Introduce a second kick for variation

To make the background move over the longer pattern, he layers in a second, chunkier kick — a reverse sub kick — quantizing and tuning it in the sampler so it sits underneath the main groove. He plays the variation roughly one bar out of two, using the extra length of the pattern to bring in elements that wouldn’t fit in a short loop.

5. Design the analog-style bass

The bass is a fat, FM-flavoured patch that feels “a bit like new techno” — built from several detuned oscillators, which is power-hungry but leaves plenty of headroom to open up later. He turns off the 808 to free space in the low end so the bass doesn’t collapse the mix, then adds an EQ and a vintage-tube saturation preset to bring chunk and weight. The goal is a simple but characterful bass that balances against the busy drums.

6. Program the arpeggiator and chords

He writes a basic chord and runs it through Logic’s arpeggiator, setting it to retrigger every four beats instead of every beat so the pattern has time to breathe and progress. From the arpeggiator presets he picks one with an uneven, funkier note rhythm that varies as it plays, then sends it to the same delay used on the drums to make it far more interesting. Controlling the lows with EQ keeps the arp from muddying the track.

7. Record pads and the main lead

For the pad he reaches into Alchemy, choosing a flanged pad sound and again rolling off the low end so it doesn’t fight the bass. He ties the pad tightly to the beat and gates it so it doesn’t retrigger in a strange way. Finally, he records a lead, adds delay and reverb for substance, and layers two resonant lead sounds together — dropping each one a little and blending them into a single, fuller main melody.

Get the project file: Mikas turns this session into a ready-made template for Logic Pro, Ableton, and FL Studio, complete with a sample pack so you can practise in your own projects. Download the template →