How to make Melodic Prog House Like Sasha & John Digweed | Live Electronic Music Tutorial 345

How to Make Melodic Progressive House Like Sasha & John Digweed

In this live electronic music tutorial, producer Mikas builds a melodic progressive house track from scratch in real time — nothing cut, nothing pre-prepared. Working at 128 BPM in Logic Pro, he lays down the creative foundation of a track: a groovy thumping bassline, layered melodic elements, percussion, pads and key changes. This is the idea-generation stage, where he gets the core elements down before later moving on to arrangement and mixing.

What you’ll learn

• Programming a simple four-on-the-floor drum foundation as a starting point
• Recording and editing a Moog-style progressive house bassline with sidechain compression
• Adding groove and movement with sample delay and feedback on the shakers
• Layering smooth velocity-driven melodies and stab chords into a reverb bus
• Building richness with Alchemy soundscapes, textures and extra percussion
• Using key changes and muting to create dynamics and a breakdown

1. Lay down a simple drum foundation

Mikas starts with the simplest possible drum pattern: kick on the beat, hats on the off-beat (the half beat), and snares in the middle of the beat. After two decades of making music, this skeleton becomes second nature — you put it down, then lay things on top and let the track evolve from there.

2. Record the groovy bassline

With a groovy, thumping bassline already in his head, he reaches for a Moog-style sound in Logic and records the idea quickly. He keeps the initial take simple, then quantizes it (Control+Q) and edits the spacing of the notes by hand. It’s the same kind of rolling bass pattern you’ll recognise from many Eric Prydz tracks — not hard to play, but all about getting the right spacing and feel.

3. Sidechain the bass to the kick

To get that signature pumping movement, he drops a compressor on the bass and sidechains it to the kick: fast attack, fast release, very high ratio, heavy compression. Without it the bass sits static; with it, the bass ducks against every kick and really stands out. He’s careful not to overdo the volume — the compression alone makes it present in the mix.

4. Add groove with shakers and sample delay

The pattern feels like it needs a groovy shaker. To stop the percussion sounding completely static, Mikas adds a sample delay, nudging the left and right channels apart by around 20 and 10 milliseconds so the shakers sit slightly off. He then sends them to a delay with a touch of feedback so they breathe and feel more organic rather than rigidly on the grid.

5. Sculpt tone with EQ and tube saturation

For more vibrant, chunky character he adds Logic’s Vintage Tube EQ with a good preset, placing it before the compressor so the compression reacts to the saturated signal. He also pushes the filter and adds a little noise and delay swirl for that echoey, organic texture that defines progressive house.

6. Play smooth melodies into a reverb bus

Next he sets up a bus send with a Silver Verb reverb and opens Alchemy to record a soft, smooth melodic line. Instead of automating a filter, he plays with velocity — using the dynamics of the keys to make the part more interesting and expressive. He then compresses the melody, sends the reverb return through a compressor at an 8:1 ratio, and EQs the reverb channel to cut the low end — protecting the all-important low frequencies that electronic music depends on.

7. Build stab chords and a key change

Using the same MIDI, he creates a simple chord progression for stab hits with a stringy, pad-like patch, then a brighter bell/keys sound with a slow delay echo. To create movement he drops the key down a couple of semitones in a later section. When the key change costs him some of the vibe, he transposes the other elements to match — and it locks back into place.

8. Add texture, percussion and a new bassline

To add dimension he loads a rich Alchemy soundscape on the root key — sparse, slightly mad texture that instantly makes the track sound different. He layers in more percussion (a siren-style scoop, a ride on the beat to complement the hats) and later auditions a new Reese-style bassline an octave down, perfect for a breakdown section. By muting elements and pulling down the cutoff, he shapes intros, breakdowns and dynamics before later finishing the full arrangement.

Get the project file: Want to open this exact session and follow along? Grab the ready-made templates for Logic Pro, Ableton and FL Studio. Download the template →