What is italo disco music? Everything you need to know to make it

The original form of lo-fi electronica, Italo disco helped shape the future sound of dance music with its driving beats, energetic bass lines and catchy melodies. So, what is Italo disco music, and how does it differ from its progenitor disco?

In this guide to making an Italo disco track in your DAW, we’ll explore different examples of Italo disco music before learning how to create your own. We’ll use Native Instruments Discoteca Drums, Discoteca Keys, and the Italo Disco Leap Expansion, all of which are compatible with Kontakt 8 and the free Kontakt 8 Player. We’ll also use iZotope Ozone 11 for mastering.

Here’s how the final track sounds:

Jump to these sections:

• What is Italo disco music? 
• How to make an Italo disco track:
  • Get a head start with Leap
  • Compose a beat with Discoteca Drums
  • Create chords with Discoteca Keys
  • Add a counter-melody
  • Make an arrangement
  • Master your track

Discover Italo disco instruments

What is Italo disco music?

In the 1970s, disco music became hugely popular in its home – the United States – and beyond with artists such as Chic and Earth, Wind & Fire creating lushly orchestrated, organic dancefloor anthems such as “I Want Your Love” and “Boogie Wonderland”.

In the late seventies disco’s popularity waned in the US, but the disco scene remained vital in Europe. European producers, many of them Italian, created their own DIY take on the genre using synthesizers rather than the opulent string and brass sections that defined US disco.

The Italo sound might have not enjoyed mainstream popularity in the United States, but it had a strong underground following and became a hugely influential style of dance music, arguably bridging the gap between seventies disco and mid-eighties early house music.

Italo’s influence can be heard in mainstream hits such as Tag Team’s “Whoomp! (There It Is)”, which samples Kano’s Italo classic “I’m Ready.”

You can also hear the influence of Italo in more recent dance music such as Purple Disco Machine’s “Bad Company.”

How to make an Italo Disco song

1. Get a head start with Leap

Italo Disco Leap Expansion is a great way to start a track, as it features a selection of construction kits that we can use to get an authentic-sounding idea going very quickly. We’ll stick with the default DAW tempo of 120 BPM, and load up Kontakt on a MIDI track. Click the Leap button to access the Leap presets, then click the Italo Disco expansion and double-click Mirage Kit in the list of available presets.

New to Leap Expansions? Learn more about them here.

This kit features all the elements you need to create a track, but we’re just going to use a couple of them to provide a foundation for our track. At the bottom right-hand corner of the interface you can see that this kit is in E minor. We could alter the key if we wanted to, but this isn’t necessary, and we’ll just make a note of the key for when we start to compose more parts later.

First let’s use the bouncy bass line on C4. Create a four-bar MIDI clip, and sequence C4 to play for all four bars. We’ll use velocity values of 100 for everything in this walkthrough unless otherwise specified.

Now duplicate the track, and on the new track move the MIDI note from C4 to A4, which will play the lead line.

These two sounds provide a very solid foundation for our track, with impeccable Italo vibes from the off. Next, let’s compose a drum beat to work with these elements.

2. Compose a beat with Discoteca Drums

Create a new MIDI track, again load Kontakt, and this time click Discoteca Drums, then double-click the Coup de Synthese preset.

This kit has a selection of pre-programmed rhythms that we can play on the keys C3 through D#4, but let’s program a beat ourselves using the included one-shot sounds. Create a new MIDI clip that lasts for two bars, but loop it out to play for the whole four-bar sequence.

Let’s start our beat by putting C1 kicks on every beat, with an extra kick halfway through the final beat of the first bar. Use a velocity of 80 so that this kick plays slightly more quietly.

Now add D#1 claps on the second and fourth beat of both bars.

Now sequence F#1 closed hi-hats between each beat, switching up to an A#1 open hi-hat after the last beat.

Now we have a bass, lead, and a drum beat. Here’s how they all sound together.

3. Create chords with Discoteca Keys

Now create a new MIDI track with Kontakt, and this time select Discoteca Keys and double-click the Sintesi preset.

As we noted earlier, the Mirage Kit is in the key of E minor. However, our lead line doesn’t actually hit the minor third, so let’s create an uplifting chord progression that begins with E major. Create a four-bar MIDI clip on this track, and create a chord progression that plays E major, D major, C major and D major with velocity levels of 70.

Here’s how it sounds with the other elements.

Next let’s add a counter melody to keep things interesting.

3. Add a counter-melody

Our track’s main melody is quite repetitive, being essentially a single bar long, with slight variations on the second bar. The bass line and chords change under this, which prevents it from becoming too repetitive, but nonetheless a longer, less incessant counter-melody will add some contrast to our track.

On a new MIDI track add Kontakt, and this time load Discoteca Keys’ Sonica preset.

Set this track’s volume level to -6.3 dB to balance it with the other elements

Create a two-bar clip and loop it out for four bars, copying the counter-melody we’ve used here.

Let’s make this sound a touch more atmospheric by turning up the Delay and Reverb effects. Set the Delay level to 68%, and the Reverb level to 72%.

Here’s how the counter-melody sounds in context.

Now we have all our track’s musical elements in place, let’s work on an arrangement.

4. Make an arrangement

Before we arrange our track, it will help us to have a transitional sound effect. Duplicate the lead line track, and this time move the MIDI note so that it plays on D5, triggering a synthesizer FX sequence.

Now, copy the arrangement we’ve used here. Notice how new elements are added or removed every four or eight bars, and how the synthesizer FX sequence is used to segue between different parts of the track.

5. Master your track

Let’s use iZotope Ozone 11’s Mastering Assistant to help us quickly make a master. Add

Ozone 11 to the master bus, and click the Assistant View button.

Ozone 11 will prompt you to play the loudest section of your mix, so play back from bar 25, where all the musical elements play at once. The plugin will automatically analyse the audio input and create a custom mastering chain. Note that this will boost the track’s level significantly, so take care you don’t have your speakers or headphones set too loud!

Start making Italo disco today

In this tutorial we’ve shown you how to make an Italo disco track from scratch with Discoteca Drums, Discoteca Keys, Italo Disco Leap Expansion, Kontakt 8 and iZotope Ozone 11.

If you’d like to learn more about making disco music, check out our guides on music production, how to write a disco song, and how to mix disco drums.

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