Gunjack: I'm right with you on your thinking.

Blistanbul, in my experience the new generation of Techno producers or guys in electronic dance music in general, seem to lack the ability to actually play instruments.
While the older guys often have a broader musical spectrum.
Myself I play piano / keyboards since early age. (I'm really into jazzy stuff, orchestral music and similiar)

I think it makes much difference honestly, the more musical experience you have the more impact it has on the music. Most of the young producers today downloads Ableton and mess with it for some months and demands releases right away, thats the way things look now.

Even if many producers doesn't play traditional instruments they should research more about the background of Techno (aswell as other music, try / learn to play and understand some basics behind music, harmony, rhythms etc) and dance music and definitively sit longer with their productions. Internet provides tons of info and tutorials when it comes to music today but I find much of everything today is lacking the soul needed.

Sometimes it really feels lots of the new tracks is "follow tutorial and internet hype ideas on music forums" machine-style, without going deeper into how stuff works and understand simple routing or and where signals flows and where they go.

Wow this kinda sound like a rant about today's new producers but I didn't intend that, theres many good new guys as well, but the majority is definitly lazy bastards :)