Beginner's Masterclass: Kicks and 909 Distortion

The general rule for the second EQ is that boosting different parts gets you different kicks. Boost the mids and you get into rawstyle territory, very raw. Boost the bass for frenchcore, because frenchcore has this square wave vibe you get around the bass. Remove the sub for more crunch.

Hardstyle kicks are a bit more in the low mids. With euphoric kicks it's more about keeping it subtle. In the end it comes down to whether you want a tonal punch. If so, boost the mids a lot and add distortion. For euphoric kicks you don't boost the mids. You add a snare transient instead, a bit more of a clicky sound.

At some point you need to get out of your mixer. Record the kick with Edison, trim the noise, normalize it and drag it into your project. Then separate the punch from the crunch. That's something I always do. Slice it, make unique, and give the punch and the crunch their own channel. Both of them go into the kick channel.

This is the kick production routine I always use to keep on processing kicks. You can do the same exact technique with kicks that are already done. Later you render it again, separate it again and keep on working until you find a nice one.

Say you have a kick that's totally static and you distort it. It just keeps on going. The 909's volume goes down, so when you distort it, the start is the most distorted and then it fades out. That's why the end of the crunch has this very wide, noisy sound. There wasn't much left to distort.

You can use that with gain. I put a Fruity Limiter in front of the distortion and automate the gain. Minimum at first, more gain in the middle and less at the end. Then the distortion changes the character of the kick pretty drastically.

Uptempo is pretty easy, and it's the only one here that isn't from the 909. Take a saw wave and add the sub as well, so you have the sub and the saw wave at the same time. I put both at minus two. Then add a ton of distortion, chain after chain, until you have a lot of distortion.

In Patcher I separate the punch from the crunch with a band pass. If you make a very resonant peak you get a nice combination. Then control that resonance until it leaves room. If I boost it too much, the whole kick is just that. You want the saw effect, but only a little bit.