In this tutorial
Also free with this video: Free Color Kick Sample Pack
My notes from this video
I load up LFO Tool or Serum effects and look at the filter. I really like the all-pass filter for these kicks. If you add a lot of resonance, you can see the bass gets back into the kick. Then if you move the cutoff around, it really cuts into the lows and the low mids. That cleans up the kick and makes it a little more hollow.
This is useful later. When I clean up the main kick, I go back into LFO Tool and change the cutoff.
Why Chroma is such a cool plugin is that you can just go to the punch and throw it on. And because the punch also goes into the reverb channel, the reverb is automatically affected as well when you change Chroma.
In Chroma I take the range so it affects everything. Then add color. It's probably just adding a longer release, and it makes it more resonant, so the color and the chord really come through. 150 works well. Then check the root note and the scale. To start off, just use the pentatonic scale and play around with the root note until it matches your punch. F sharp works well, D sharp works as well. You just have to play around.
Now a thing you can do is create the offbeat chord punch. Render out the chord reverb, take the best part of the reverb and put that on a triplet offbeat. Take that offbeat chord into the mixer as well, add it to the punch main, add normalization and maybe some gain. Now you really get that rhythm.
An issue with rendering out the reverb is that it doesn't change with the punch. So you could also just use the punch again as the offbeat, which is also going through Chroma.
The only difference with Vocodex is that you take the punch but also add Serum, or any VST. Make a simple pattern, minor pentatonic, on G sharp for now. Put Serum next to the punch and get both of these into one channel called Vocodex. Vocodex goes into the main punch and into the punch reverb. For the modulator use the punch, and the carrier is Serum.
The main and most important knob is the width of the bands. Then you can change the bands. The more bands, the clearer it gets. Take it down a lot and you get this big fat saw. Change the release to make it snappier.
A really important trick is that you can play around with the sound of the punch. Don't play around with Chroma, just play around with how the punch sounds. If you change the punch, it changes the sound.
Add a formant shift, for example with Pitch Shifter, and you really change the sound. Just make sure it's in front of Chroma. You can also add Effector and do really weird stuff, or use a phaser.
FL Studio·Chroma·Vocodex·Serum·SerumFX·LFO Tool·Kilohearts Transient Shaper·Fruity Reeverb 2·ValhallaRoom·ValhallaSupermassive·OTT·Fruity Parametric EQ 2·FabFilter Pro-Q 3·Fruity Soft Clipper·Fruity WaveShaper·Fruity Limiter·Sonnox Oxford Inflator·Disperser·Pitch Shifter·Effector
Color Kick Demo + Templates
Get this one free, plus hundreds of harder-style sounds, presets & project files. Unlock our freebie vault.
We only send you harder-style content. Unsubscribe anytime.
Open the Freebie Vault
Color Kick Expansion (Vol. 1)
50+ color kicks with a kick builder and kick templates. The rumble I use here comes from it.
View the pack
