How to Make Frenchcore Kicks in Serum 2

With these kicks a lot of people just try to get a lot of distortion in Zero-Square. I don't like how sizzly it sounds, so I do a little bit more careful distortion with Diode 1. It makes sure the highs are a little bit more warm. Then I add an EQ in front.

In that EQ you boost the bass, but at the second fundamental. With zaag kicks we usually put it right on the bass. Make it very narrow first and find the second fundamental. This will depend on the key you're in. Once you've found it, open the area a bit, because if it's too tight it gets thumpy.

Oscillator B is an octave higher than the sine wave, so I add a little bit of unison there. Two voices, and play with the detune. It really fills up the stereo imaging, and the voices phase with each other and create interesting variations in your kick. This is allowed because we're an octave higher than our low fundamental, so the bass doesn't get too muddy.

Then a very simple mid side splitter, and a high pass filter to remove the low information from the side. But first distort it. The detuned oscillator comes together with the sine wave, and that gets boosted and distorted. If you first remove the side information in the bass and then distort it, you don't really get this nice phasing effect.

With every kick I make in Serum 2, there has to be a finalized stage. An EQ, a distortion on SoftClip, and an LFO on the low shelf of that EQ, shift alt click for unipolar. The LFO just means low bass, high bass, lower bass. Make sure you're really putting the shelf at around 100 Hz. It changes a very mid heavy kick into a more squashed, contained kick.

That's the beauty of it. You dirty up the sound with the beginning stages and add a lot of mids and interesting stuff. The final stage, with the soft clipper and the boost on the sub, is where you shape the kick into the final version. If you don't like how the kick sounds, just add another finalized stage.

Then I play around with distortions. I add another distortion on Linear Fold. Normally this sounds trash, but within the frenchcore context it actually works. It gives you a ton of different tone control. You do have to dial it in a little bit and find the very precise right setting.

And you can stack this. A second Linear Fold with the mix down a bit, then a third one with the mix down, on pre, so it has a filter in front. Make that filter a band pass, or even a little bit of a high pass, to enhance the grit in your kick. This linear fold stack stage is what really adds the spice and the grit to the sound.

To enhance the click I open a noise, go to attacks, kick, and make sure it's on one shot first of all. Then route it from main to none and bus 1, so it only goes to bus 1. I don't want to distort it, so bus 1 doesn't go through main, just direct out.

It works really well when you put a pitch up. Cycle through the attacks until you find one that really works for your specific kick, and take the level down a little bit. In bus 1 I add some tube distortion to enhance the click, and an EQ to remove the bass and a little bit of the mids from the click.