How to Make Kick FX

When you're working on a kick effect, you're working on a preset in your playlist. That sounds really weird, but that's how I like to see it. You have a sample, you load it into your mixer, you add automation clips, then you add distortion and EQ and you get a kick effect.

Once you've made that, you can just change a few knobs. Because it's distorted really heavily, a really small change before the distortion plugin results in a really drastic sound. Tweak an automation clip a little bit more and you get a super different sound.

With no effects at all the sample sounds really bad. So I add an EQ, boost one or two knobs and put the frequency of both on an automation clip, so they move together. It's just filtering. But because the distortion comes after this really big filter, that's how you get the kick effect.

Then remove bass. That's the biggest part. If you remove bass before a distortion plugin, it's not as muddy. Find the frequencies that are annoying, then add the distortion. WaveShaper is great, just boost it. After that, make sure your mix is right with a compressor, a limiter to remove the peaks, less bass and some high end.