Oldschool Kick Sound Design in Serum 2

First I need a 909 sound. Initialize your preset and take down the randomization so it always plays at the same time. Look for the Basic_Wrd wavetable and stick it down two octaves. Then make LFO 1 look like an envelope, and LFO 2 and 3 as well. LFO 1 goes to the global main tuning. Double-click it and type 12 semitones. LFO 2 goes to the coarse pitch, and 3 as well.

Then I assign a macro to the height of the envelopes, in the matrix, one directional so it goes up. I also control the curve. I make sure the envelope stops at a certain point, so the kick only has pitching in the beginning.

In the main bus, before I do bus 1 and 2, I want some standard processing. First asymmetrical distortion. That's what you always do when you want to make oldschool kicks. Then tube distortion, and at the end a soft clipper so I can really push the volume. A utility to make the bass mono. It's amazing that we can do this now. And a filter on German low pass to make it sound more analog.

Reverb always helps a lot too. I put it in front of everything, especially the utility, so the bass stays mono. A plate reverb, so I can control the width. A chorus in front of everything works really well too. Take down the rate, the depth and the feedback.

This is where the kick comes to life. Oscillator A goes to my filter, and there I split it into a punch on bus 1 and a crunch on bus 2. Both go into main. Filter 1 goes to nothing, so I only have punch and crunch instead of a blend with the dry sound.

On bus 1 I use asymmetrical distortion once again, then an equalizer that really boosts the mids with a bell curve. An LFO takes it from frequency low to high. Then distortion on overdrive, which is new, with a stack. That's how you really get that old school sound. If you don't boost it much, nothing happens, so you want a lot of distortion input volume.

Bus 1 is a really good one, so I just copy that FX bus into bus 2. Take down the level on one and up on the other, and make sure the utility goes up. Now I already have my crunch sound. I assign a macro to the frequency range, and LFO 4 goes on it as well. It's really about where you put the frequency curves and the pre-distortion.

To blend the punch and the crunch, go to bus 2 and assign an envelope to the volume in the utility, so it's really crunchy. Then you really mix the punch with the crunch.