How to Make Laser Kicks

Open up Serum with a sine wave and another wave on zero volume. In the matrix I put envelope 2 and envelope 3 on the global master tune. I use two envelopes because then you can make more complex kick pitch automations. It just gives you a more interesting effect.

Then take FM from B. There are no envelopes left, so I put an LFO on envelope and add it to the FM. Tweak the envelopes, the LFO and the amount, and finally change the waveform, especially the spectral ones. Keep on fine tuning until you find something that sounds good to you. This can take 30 minutes or one hour, it doesn't matter.

Now take a distortion and keep it very subtle. Hard clip opened up is too much, same with diode. That's hardcore, and I don't want that.

Then put an envelope on it. At the beginning I don't want any major distortion, because then I get a really thumpy top kick. But at the end I want a crunchy end.

Take a parametric EQ and remove the bass from the punch. Your full punch goes into one channel, and from there I route it to another channel that's solely reverb. I take Valhalla Room. Put a limiter or anything with a gain automation on it to control the reverb. So the punch is playing and at the same time it's generating a reverb.

On the reverb channel, play around with the reverb sound. This is very important. Little AlterBoy really changes the tone of it. Then boost the volume a lot. I use the multiband compressor from CamelCrusher. At the end I add the imager in Ozone and stereoize everything, so the kick gets wider.

The punch and the crunch go into one channel, and there you're doing three things. One, cut frequencies. Laser kicks get better when you remove certain frequencies. That gets that hollow, really festival vibe. Two, SerumFX with the multiband compressor. That really defines these laser kicks. Don't make it too aggressive.

Three, create phasing issues. Take down the mix knob on SerumFX in the mixer, so the wet gets mixed with the dry. Some of the wet and the dry signal are similar, so you get phasing. You could call them issues. I'm calling them solutions, because it's working.