How to Make Your Own Kicks in Serum

I use oscillator A as my punch and oscillator B as my crunch. Take the randomization down so it always plays at the same part in the waveform. LFO 1 goes to the level of oscillator A and LFO 2 goes to the level of oscillator B. Make sure both of them are on envelope and let them flow into each other. Then separate the octaves a bit. The crunch needs to be low.

Then the filter, something like High 24, with resonance, drive and a little bit of fat. Only oscillator A goes through it, because we only want the punch to be filtered. Then I immediately add a multiband compressor and take the threshold down. That one is incredibly important.

Another thing you can do is take FM from B. You FM the punch based on oscillator B, and now you get kind of special kicks.

Then assign a few knobs. The first one changes the punch character, more and less FM. The second one moves the cutoff. Just those two macros result in a bunch of different punches.

A really nice trick is adding a filter in front of everything. Put a flanger or something weird in front and then just squash it.

Great candidates are all the plus ones. Go to LFO Tool, which is from Xfer Records as well, and look in the cutoff section. The plus ones don't cut into the bass, while the minus ones remove the bass. And we need that bass to make these kicks.