Hey guys hope you're all doing great.

I'm currently trying to learn techno production and been struggling (a lot) to get those big smacking techno kicks. I'll leave the Nexus 3 Techno expansion demo video cause imo their sound design is really top notch and I really want to be able to get my kicks at that level.

So yeah, all the kicks sound great but I'm more interested in learning on how to make those ones that sound more "smacky" with some sort of mid range punch, like the ones on the minutes 2:22 or 3:21.

Any help would be really welcome, from tips and tricks on the engineering behind these type of kicks to tutorials or actual presets so I can reverse engineer them. Even vst/vsti recommendations for creating or processing the kicks are welcome as well. I'm really hoping someone can help me out on this cause it's really frustrating to not being able to come close to a sound you want to achieve, I think every producer have faced it at some point and can relate to this feeling.

Thanks in advance for your attention and for any help.

 

There are many ways to get heavy techno kicks, my favorite one is by using serial distortion + shaping with EQ and comp. You can also use a low-pass filtered reverb (with some distortion) as a bottom layer. Narrow Qs in an EQ can be useful as they sound punchy. Sub Exciters will give you a deep bottom and and bitcrusher can give you that sweet high-end clicky sound.

Good luck

 

Interesting bro, can you extend a little on what you use as a sound source? I mean, do you usually use a clean 909 style kick or you already choose a full sounding kick with layered clicks and stuff?

And thanks for the tips bro, I'll definetely try'em out.

 

Aren't you using Kick2? The kick in the YT you linked sounds like it is the 3 part recipe, to me anyway. Click/transient, body, tail. But I didn't listen obsessively to it I also like Falcon2 Drum Designer a lot, and Rob Papen Punch2. AD2 has some decent stuff in the "Reel Machines" selections.

The nexus one sounds very good.

 

I tried creating it in kick 2 and PunchBox but didn't come close to the ones in the example I posted above. Mine are kinda missing some sort of percussive smack in the midrange but I really don't know how to replicate that. And yeah, i believe it has a top layer to get that punchy sound but I just couldn't found a way to make my top kicks to sound the right way.

Thanks for the recommendations bro, I'll take a look on these ones.

Yeah, since I'm trying to get that specific sound I thought it would make sense to load one of those presets and use the kick as a reference so I could analize it, but unfortunatelly the kick is already layered with the rumble plus some textures and processed afterwards so I couldn't have access to the original sound to reference. Well, Nexus being Nexus. :p

Anyway, thanks for your attention and for the tips and for recommendations.

 

that particular kick is really good, almost impressive. I think something that good usually is 90% at the source/starting sample level. The individual elements are left pristine and not completely run over with compression and saturation. (like I would do to them).

 

Like Qiloo said, parallel distortion - with lows and highs filtered and a low/mid boost - is the key to go from a regular kick to a smashing kick. Didn't listen to the demo btw because I don't like Nexus but if you're after those Driving / Peak Time kicks that are common these days, that's one way to approach it. To get a good regular kick, layering samples or synthesized kicks is almost necessary to my opinion. Starting with a TR-909 kick needs more processing like distortion, tube processing, compression, EQ etc. so I would go for the option mentioned before.

Another trick is to keep the kick short and add sub/bass/reverb/rumble layers apart from it for better control. To properly divide them, use something like Cableguys Volumeshaper to not only sidechain them to the kick but also the kick to the layers with the same setting reversed. That way they can never clash. And because it's multiband, you can still add some more highs in the layers.

 

Why not, instead of the one, have two of them mixed (two different channels), your main kick and a second one that will give it a different character. I have an old Yamaha grove box and a lot of sequence presets have two different kick and two different snare sounds, sometimes, playing the same beat. There's more room for variation and creativity this way.

You can see in your video, he is using two drum presets at 3:00...
Kick 2 have good expansion packs...

 

Last edited: Sep 15, 2022

This video is great bro, definetely the most complete one I've watched about rumbles, but my issue is not much the rumble, it's more the kick itself, more specifically those big mid range percussive transient and even the kick in this video don't has that. But I appreciate your help and goodwill bro.

 

Yeah, I believe that what is missing on my kicks is some sort top kick. I mean, I can get something similar to the one in the "Techno Rumble Mastery" video shared by @demberto and even if that kick sound good it kinda sound soft and weak if compared to the kick used on 3:22 on the Vengeance video I posted above. My issue is not the low end part part of the kick but to get my mid range to sound as big yet clean as the ones I've shared.

Maybe I'm not using the right top kick samples or not processing them the right way, but since techno is really new to me I don't have much a direction of what to do to achieve that specific sound. In any case I appreciate your help bro.

 

I tried to isolate the initial punch of the sound from the rumble in the vengeance kicks to make it easier to examplify what I'm trying to achieve. Hope this helps someone to give me a direction on how to achieve that sound.

https://voca.ro/17bFztKAgyyP

https://voca.ro/1apQ6Rrs508h

And I want to thank you guys for your goodwill, recommendations and all the help so far.

 

i'm no expert but i want to give you advice which i know from experience is true: never listen to the kick by itself to "judge" it. i hope you are already doing that... listening to it in the context (with bass, with rumble, with percs, etc).
other frequencies also affect how we listen to other frequencies.

good luck

 

Thanks bro, and yeah, I totally get what you mean, initially I started just referencing the drops in the video I posted, but couldn't get my kicks anywhere close to that, so I decided to isolate the sound so it's easier to not only reference it while trying to replicate it, but also exemplify what I'm trying to achieve. And since in techno the kick sound is the initial element needed to create the rumble than I think it's better to get it right from the start and edit/mix it afterwards to fit the rumble and the rest of the instruments.

 

Try to distort a simple pitch envelope sine kick. Use pre-EQ and post-EQ to shape the tone. Then compress the result and gate out the tail.

 

I would be tempted to make it last. Put any 909 down 4/4 and do the work (within final context) once, not twice.

 

I listened to the demo after all, the one at 3:21 is almost an UMEK style copy, so if you want completely isolated samples to reference I would suggest the following pack: https://www.loopmasters.com/genres/40-Techno/products/11701-Umek-Techno-Foundations

 

since it is a demo for a plugin, surely the original sample source is from one of the analog drum machines they purchased with their customers money.

 

You might be surprised when i tell you Ive even used a snare or a tom to make a kick. But don't complicate yourself, use kicks from Roland drum machines (808 & 909 are the most used ones) then I transform them with the FX I already mentioned

Sometimes I use 4 layers (sub, thump, body and click), but thats just how advanced and detailed it can get. Don't complicate yourself when learning how it works

 

Last edited: Sep 15, 2022

You have two options: spend an ungodly amount (every time you make a song) of time searching for the perfect bottom and then the same amount of time searching for a top texture.

Or you can spend about a month making bottom kicks in Sonic Academy's Kick 2 and never have a kick problem again. The pitch envelope, amp envelope and the global kick length have tremendous impact on the final result so you must experiment alot.

Then, when you have a handful of bottoms (909-woody-long, 909-woody-short, 808-softy-long/short to start with) audition the factory tops and start combining them with the bottoms. To get that perfect punch, you need to align the bottom and the top perfectly. To do that, use a separate track for the top, place a sample delay on it and delay it forward or backwards in relation with the bottom, so it won't cancel out the frequency areas you want to truly punch.

Finally, nail the kick perfectly at the source (kick2+top layer) and send it straight to the master channel and it should not trigger your limiter. During the song progression you will need to push some frequencies more and some frequencies less, you do it with the amp envelope in Kick2. Is hard to master that envelope, well worth the reward once you do.

If you want to punch, you need to keep it clean. If you start compressing it, distorting it and whatnot, you lose alot of punch. As I said, you don't want master bus compression to start shaving yoru kick, 1 dB is acceptable though. You don't want the limiter to shave your kick (design it in such a way, it won't trigger the limiter). At the end, when your song is ready, if 2 dB of limiter don't get you the loudness you want, you need to go back to the mix and make it loud without pushing the limiter or the master buss compressor. At the very most, 2 dB on the master buss comp and 2 dB on the limiter is acceptable. This is how you get the loud & punchy & massive sound - by doing a good mix, a un-squashed kick and overall minimal buss compression and limiting.

Finally, expect to make decent techno music in a 5-year span, its one of the most difficult genres to produce that is, if you want to be in line with something like Drumcode, Wehbba, Pig&Dan, Beyer, Rebuke, Ruiz, yadda yadda.

Good luck!