How to Make Industrial Techno Kicks

A kick in Serum is pretty straightforward. I start with two saw waves, one two octaves down and one an octave up. LFO 1 is a punch envelope on the level, and LFO 2 is an envelope as well, on the crunch. Then distortion on Diode 2 and a multiband compressor. FM from B, and in the filter I select High 24 so only A goes through the filter. In the FX filter, before the distortion, I add a flanger.

What I always like to do is immediately add some reverb that's reversed. You can put it in front of the distortion or after. I put it before the distortion, render this out, and then we have a very heavy punch.

A low punch, a main punch, the reverb tail of the punch and the rumble. The rumble adds a little bit of low end in our punch, because we're lacking that. I make the punch shorter and duplicate it, so I also have an individual reverb tail. These four go into one channel and then you distort it together. Inflator at the end of the chain, a soft clipper, and then it's all about EQing it properly.

Then add a punchy kick or a techno kick on top, because we do want to keep it techno. If you only had that punch sound, it's really going to be like hardstyle.

On that channel I add a transient shaper to improve the punch. If you make the speed longer it's going to explode the punch, and the crunch is left untouched.

Then boost the mids. A lot of raw industrial sounds are in the mids. I took a band and automated it going up, so the mids open up only in the beginning, during the punch. Not too much.

About the phasing. As long as you clip it enough and make sure the stuff is mono, you'll probably get something that sounds good enough. I won't worry too much about the phase, because rumbles are phasing sounds anyway.

Something that's very important on the next chain is Pro-Q 3, on the side. On the final channel I put Pro-Q 3 on stereo placement side again, because obviously we did mess with the phase.

The most important thing I added here is Serum FX. This trick will change your kick entirely. Open the distortion on Sine Shaper and listen to the difference. This is how you hollow up your kick. I didn't find any other distortion yet that does this. Just don't overdo it.

Then you put an EQ in front of it and play around with the bass. Removing that just gives you mids, but there's a fine balance. Boost the low mids where you really get that rumble, and go into the mids to boost the punch.