Tom’s rumbling techno kick drums
Tom begins by revealing the secrets behind his banging warehouse vibes: by starting with a rumbly kick. To demonstrate, he sequences a 909 kick on every beat, and sends this to a Return track in Live, on which he places an Overdrive to distort the signal. A Convolution Reverb Pro then provides a boomy, warehouse-style echo signal, then Filter Delay creates rhythmic movement. Finally, an Auto Filter filters out the signal’s high end, leaving just a pounding, subby throb.
Tom explains further. “This rumble isn’t a ‘character’ sound; it’s not a bass sound that needs to be a specific tone, but will give you the power of the kick underneath. I bounce this, then use [Xfer Records] LFOTool as a sidechain effect, because for me, it’s an easier way to sidechain, rather than routing anything, and it makes it automatically pump all the time.” Tom then adds a Soundtoys Decapitator and UAD Pultec EQ before LFOTool, and uses these to sculpt the sound and give him the tone he desires. “I’ll add some extra saturation with Decapitator or similar. Most of the time, I use emulations of old EQs, like the ones from UAD, for extra colour.”