Rough 808 kicks for the Trap charts
There‘s no question that Shirin polarizes, but there‘s no arguing about musical tastes. But the sound of an 808 is. These are the only ones we‘re talking about here, and they‘re definitely beyond doubt. However, it should be no secret that there is much more to a current trap kick than just a distorted 808. What exactly that is, we explain in the following workshop ...
1 Layer kicks
The most common technique for creating juicy, smashing trap kicks is to layer a kick and sub bass. The former usually stays on the same pitch while the latter can play melodies. For our workshop we use the DrumSynth of an MPC Live, alternatively we can use the free MPC Beats [1].
2 Bass layer
In the MPC we load the DrumSynth:Kick on the first free track and select Eighty as MODEL. We set tune to C, so that the right notes sound when playing chromatically. For the necessary belly, 50% decay and 70% sweep are sufficient, all other parameters are set to 0%.
For a rougher sound we activate distortion.
3 Emphasize subbass
We set drive to 30 dB and mix to 100%. The kick still sounds clumsy and flat, which can be quickly changed with a filter. We select LP3 as TYPE and 61 Hz at CUTOFF. And this for a specific reason: 61 Hz corresponds to the frequency of note B, the main pitch of the bass. If you turn up RESONANCE, the frequency will be emphasized accordingly.
4 Flatten
So this is how you can make the bass roar hard. For now, however, let‘s turn RESONANCE down to minimum, turn DRIVE up instead, and switch to VCF MODE. Thanks to the filter, only the bass part of the kick is left now. To smooth it out a bit, we load an AIR Maximizer with THRESHOLD -5 dB. Load a second DrumSnth:Kick instance.
5 Kick layer
There we select the Grimey Ripper preset and set tune to C here as well. Copy the pattern of the bass over and shorten the notes to 1/16, because here we don‘t need a decay, just the massive kick. To emphasize the force of the kick, we also load an AIR Maximizer here and turn the THRESHOLD to -40 dB.
6 Finetuning
Now the kick is ready. But two more tips: Instead of copying the pattern, you can select the second SEND TO in the settings of track 1 in order to automatically route all notes there. Especially when recording the kick, this is much more practical. And if you want the bass to be even rougher, load an AIR Maximizer in front of the filter.