909 Kickdrum edited with FX used in Scooter's 'Weekend'

Hi guys. I have a question for you… you know the Scooter song ‘Weekend’ from 2003? It is like no other

kickdrum I have ever made with FX? I tried using distortion to make a similar kick drum to that, but it only

sounds like a hardcore kick, not a hard techno kick. I know that Vengeance did something similar with his Essential Clubsounds 1 pack, but I heard that in 2003 Scooter were still using the TR909 drum machine, so

I reckon they must’ve used some special effects to create the kick drum used on ‘Weekend’ as well as on ‘Level One’ and ‘Soul Train’.

If you have any idea what effect units they used to toughen up/fatten up the 909 kick drum, and if you know any

AU and VST emulations of those effect units, could you let me know? I have a TR909 plugin emulation ‘Drumazon’ from D16 and I’ve been trying to recreate that fattened up kick drum used on ‘Weekend’.

If you can give me some tips and suggestions on how to make the ‘Weekend’/‘Level One’/‘Soul Train’ kick drum, then i’d really appreciate it. Cheers!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qLzmltfvqM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMPSgDZ1cmQ

If they use hardware, probably they just overdriven 909 kick with mixer + EQ + compression. Maybe they used sampler for pitch envelope + mixer overdive + EQ + compression.

Try use waveshaping plugin for that subtle overdrive. Melda free bundle have good one.

Some principles in my example.

Thanks, man. I’ll try it out. How do xrns files work on Mac and/or Windows?

Do you have Renoise?

Not yet, man. But I would like to get it. How do I get a VST/AU of Renoise? Is it free to download?

Not yet, man. But I would like to get it. How do I get a VST/AU of Renoise? Is it free to download?

Renoise is a tracker-based DAW (digital audio workstation) for sequencing your own music.

It’s not free, but you can download an almost fully-functional demo (with loading, saving, etc) from our website:
http://renoise.com/download

These forums are to provide support for our Renoise users, and for them to share their songs, ideas, workflow tips, etc.

Anyone is welcome, of course, but it’s just to say that this is not really a general music forum.

Just curious… How did you manage to find this place, if you didn’t come here for Renoise itself? :slight_smile:

I just came here to ask questions on electronic music productions from the 70’s to the 90’s to the present day. That’s why I came to this forum. And I also wanted to know the top secret effects units that Scooter used on their TR909 kick drums from 1994 to 2004, so that I could use plugin emulations of those effects units on my TR909 emulation plugins. Thanks for asking, man! :slight_smile:

Maybe someone told him renoise users were the kind of people that know a lot about the 70s - 90s…

Haha, yeah the 90s were a great time for tracker users on IBM PCs. No effects at all, and to make a booming Bassdrum you just sampled one from that pure drum intro of some techno CD.

Whee, despite you’re not a renoise user, I think you approach the problem in a totally wrong way. The idea to make exactly the same as the scooter people did to punch their techno stuff is not only very naive, but also impractical. Unless they tell you (or everyone) how exactly they did their booms. Always remember, you’ve called it “top secret methods”, those methods are musicians secrets, the more valuable the more money by bassboom-advantage you make from them.

Just try to make your own techniques by experimenting cleverly and learning by ears (most important, really!), soundwave plots and spectrograms what each effect does. The bassdrums you’ve put up as videos don’t have to be 909 samples at all - there’s many different sources to get such boomy drums, even dedicated synths that’ll let you tweak lots of parameters of the basic sound. The rest sounds to me like, well err could be an idea, but doesn’t have to be…clever effection, i.e. have some boomdrum, compress and eq it clever to make the dynamics have the right envelope, overdrive, hp filter, distort the wave crossover impulses, eq the grittle hard to make it more subtle, do silly stereo tricks to the higher frequencies, mix back to the basic bassdrum sound after inverse amp modulation to make the grittle behave to the way the ringing oscillates, sample that shit and use it for your oontz, with even more compression and eqing to make it loud as can be despite of other instruments in the same track being almost so very loud.

maybe something wicked like this even. One track actually seems to combine the low bass to the bassdrum with some distortion pathway. This sounds interesting, but given the very commercial context it’s probably just a trick to let the tune sound ok on speakers with very little bass power. Or just eq, the right overdrive box, compress, eq…try all such stuff for yourself. If you want to learn techno style very refined Bassdrums, there’s lots of video tuts on youtube from people showing their complicated methods - be dazed and confused how many steps many people apply to their kicks, each with subtle effection, and lots of lots of resampling the steps in between.

Hmmmm… you’re right. Maybe I should look up some tutorials on how to make those kinds of kick drums and experiment with my own techniques instead of trying to copy someone else’s technique. In the past I have used FL Studio’s drum pad for the body of the kick drum, then I layered a closed hi hat, a sampled rim for the click of the beater, and I also used whitenoise/reverb for that rumble. On some kick drums I created, I also used some offbeat reverb. That’s my way of creating tough kickdrums.

Layering is the easiest way for inspiration and originality, and I have actually got my own sample pack posted online entitled ‘Bulletix HandsUp Shop Vol. 1’, a selection of dance drums ranging from 90’s techno and hardcore to 21st century HandsUp. It even includes some 909 snaredrums that I created myself using a demo of D16 Drumazon. This sample pack is for all hands-up, hard dance, and acid techno producers who are out there who want more dance drum sounds.

Thanks for your advice! I’ll try and get to it right away. :slight_smile:

Oh, and i forgot to tell you… I know that Manuel Schleis used similar effects with kick drum synthesisers for Vengeance Clubsounds 1 & 2. So Scooter are not the only ones to make that hard techno kick drum used on ‘Soul Train’ as Schleis did something similar for his Vengeance Clubsounds packs. I know, I’ve got both volumes 1 & 2.

This kind of kick you even can do without a 909. You just need a VST/hardware synthie with a sine wave oscillator and an ADSR amp envelope and minimum two extra modulation envelopes. With this synthie you can modulate your kick’s body (the bassy and punchy part of the kick). The sine wave should be played in the lower note range that it sounds like a sine bass and it should be played in the root note of your song. Use the amp envelope for modulating the body’s volume curve (attack phase, sustain (length) and release (fade out) of the kick). The punch of the kick then will be done with the two extra modulation envelopes, routed both to the oscillator’s pitch. Use the first mod envelope to modulate a very fast pitch down to get a click like sound at the beginning of the body. With the second mod envelope you then also modulate a bit longer pitch down to get the punch of the kick. You need to fiddle around with the envelope until it fits your needs. Then you need an EQ to lower the part in the bass range a bit, where it sounds like a heavy punch (ca 50 Hz to 70 Hz). With the right settings you get a boomy body with a nice punch.

For a more aggressive body like in your Scooter examples don’t use distortion. Tape saturation is better for this kind of aggressiveness. Or use a compressor, which creates some saturation/distortion when used with extreme settings. Then you need another thing for the kick to create the “attack” or transients for the kick. For this it is best to use samples with a clicky character (claps, percussions, snares, even hihats) to create some kind of a click sound. Modulate this clicky sound with envelopes until it sounds good together with the before created body. Maybe you have to add an EQ with a steep HP filter to cut out all the low frequencies below 500 Hz. You even can use a decent, not too long reverb on the click sounds, to get a kind of slight “tail” (like it’s done in a lot of Hands Up kicks, and the kicks in the Scooter examples). And finally use a decent compressor on the sum of the attack and body to “glue” them together.

If you can spend some money, i recommend the VPS Metrum VST made by Vengeance. It’s a powerful kick drum synthesizer. You can create all kind of kicks, also this kind of kick you’re searching for. It has all tools you need for creating your kick.

If i find some time in the next days i could make a tutorial, how you can create your own kicks of choice from scratch with VST’s or even the Renoise stock sampler. A while ago i made a demonstration video, while i was creating an uplifting trance kick from scratch in another DAW.

BTW: the melody of Scooter’s Level One (released in 2003) was stolen from the Amiga/C64 game Turrican 2 from 1991, made by Chris Hülsbeck. It’s the melody of the end theme of this game wit the title “Freedom”.

Thanks, man! I’ll go and check out Metrum now! Cheers!

http://bedroomproducersblog.com/2014/08/18/bigroomkixsynth/