Everyone here saying 'trust your ears' and 'practice' is correct. I know you're going to respond to me talking about industry-quality methods and how you're not really looking for anything besides a compilation of industry procedures, but that literally doesn't exist beyond anything you should have learned in your first 5-6 months of producing (provided you worked hard and did your research) Sure, you'll always learn little things here and there, tools to compliment your toolbox, but there really are no secrets beyond using things that sound good and processing things to maximize their potential as an element in the mix(compression, EQ, reverb/del, effects). I will try my best to list to you a few things that nearly all professional producers think about when making a track that you will later consider to be 'professional quality' even though the only real thing that makes it professional quality is that you decided you liked the sound of it, and saw that other people did too. I'm saving the obvious shit that I assume you know already because I'm taking you seriously (how to EQ, use compressors, meticulous sound selection etc)

1. Rolling off high frequencies in most sounds. All that high end can kill the energy of your track, and make it hit a limiter like a chainsaw. High end always sounds better with than without on a solo'ed channel, but most sounds have these frequencies and they stack quickly. If you notice most professional tracks aren't actually 'crisp' because of the high end but are crisp because there is good frequency seperation between sounds, as well as distinction using the stereo field.

2.spending shit loads of time on getting the right kick sound. Way, way too much time has to be spent getting this right. So much so that a lot of producers have 2-3 kicks in a few different keys and tend to stick with them for most tracks. A Kick can seriously ruin your track, so a lot of producers just use ones that their other producer friends gave them cause they work and its not worth fking with.

3. spending shitloads of time getting the right noise risers, impacts & fx sounds. Most professional tracks have way fucking more of these layered into it than your brain cares to recognize, because it's all just variations of fuzz and static anyways. but it's huge for tension and release. Making these things sound right can be a very meticulous process especially with the amount of layering it takes to really maximize tension and release sometimes. A lot of beginner producers spend a bit of time putting some sweeps on the track and thing that it'll do, but this stage is really important to the point that a lot of producers save it for the mixdown to even add these, and give it shitloads of time and energy.


4. writing a good song. Dont read this and think "ugh, this guy thinks he's conceptual." It's true. Most of these people around forums like this (no offense guys I love you and I'm here too ) are over-involved in the mixing process to the point where they aren't even thinking about music half as much as they should. Seriously, good music that feels well mixed only feels that way because it invokes an emotional response, and shit music is never going to do that. So basically shit song, shit mix no matter what. not REALLY, a song can still be technically mixed well, but a listener will percieve it as boring and badly mixed if the song is fucking boring and bad. There are even lots of amazing songs with shit mixes that people enjoy and pay for because they don't care about the mix. The song is enough to make them move. In the end consumers don't even know what a good mix sounds like, they just know when they respond emotionally to a song, same as a good dish or painting. They aren't aware of the process.


5. Gain staging and makin shit louder. Just figure it out. making sure your mix has energy and punch is important, as is making sure that your mix isn't smashed against a brickwall like a crushed bug. This is something that practice will make perfect over anything else, because the effects can be subtle on individual channels but cumulatively define the energy of your track. This is probably the hardest thing in production, in my opinion, and destroys a lot of peoples tracks for years as they never make a huge, specific effort to improve and listen to their decisions critically, and learn from them. So the best advice I have is to watch tutorials of professional artists and take cues from their compressor settings on certain sounds, observe how they sound, and bear in mind that they have a solid master on the track and that does change your perception of it.

6. Get someone else to master your shit. I'm aware that there are professional artists out there who master their own shit. I know they do. Don't worry about them. Don't do it if you are trying to have your music taken seriously on a commercial level. Those people who do it themselves are probably better than you. Just deal with it and if you want to master your own shit, get a proper room and learn the science. If you don't want to do that then spend a lot of time trying to make it sound right and hopefully get it as good as possible. But do not confuse what you did with the mastering process because you didn't master for shit. It's a different world and chances are you know very little about it. (even those guys who 'master their own shit' are actually often doing what is called a premaster where they kind of sort of master it themselves and then send it off to someone who makes sure it works)


Those things are pretty standard across the board for professional electronic and EDM producers. I think that's about as standard as things will get, bro. Hope it was any degree of help to you and good luck with your productions!

Why don't you just sample those kicks you wanna imitate and then layer them with something else? lol

because I'm not interested in being limited to the kicks that professional producers are able to create on their own, that I manage to get my hands on. All the kicks are very different, but all have similarities that I can't seem to re-create. The two main things hard to emulate is the powerful 'umf' in the mid, and avoiding the overbearing snappy noise on the transient while still having it slam.

Sometimes I feel like screaming. Sometimes I want to break all of my studio equipment and run off and live in the forest. There is only thing that makes me feel this way, and its getting a good sounding kick. I can nail everything else and am really confident in my production and even low end mixing, however getting a good top end kick that sits on the mix and feels powerful yet not too snappy and in your face is just not something I'm capable of figuring out on my own. I've been trying ceaselessly for YEARS.

It's not the sub of the kick, I'm fine with that. I make dirty dutch/melbourne bounce, so It's the top layer. How the fuck do artists get this sounding good so consistently? When I try to use samples, I can never get it to sound punchy enough with the frequencies still sounding relaxed and 'small'. When I try to use clicks from banks like nicky romero's kick, It sounds much too small to produce the mid 'umf' that is the most important part of a strong kick for melbourne bounce. Any amount of overdrive/compression/EQ attempts to get a sound closer just further convinces me that I'm starting with a bad sound to begin with.

I'm starting to think that there is some tried and true way to make melbourne bounce kicks and I'm just not in the loop. Because I'm a competent producer, I really am. But as far as the top end of my kick goes, I don't even think it can get in the ballpark. I just can't get it to have weight without being a snapping mess.

Please, if you have sound design advice, I would love to know. But more importantly, if anyone knows of the samples that artists like SCNDL, Will Sparks, and Deorro use to get their top kick sounds, please let me know. I'm tired. So, so tired.