Forge Notes

Kick Alchemist vs Sonic Academy KICK 3: layering vs synthesis
Let me start with the awkward part. Sonic Academy have been making KICK since long before I had a plugin at all. It's good software, it's well regarded, and a lot of records you like were made with it. I'm not going to stand here and tell you my thing beats it, because that's not true and you'd know it wasn't true by paragraph three. What I will tell you is that these two plugins are not really competing. They're doing different jobs that happen to produce the same category... Read more...
The three-layer kick: sub, body, and click
The kick on the record you keep going back to is almost never one sample. I spent an embarrassing amount of time not knowing that. Load a kick from a pack. EQ it. Compress it. Saturate it. Wonder why it still sounded like a demo next to the reference track. Load a different kick. Repeat until 2am. The problem was never the processing. It was that I was asking one sample to do three completely different jobs, and most samples are only good at one or two of them. So... Read more...
How to find the key of a kick drum sample
Your kick has a pitch. Most producers never think about this. A kick is a thump, a percussion sound, a thing you put on beat one. But almost every kick worth using is a tuned sine-ish tone with a fast decay, which means it has a note, whether or not you know what it is. If you've ever had a low end that gets muddy no matter how you EQ it, this is usually the reason. Why it matters Your kick and your bass live in the same small piece... Read more...
Why your layered kick sounds weaker than one sample
You have a kick you like. It's fine. It's just not big. So you do the obvious thing. You drag a second kick underneath it, expecting more weight. You hit play and it got smaller. Not different. Smaller. The low end goes hollow, the punch goes soft, and somehow two kicks are quieter than one. So you turn the bottom layer up. Now it's louder and still hollow. Everyone has felt this. I chased it with EQ for an embarrassingly long time before I understood what was actually going on,... Read more...
How to Write Tech House Basslines That Actually Groove
In tech house the bassline is not an accompaniment, it is the lead singer. The kick keeps time, the hats push, but the bassline is the part people hum on the way home. It is also where most unfinished tracks die: eight bars of a root note on every off-beat, no movement, no story. Here is the anatomy of basslines that move a floor, and a method for writing them. Start from the pocket, not the notes A tech house groove is a conversation between the kick and the bass.... Read more...
Chord Progressions for House Music (No Theory Degree Needed)
House music has never required a conservatory. Some of the most-played records in the genre are built on two or three chords, played with feel. What separates a demo from a record is not harmonic complexity; it is knowing which few chords belong together and voicing them like a musician instead of a MIDI grid. Both of those are learnable in one sitting. Let's go. The one rule: stay in the key A key is just a club with seven member chords. Pick a key, use its seven chords, and... Read more...
How to Layer an 808 Kick That Translates on Club Systems
You bounced the track. It slapped in your headphones. Then you played it in the car and the kick disappeared, or you heard it on a club rig and the low end turned into soup. Every producer has lived this, and it almost always traces back to the same three mistakes in the kick. Here is the fix, start to finish. Why one sample is almost never enough A kick that works everywhere has to do three jobs at once: sub weight you feel on a big system, midrange punch... Read more...