Making Big Room House - The Complete Guide To Kick And Bass Creation

Big Room House is a sub-genre of Electro-House that established itself in 2010. It grew out of a craving for huge drops when the festival scene started booming. What makes it Big Room? It sounds like a big room, but technically speaking, it's the use of powerful detuned leads and deep sub-bass kicks. Unlike other House genres, Big Room always features a boomy sub that follows the kick drum instead of the lead. Also, the melodies are almost always minor, and the number of elements is usually minimal on the drop. In this article, I'll review how to make Big Room's two most essential elements: The Kick and the Lead.  

Kick

The kick comprises two layers: a bass layer and a transient layer. I'll show you how to make the bass layer in Native Instruments' Massive.  

Bass Layer

To begin, open up a fresh instance of Massive, set oscillator 1 to Groan II, and assign envelopes to control the parameters as shown. They will give the kick the right texture on the wavetable position and amp. The envelopes' controlling pitch gives the bass a percussive pitched attack. Make sure the pitch of the oscillator is set to +48.

Now it's time actually to work the envelopes. In envelope 1, set the attack and attack level to 0 and the decay between 8 and 9 o'clock.

Envelope 3 is the same but with more decay than 1 Env. These envelopes will give the bass the impact to sound like a kick.

Next, decrease the sustain level in the amp envelope ever so slightly and set the attack to 0.

Lastly, in envelope 2, click "select a preset" and choose "rotor." Then increase the decay to about 11 o'clock. Since this envelope is assigned to the amp of oscillator 1, it will act as the primary amp envelope for the kick.

In the filter section, set Filter 1 to a 4-pole low-pass. MEnsureit is set to serial, with a cutoff between 1 and 2 o'clock.

For the FX, add a classic compressor with the dry/wet at 9 o'clock and the drive at 10 o'clock.

The kick sounds like a kick, but it's time to thicken it. Add feedback, sine shaping, and clip to give it more weight.

The Transient Layer

The bass layer sounds nice and deep but doesn't have the initial impact we'd expect from a kick. To correct this, I will add a transient layer in Battery 4.  The sample I've chosen for this transient is the first bass drum from Vengeance's Electroshock 2 pack, but any sample with a little click at the start should do the trick.

The process consists of two steps. First, turn on the volume envelope and shorten the sound using the Decay and Hold.

Then, in the FX section, add a 4-pole HighPass filter and set the cutoff between 10 and 11 o'clock. This will eliminate the low frequencies from this transient and prevent them from conflicting with the frequencies in the bass layer we created.

Our two layers sound together, playing a 4/4 kick pattern.

The Lead

Now that we have our support layer, it's time to create the lead. Of course, Big Room isn't limited to one kind of lead, but it sounds like the one we're about to make is commonly used in the genre. In a new instance of Massive, load up two saw waves detuned by the same amount in opposite directions. Then, route them to Filter 1 by bringing their filter mix faders to the top.  

The lead has a lot of low-frequency content that will conflict with the kick layer. To clean it up, set Filter 1 to a 4-pole HighPass and assign Macro 2. This lead might also be featured in the intro of a track where it doesn't need to be cut out, so it's nice to have flexibility over the cutoff position. My work is more organized when I keep all the modulated parameters in the Macro section. Turn the Ser-Par slider up and make sure it's set to serial.

In the amp envelope (4 Env), increase the attack and decrease the sustain. This will make the lead a semi-plucked articulation on every note.

It's Big Room, so it's time to add some voices. I set the Unison to 16 in the Voicing section, enabling Pitch Cutoff and Pan Position. Sliding the pitch cutoff to the right ever-so-slightly will create detuning amongst the voices, an effect characteristic of this type of lead. As for the Pan Position, it'll give the sound some width by spreading the voices across the stereo image.  

Adding some phase modulation to a sound with so many voices can be chaotic. But in moderation, it can add some desirable depth. In the modulation section, enable phase modulation on oscillator 1 and set the amount between 9 and 10 o'clock.

Add some reverb, dimension expansion, and EQ in the FX section. Increase the dry/wet knob on the reverb ever-so-slightly and set the size just past 12 o'clock. The Macro section of the synth will control the wetness of the sound.

The dry/wet and size of the Dimension Expander should be set to around 9 o'clock and 12 o'clock, respectively. This effect will add a short decay after the sound, providing a much larger sense of space.

Finally, use the EQ to boost the high frequencies of the sound and strengthen that "white noise" top layer.

The Melody

That's it for our lead! Here's a melody I've played with the patch to show the two elements in context. It's in the key of F minor and hangs around the root note, F. But it also uses a characteristic tone from the F Phrygian scale, F#, without changing harmonically.

Putting It Together

Here are the two elements playing together.