By Brandon Darby, 2025
There is little that needs to be said about this absolute anthem of a classic deep house track, that hasn’t been said already in words, legendary status and the hearts of many it has moved on the dance floor. It has hard to get more soulful and beautifully simple as this track. As a long time obsessed fan of this track, I have delved deeply into the iconic sounds that make it up, and in this article I will show exactly how you can re-create these sounds yourself.
Table of Contents
Let’s listen to a section of my full recreation of this classic nineties house music anthem:
Drums
One of Kerri Chandler’s many signature sounds is his drums, in this track in particular, I think they are his greatest use of simple, ear candy, hard hitting drums. Let’s listen to the drum set on its own:
As you can hear, there’s a few interesting characteristics about these drums. You’ve got the slightly reverberated kick, the loose and groovy swing, the loose claps and the overall warmth and texture to the hits. I believe that Kerri thinks deeply about the character of his drums, and makes each individual hit have a certain ear candy to them, when you combine this with having such a minimal amount of drums, this sparseness allows for the character of the drums to come through, and hit very hard. This thought process of spending time getting each drum to have a smooth and warm character can make you as a producer stand out, instead of just banging a load of loops and layers together without consideration for what vibe you’re giving off.
Let’s take a look at designing a kick in this style.
Kick
Firstly, you need to start with a good old 909 kick sample. My choice of 909s usually comes from Goldbaby, specifically the Super Analog 909 sample pack. You just want something with a lot of weight and punch, here is the unprocessed raw kick sample:
Inherent in the sample is a lot of punch, which is why using high quality sample packs is useful, as the processing already applied to the kick from the creator gives you an amazing starting point, and makes it easier to get the finished result you want.
What we can now do is start shaping the kick to suit Kerri’s vibe a bit more, I like to think of these stages as little bits of paint added to a painting, adding shadow, light, shades etc. They are all subtle, but they add up in a sequence to accumulate into something greater. Again, when we want to be as great as Kerri, we need to be subtle, yet think carefully about our processing.
I have started by adding some EQ, to gently take away some click in the top end of the kick, creating a smoother sound.
This EQ makes the kick sound like this:
A little bit more warm. This is the starting point for understanding the kick sound in this track, which is similar in many of Kerri’s tracks, where the kick is almost like a heavy bouncy ball, really filling the low end and sounding punchy and rounded, yet it almost gels in the mix and doesn’t poke through, it really sits below everything with no harsh edges, just providing a strong low end thumping energy, masterfully blended into the mix as a whole. By taking away some clickiness in the high end, we are setting the foundations for this.
Next up is a Channel EQ, you could arguably do this in the previous EQ, but I like the natural curves and ease of use for broad sound shaping that you can get with Channel EQ. I use an EQ like Fabfilter Pro Q3 for more precise adjustments. As you can see here, I am further shaping the kick to be tucked into the mix by taking out some of the mid range at 440hz, -12db in fact. In the mid range is where a lot of the muddiness lives, taking this away can help a kick sit underneath a mix better, while the low end stays strong. Adding the high end boost of 3db serves just to bring a little bit of the click back, in a broad stroke, just adding some air to the kick.
This is how this now sounds, so much warmer and more round, we are left with only the frequencies we want:
A finishing touch we want to add to this kick is a subtle reverb. This adds so much to the sound, further enhancing the kick’s ability to sit in the mix while adding character and depth. Here is how I set up the reverb within Drum Rack.
By enabling the S and R in the bottom left hand corner (green), you open up the Drum Rack’s internal send/return settings, from there you can create an empty return track and add a reverb plugin in there (red), then sending the some of your kick to it (pink). On your return channel, you can copy my Ableton Reverb settings like this:
The aim here is a short, small roomed reverb. Just enough to give the kick some boom and a sense of space. Notice how I put the reverb in mono (0.00 stereo), this helps the kick not overpower the stereo frequencies when the reverb is added. After all, if our kick is in mono, why shouldn’t we put the kick’s reverb in mono too? Experiment with different cutoffs for the Input Filter and Diffusion Network, this will give you a darker more thunderous reverb, or a brighter more airy reverb.
Here is the kick playing with the reverb on/off:
We can now finish off by adding a Saturator to the whole drum group, because I’ve used a Drum Rack, I just put this device on the whole channel, so it applies it to all of my drums at once. Gentle saturation is the key here, to glue all of our drums together and add some analog soul. By all means experiment with stronger saturation, depending on your tastes.
One final tip is to add a groove template to your all of your drums from this point onwards. I have chosen the “Swing MPC 3000 16ths 64” template, as I feel this is just the right amount of groove for this style. If you apply this to all of your drums, they will all gel together and groove together nicely, while not being too extreme.
Claps
For our claps, we can keep things quite simple, we want something quite natural sounding, nothing too electronic or processed. We can bring out some character using a touch of processing ourselves.
Here is the sort of clap sounds we want to go for (with all processing applied):
For the main clap, on beats 1.2 and 1.4 I have chosen a clap from a great sample pack called by Sample Magic: 90s House this is an awesome pack for Kerri style sounds. For the clap in-between this main one, I’ve chose another from this pack too.
Make sure you keep your same groove template on for these claps (if using a separate midi track) rather than a Drum Rack.
Moving onto processing these claps, you want to first play around with the decay time of the sample, to ensure you get the right length, this can be done by taste.
Then we can move onto some audio effects. Group your two claps together and apply this processing to both simultaneously. A Glue Compressor can work wonders here to add some snap to the claps which helps them punch through the mix. Add a Glue Compressor to the first section of your chain, and set it up like below:
Try to aim for around 4-5db of compression, but keep the attack and release at 1 and .6 respectively, this will allow for the claps to have an ever so slight bit of character while not sounding over compressed. Experiment here with differing attack/release times which will determine the character of the compressed claps.
Next up, we can add a favourite of mine, the Redux plugin. This will add so much character to the claps, and perfectly suits the Kerri Chandler sound and also nineties house music in general is full of this.
Set up the Redux as above, experimenting with the “Rate” and “Bits” knobs, for varying degrees of bit reduction and crunch.
We can finish off our claps by adding a reverb return to our drum rack as we did with the kick, try setting up the reverb as follows, for a short and realistic room reverb, perfect for bring the claps to life while keeping the groove nice and tight:
Open Hi Hat
Another key drum to the simple yet effective drums of this track is the lush open hi hat.
Here is the hat in solo:
Clearly, this is just a simple 909 open hi hat, yet two things are important this to get the perfect sound. Firstly, you must choose a nice starting sample. For this I have again chosen a sample from Goldbaby’s Super Analog 909 and I have set up the sample’s attack like below, this gentle softening of the attack makes the hat less harsh in the mix, emulating a bit of analog processing which would naturally soften the transient of the sample in the real world.
Finally, we can add some saturation to the hi hat, for this I have used another favourite of mine, “Decapitator” by Soundtoys. Here is how I have set up the plugin:
There is a couple of key things to think about here, first is choosing the N style, helps darken the hi hat, tucking it away in the mix so it sounds warmer and less abrasive and dropping the high cut knob slightly, also darkens the hat and makes it warmer. You can experiment with more saturation by increasing the drive and using the punish button.
Here is the hi hat with and without the Decapitator:
Drum Group Processing
Now that we have our main drums in, feel free to add whatever extras you want, but remember to keep it quite sparse and open, not too dense with every space filled. We can now look at how you can process the drums as a whole to add some final polish to make them the best they can be.
What I like to do is send a tiny bit of the drum group channel to another reverb, the logic here is that a small amount of reverb will put all of the drums in there own textured space, giving a sense of cohesion.
Here are the settings for this reverb:
It’s very subtle but it works nicely.
As you can see we have another send (B), this is going into a parallel compressor, which has a more obvious effect on the drums. Let’s listen to the compressor off and then on in real-time to get a feel for what its doing:
As you can hear, when the compressor comes on in the second half of the above audio, there is a distinct thickening and pump added to the drums, without the drums getting significantly increased in peak volume, this means you can get louder more powerful drums without running out of headroom in your mix. It definitely adds a certain vibe, which may or may not be what you’re after, but if you have the space in your mix, it works very well!
To set this up for your drums, first create a return channel and load up a Glue Compressor, or any compressor you like. Then set up the compressor as follows:
Here you need to consider a few important parameters. Firstly, the attack should be as quick as possible because you want the compressor to compress the transients quickly.
Secondly, the release should be timed as much as possible to groove of your beat, meaning the compressor needle or gain reduction meter bounces up and down to the same rhythm of your beat. The release time also has an impact on the overall feel of the compressor, quicker times will sound more aggressive, slower times more subtle. Experiment with what works for you.
Thirdly, the ratio should be at least 10:1 or higher. Finally, the threshold should be as low as possible.
Heres how the compressor sounds when the return channel is playing on its own without the dry drums (remember, this is a parallel process, so in the end you are having a mix of the dry uncompressed drums and the wet compressed return channel, playing together at the same time):
It sounds cool it its own right, but its too compressed and generally you wouldn’t want it playing just on its own, whereas when you combine it with the dry drums, you get the best of both worlds, the solid unprocessed drums you started with and the compressed and bouncy groovy drums.
One last thing to consider is to turn down the compressed return channel enough so that when you mute and un-mute it, there is no significant increase in perceived volume when the return channel is playing alongside the dry drums. As you can see in the image above, I have turned down my compressed channel by 11db.
Synths
Now let’s move onto some synth sounds! There are countless iconic sounds in this track, but among the most iconic are the synth sounds. One of the best sounds I’ve ever heard is the lead chord sounds providing the melody of the track, here is my recreation of that sound:
Not perfect, but close!
This is such a beautiful epic sound with such a good progression. I have never figured out exactly what synth was used originally for this sound, nor am I certain these are the exact chords, but to me it’s close enough.
For this sound, I have chosen to use u-he Diva, a very versatile high quality synth. If you don’t have Diva, then these processes can be applied to any subtractive synth of your choosing, but I highly recommend trying the demo to get a feel for its power when creating such rich sounds like this.
First up, it would be good to get the chords in first. Here’s an image of the approximate chords for Kerri’s progression (spread over 4 bars, 2 images of 2 bars split up):
These are very complex and rich chords and are made up of a few important chords and inversions. It gets easier to understand once you break it down into stages.
- The pink chord starts as a basic G# minor 7, except the F# is inverted below the root note (G#). Then to reinforce the chord and make it sound richer, you add two G# notes further underneath in the two octaves below.
- The orange chord is just a short sharp chord for added groove and it is technically called a C# add 9 (C#, F, G#, D#), except the D# is placed immediately after the C# instead of in the octave above. You could also think of this chord as a C# major (C#, F, G#) with an added D#.
- The green chord is the second half to the chord progression. This chord is a C#6sus2 (C#, D#, A#) which is an unusual chord! Like the pink chord, this is also reinforced by having two A# notes underneath it.
- Lastly, the blue chord is also a short sharp chord to help transition like the orange chord before, and I like to think of it as essentially the same as the pink chord, but you take the top D# away!
These are really amazing chords that sound so rich and dynamic. If music theory is not your thing, then feel free to download the midi file here: Kerri Chords
Remember to keep your groove template used for your drums on this midi clip as well, this will keep the chords grooving nicely with everything!
Now that we have set up the chords, you can begin by opening up an instance of Diva. This sound is quite simple at heart, but it’s the effects that make it, which we shall look at later.
Firstly, set the oscillator type to “DUAL VCO”, this gives us an emulation of the Jupiter 6/8 oscillators. We will only use VCO 1 here, so you turn the mix all the way to VCO 1. Set the shape to “analog2” and for VCO 1, use a PWM wave. Set the PW to around 40 and the PW modulation to LFO 2 (more on the LFO later).
Just below the oscillator panel, you will find “LFO 2 [MOD]”, in here copy the settings as shown in the image. Once this is done, you will hear a slight modulation on the PWM wave you set as the oscillator before.
Let’s now move over to the filter, where we can begin to get a good sound.
If we set up the filter and envelopes as follows, we should get something that sounds like this:
Make sure to change the filter envelope knob to “ENV 1”. And also to make sure you are using “VCF | CASCADE” and “ANALOGUE ENV 1”. Now returning to our oscillators for a moment, lets play the sound without the pulse width modulation with LFO 2:
A stark difference! Much less richness. With only one oscillator, the options are limited for detuning the sound without a chorus effect, but we can get a good start by using this LFO 2 to modulate the oscillator.
Now we have an awesome sound already, let’s juice it up by adding the in-built chorus effect within Diva.
Feel free to try your own chorus instead of the Diva one!
We can now look at creating an audio effect chain after our Diva plugin to really start to detail and polish this sound.
The first set of plugins in our chain is two instances of Redux. Set them up as follows, this will add texture and grit, dirtying up the sound and making it feel as if its been ran through a vintage sampler:
Here is what the chords sound like with the Reduxes applied:
A nice warmth and grit has been added.
Now a really cool way of spicing up the chords is to use a Glue Compressor, which will add punch and weight to the chords, making them feel almost 3D and like their popping out the speakers.
Aiming for 4-5db of compression here, with a slow attack and a fast release. The slow attack allows the transients of the chords to be emphasised and the fast release creates a pumping effect that works great for these rhythmic chords. Here is what they sound like with the compressor applied:
A subtle effect, but definitely adds a punchiness to the stabs, a certain weight to them.
Next up, even more Redux! This is going to crunch-ify the chords even more, it may be too much for some, but I like it.
With this Redux applied, lets also add the drums in, so we get excited with that awesome rhythm:
Now we start to get a little bit more complex, but it’s in the complex details that make this sound what it is. What we will do here is add an Ableton Gate effect. It is going to set up like below, where the chords themselves are the side chain for the gate to open and close, what you then must do is find a sweet spot on the Threshold where the gate starts to be triggered with every chord, then play around with the attack, hold and release.
What will start to happen is the gate will be opening and closing rapidly with each chord, creating an almost stuttering groove which must be heard to appreciate, it really adds a special detail.
Let’s take a listen and see if you can hear the different when turned off for 4 bars/on for 4 bars:
It almost creates a random and unpredictable release time for each chord, cutting some short, some longer, which adds such a cool groove. Lets exaggerate the effect here to get your ears used to it:
Too extreme, not really usable, but it highlights the effect of the gate and when lessened to a degree like the audio before this, actually sounds very musical and groovy.
Next in our chain is a sweet little echo. Low Dry/Wet and 3/16ths create the perfect extra groove and atmosphere for these chords.
Some lush extra groove added. Last in our FX chain, let’s add a sidechain compressor with the Kick as the trigger, this tucks the chords away into the bedrock of the track’s pulsating kick, becoming at one with the groove.
To finish off these chord stabs, we can use the same reverb return channel we used for our drums earlier, adding an unmistakable vibe to the chords.
And that’s those legendary chord stabs finished.
Bass
Let’s now move onto to another incredible sound that makes up this track, which is the bassline. You might already know, this is a variation on the classic Lately Bass or Solid Bass, which originally were presets in the Yamaha TX18Z and D100 synths. You can get this sound easily nowadays with just a sample but I like to use Repro-5 by u-he, as it creates it from scratch and gives you more freedom to tweak the sound, making it more unique than a sample that every knows.
If you don’t have Repro-5, you might want to start with your favourite way of getting the Lately/Solid bass, and follow my tweaks and processing as much as possible.
Start by opening Repro-5 and initialising the preset (right click in the dark red area below and click “init”)
Then start setting up the oscillator A like the image below, we only need one oscillator for this sound, so you can turn down OSC B in the mixer. Set A to -12 frequency, 0 octave and turn both the Saw and PW waves on, then set the pulse width to the notch left of 50.
Moving over to the filter and envelope section, this is where the sound is truly shaped to be punchy and clear. Turn the cutoff all the way down, resonance down, envelope amount max and set the ADSR of both to the settings in the image below.
This is going to create a really plucky stabby bass sound that cuts through the mix well. Set up your midi clip with the melody like below. This melody is fantastic, only using two notes (D# and A#) with a two bar pattern. Make sure you use your same groove template to keep everything cohesive. Bonus tip, right click your midi clip and turn the fixed grid off for a moment, then move the midi notes of the bass around off grid a touch, this will further enhance the groove in combination with the groove template.
You should now have something along these lines:
Very powerful indeed, yet it’s missing that Kerri factor, some processing to bring it alive and make it unique.
First up, add a chorus of your choice. For this I have used Microshift by Soundtoys. Pretty standard settings, however I’ve made sure only the mid to high frequencies are being widened, keeping the bass in mono using the focus knob.
We will now add a touch of reverb, which is arguably the most important part of this sound, and gives it much of its identify and character. This is a gated-esque reverb, which gives it a metallic tone and helps it, again, cut through and become not just a bassline, but a core sound of its own.
I’ve used Ableton’s Reverb to keep things simple, with a very small room and short decay time like this:
Also, if we take out the lows in the diffusion network EQ, we make a more metallic tone without the boomy low end, as well as keeping our mix clean, a two-fold benefit. Make sure to adjust your dry wet mix to taste.
This should now give you an epic sound like this:
Now we’re getting close! What I would recommend next is a sidechain compressor to the kick, just like with the chords earlier, to help it tuck into the mix and groove with the pulse of the track. After this, let’s try a Redux (heavy on the redux in this track!). This is going to add some of that vintage sampler sparkly yet gritty texture, really helpful for this style.
This is how I set up the Redux:
You can finish off with some saturation if you want, making sure to balance the drive and output to gain stage correctly!
One final thing I like to do is send a touch of the bass to the reverb we used for our synths, drums etc. This just helps put it in a similar space to everything else, so things can sound cohesive!
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Kerri Chandler SYNTHO Tutorial