Trance Kick Drum with Compression/EQ

The average trance kick is just a 909 sample with different layers and processing that has been improved and changed over years by now. I really like to add compression from hell on a standard 909 kick and add different layers to shape the sound. 

For sure the overall sound is changing because of overall drum group processing and mastering, but you should try to let your sounds be like you want them in the phase of sound selection and later on in mixing. Compression just makes like 5% of your overall sound, unless you really using it to shape the sound. Try to find the right samples, add EQ and route all your drums into one group and add some compression there to make all drums sound nice together.

Layering kicks is not essential to the music I make, but when I do, it's usually a mixture of samples and some synthesized kick drums using microtonic. Sometimes I'll put a rimshot or a synthesized "plop" on top of that - just a bit - to emphasize the hit. 

They key to me is not to have a lot of overlap frequency-wise, otherwise it'll get too cluttered and lose its sharpness. Cover the areas around 60-100 Hz, 100-250, 1 KHz, and 3 KHz, the latter two taking a back seat in the mix. Sprinkle a bit of distortion/tape saturation and use a good compressor to glue it all together.

The main thing to keep in mind is: think 'frequency layers', so to create a pounding kick with a nice textured attack you will need the actual sub bass thud, then a snappy attack, and perhaps some noisy swell to give the kick some extra life and texture. So that's three layers each requiring a different processing chain. So, the sub bass thud could be your standard synth kick with careful compression+EQ. The snappy attack could be a sample of you hitting a cardboard box, or better, a heavy pillow, or a ball bouncing transposed down in your host, etc. This can be further edited with volume envelopes to create a very sharp attack. The last layer, the texture, could be anything. It could be the same sub bass but compressed even more, distorted and eq'd, to have a mid-crunchy tone. Or use your own sample, even your own mouth doing a 'tssooomth' kind of sound. Experiment here with sources and processing. Then the three layers can be mixed in your host so that you decide how much bass/attack/texture the kick needs. 

Another thing to keep in mind is, never ever do kick sounds on headphones as they will give you a false sense of bass. This happened to me. I was working late at night using headphones ( and I have good headphones) and have created about six extra cool kicks, or so I thought. However, when I played them the following morning on my monitors, they sounded rubbish! The bass was not there. The attack was all nice and snappy but the body of the kick was nowhere to be heard.