Kaytranada & Kali Uchis "10%" Serum Tutorial & Breakdown

Kaytranada and Kali Uchis released one of the best songs of 2019, "10%", which went on to win Best Dance Recording at the 63rd Grammy Awards. It shows why Kaytranada is one of the best producers in R&B and dance music, and his album "Bubba" cemented that status. With Kaytranada, everything starts with the drums and percussion, then the bassline brings the soul and everything else falls into place. Below we remake the bass, the keys, the pluck, the strings and the stab in Serum, with audio and settings for each. Let's take a listen.

Want this exact sound?

Every sound in this breakdown comes from the Future RnB Pack. Load it up and recreate the full track in minutes.

20% off with code BP01

GET THE FUTURE RNB PACK

Or get all 38 packs (4,500+ presets) in the Serum Bundle for $59.90.

Want to learn the techniques behind it? Check out our Courses.

RELATED BREAKDOWNS

The Bass

Let's start with the funky bassline. The preset is a mix between an 808 and an electric bass. First you need a Basic Shape waveform in oscillator "A" set it in its 7th position and with four voices slightly detuned and in oscillator "B" another Basic Shape but in its 2nd position and with only one voice. Our filter is not being modulated and is cutting everything above 200 Hz. The part that makes this bass sound a little like an 808 is the modulation being made by our envelope 3 to the coarse pitch, this modulation is making it hit harder.

The Keys

To recreate these keys we use a Jno wavetable in oscillator "A" with the wavetable position at 1, on oscillator "B" we have an Analog_BD_Sin wavetable, this wavetable gives body and warmth to the sound while the other one brings brightness and air, Envelope 2 (whose attack should be around 80 ms) is modulating the cutoff of the filter and envelope 1 is modulating the detune of each oscillator, now the characteristic sound comes from 2 things, the first one is that the fine-tuning of both oscillators is being modulated by LFO 2, and the second one (and the most important) is to activate the portamento and set it to Always to get that glide effect at the beginning of each chord.

The Pluck

If you ask us this part of the song gives a lot of movement and just playfulness to the track, once that first arp hits you, you already know this is about to be another Kaytranada classic, and funnily enough this patch isn't complicated at all. To make this preset we need an Analog_BD_Sin wavetable in oscillator "A" with 5 voices and the wavetable position at around 50, the oscillator "B" has a Saw wavetable with 7 voices, now to make this patch plucky we need envelope 2 to have a fast decay and to be routed to the cutoff of the filter and then drenched in reverb and delay and that's it.

The Strings

This string section enters at around the 55 second mark, to fill the void left by the keys, it only lasts a few seconds, but that's enough to make an impression, we need a Basic Shape in its second position in oscillator "A" and make sure it has 16 voices so it sounds big and wide, then in oscillator "B" use an SQR_SAW_Wrd, now our envelope 1 should have an attack at around 1 second and is going to be modulating the level of the filter and the PWM of oscillator "B".

The Stab

Now, this final part is quite simple as well but an important part of Kaytranada’s sound, now to recreate the patch yourself use Basic Shape in both oscillators and set one in its 7th position and the other one in its 4th, now the important part is to modulate the filter with an envelope in this case number 1 and add a lot of resonance in the filter so it has that characteristic sweeping sound.