Badhabit on his Top Five Plugins for Electronic and House Music

“Hey I’m Badhabit, I’m a producer, artist and DJ originally from Italy and currently based in LA. I’ve been producing electronic music for over a decade. I started my career in 2014 as an EDM DJ/Producer, and I’ve written and produced records for artists like Zara Larsson and Dillon Francis, collecting over 500 million streams overall. In 2023, I started sharing my knowledge online through my YouTube channel (@badhabit) and so far I’ve built a community of around 75k people.”

“Even though my career made me learn how to produce different genres such as pop, hip-hop and latin, I can confidently say electronic music will always be the genre I feel the most connected to. I believe that learning how to produce electronic music will make you a better producer overall – the techniques required to become an experienced electronic producer will provide you with a very unique skillset that will give you an unfair advantage no matter the type of music you make.”

“So let’s go through some of the plugins I use every single day for producing house music that I absolutely couldn’t live without.”

You can subscribe to Badhabit on the Badhabit YouTube channel, and on Instagram.

 

 

1. u-he Diva

It’s the monster synth that’s launched a thousand tracks (or probably more) – you can get Diva from Plugin Boutique

“If you told me ‘You only have one VST you can use for the rest of your career,’ I would say DIVA. The reason is very simple: this plugin can do anything! I can make bass sounds, I can make pads, gritty and aggressive brass sounds, as well as lush textures, incredible leads… And I’m not just talking about a wide library of presets, but I’m referring to the ability to replicate so many different analog and digital synths. I can find Moog sounds in it, Prophet sounds, Juno sounds, DX7 sounds… literally anything! And the sound quality is unmatched, like any other u-he product.”

“The way I like to use Diva is usually browsing through presets first. I can design my own patches, but when I need to get inspired I like to first scroll through the sounds in my library, then tweak them depending on my needs. The factory presets are so good, I’d say 90% of the time I just pick one and go from there. The sounds I use the most are bass sounds and leads. Oh, and let’s not forget about the built-in effects: usually I keep the effects active because they already sound perfect for the patches I’m working with, then if needed I may add more reverb, delay, saturation… A must have!”

 

 

 

2. Plugin Boutique BigKick

Get our kick-generating plugin right here, and start off every track exactly how you like it

“You can’t make house music without a nice punchy four-on-the-floor kick. But sometimes scrolling through a thousand kick samples to find the right one drives me crazy, and that’s why I like to use BigKick, by Plugin Boutique and Credland Audio. This thing is just so easy to use, you can make your own kick in 30 seconds: just pick the body of the kick, shape it how you want it by tweaking attack, hold, decay, mess around with the pitch and you’ll be able to go from an aggressive techno kick to a very round and dark kick really quickly.”

“What I love is that sometimes I have an idea of what the kick should sound like, but until I hear it with the track, I can’t really tell if it’s gonna work or not Sometimes I listen to a sample from my library and I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s the one!’. Then I play it with the song and I quickly realize it’s not! BigKick instead allows me to shape the kick while I’m listening to the track. I let it play and I start changing the parameters until I hear what I have in mind. If you’ve never tried working with a kick synthesizer before, well you definitely need to give this a try!”

 

 

 

3. Newfangled Audio Elevate Mastering Bundle

To bring your tracks together with a punch, grab this great bundle from Plugin Boutique

“Let’s talk effects now! You can start from great sounds, but if they don’t have the knock needed for house music, your tracks can’t compete at the highest level. The Elevate bundle by Newfangled Audio is one of my secret weapons, especially for drums and bass which are the two main components of electronic songs. It includes an EQ, a Clipper, a Transient Shaper and a Limiter, and when you start combining all of these things together you can get pretty impressive results. I usually put this on my Drum Bus, and let’s say I need a touch more of punch, while also adding some nice saturation and loudness: I can do all of this with Elevate, and the sound coming out of this plugin is so powerful. I love the auto gain feature, which makes sure you don’t get tricked by the volume change so you can focus on what the plugin is actually doing. And don’t get fooled by the name ‘Mastering Bundle’, you can use this plugin on individual elements, I also like to put this on kicks, snares, bass sounds, and in that case I’m probably just going to disable the limiter and only take care of the EQ, transients, and maybe clipping if it’s needed.”

“If getting the full bundle feels like too much, you can also get the individual components separately and they will work amazing even by themselves. Again, it’s my secret weapon so keep it to yourself!”

 

 

 

4. Native Instruments Maschine

For the perfect drum sounds and samples, this plugin has you covered – pick it up now from Plugin Boutique

“I know one of the biggest struggles for electronic producers is finding the right samples. So many times I have found myself listening to a track I love and thinking ‘Where did they get that snare sound? Where are those hats coming from?’. There are so many sample packs nowadays and, in a world full of Splice samples, one of the best things you can do to make your music sound fresh and original is looking elsewhere. Maschine is not only a hardware drum controller but their plugin is loaded with thousands of incredible drum sounds, already processed, that I love to use in all of my songs. You can use the plugin even if you don’t own the hardware controller, and it’s actually so much fun for me to play in the drums using the pads of my midi controller. One of my favorite features is the ability to shape the sounds exactly how I want them. Maschine has its own sampler in it that allows you to change any parameter you can possibly think of, apply effects, and process the sounds together. And usually when I’m done working inside the plugin, I route all the sounds to audio channels in my session and turn them into audio samples. The collection of drum sounds is just top quality, you gotta check it out!”

 

 

 

5. SSL Native Bus Compressor 2

For a polished, professional sound, glue your tracks together with this great compressor, available from Plugin Boutique

“Time to glue it all together! This last plugin is present in EVERY single one of my sessions. The SSL Bus Compressor is such a classic, but it just can’t be beaten. This is usually the first plugin in my mastering chain, I like to set it in a way that allows me to compress between 3 and 4 dB and I want the needle to be bouncing, so you wanna set a pretty fast release, and if you wanna preserve those nice transients we have worked for, make sure to set your attack to a high value (for me it’s usually the maximum). There are so many companies making a replica of the original SSL Bus Compressor, but who better than SSL themselves? For years I’ve used the Waves version, then the UAD version, but since SSL dropped their own plugin I switched to that. To my ears, this is the best emulation of the original thing, the compression feels so good and transparent, but at the same time whenever I disable it for an A/B test, I realize how essential this is. When you hear people talking about the glue in your mix, this is what they’re talking about. Put this on your master and forget about your tracks sounding disconnected and all over the place!”

 

 

Bringing it All Together

“Just pick a random session of mine, open it, and I can guarantee you’ll find all of these plugins in it. For different reasons but these are all so essential to my workflow and they all contribute to bringing my productions to the a professional level; BigKick and Maschine for crafting the perfect drum sounds that feel fresh but contemporary; Diva for making my bass, leads and synths sound big and energetic; and finally the Newfangled Elevate Mastering Bundle and the SSL Bus Compressor to bring it all together and make my tracks sound punchy, loud, but at the same time polished and nicely glued together.”

“If you want to see all of these in action check out my YouTube channel for my extensive tutorials, and my Instagram for shorter form content. Enjoy!”