Every week someone emails me the same question: how do I make that phonk Serum 2 cowbell everyone uses? They’ve tried stock presets, three YouTube tutorials, a couple of sample packs. It still sounds like a kitchen utensil instead of a Memphis nightmare.
Here’s the good news. Every core phonk sound – the cowbell, the cowbass, the dark leads, the tape wobble – is a phonk Serum 2 patch you can build in about ten minutes each. No outboard gear, no rare vinyl rips. Just six or seven settings per patch, and I’ll give you the exact numbers.
We at Monosounds have been making phonk presets since 2022, so these recipes come straight from patches we actually sell. Let’s build them.
What Gives Phonk Its Sound
Phonk grew out of 90s Memphis rap tapes: dark minor-key melodies, crunchy 808s, and samples that went through so many cassette generations they started to smear. Modern phonk keeps that DNA but rebuilds it with synths.
Four ingredients do most of the work. A metallic cowbell playing the hook. A distorted 808 or cowbass underneath. A detuned lead for tension. And a layer of lo-fi grime over everything.
Serum 2 handles all four. The three-oscillator layout and the multiple FX buses actually make this easier than it was in Serum 1, because you can keep the clean sub on one bus and crush everything else on another. If you’re new to the synth itself, Xfer’s Serum 2 page covers the basics; the upgrade is free for Serum 1 owners.
The Phonk Cowbell Recipe
The classic phonk cowbell is a descendant of the TR-808 cowbell: two square waves roughly a fifth apart, gated hard, with a metallic knock at the front. Here’s my build.
- Osc A: Wavetable engine, Basic Shapes table, frame set to the square. Octave 0, unison 1. No detune – cowbells are dry.
- Osc B: same square, coarse pitch +7 semitones, fine -15 cents. Level around 80% of Osc A. That slightly sour interval is the whole character.
- Amp envelope: attack 0 ms, decay 400 ms, sustain 0. Cowbells don’t sustain. If yours does, it’s a synth, not a cowbell.
- Env 2 to pitch: drag Env 2 onto both oscillators’ coarse pitch. Amount +12 semitones, decay 25 ms. This tiny pitch drop is the metallic knock.
- Filter: bandpass around 800 Hz, resonance about 15%. This kills the cheap-synth body and leaves the clang.
- FX: Distortion in Overdrive mode at 30-40%, then EQ with a 3 dB boost at 2.5 kHz, then a short dark reverb at 10% mix.
Now the signature move: the pitch-bent melody. Set voicing to mono, portamento around 70 ms, glide always on. Play a minor-scale hook where notes slide into each other. At 130 BPM, eighth-note phrases with one or two slides per bar sound instantly right.
One Serum 2 bonus trick: once the FX chain sounds good, use Resample to Oscillator. It bakes the distortion into a new wavetable, so you can turn the FX off and save the CPU for the rest of the track.
The Distorted Cowbass
Drift phonk’s low end is usually not a clean 808. It’s a cowbass – literally the cowbell patch dropped one or two octaves and distorted until it growls.
Start from the cowbell patch above. Drop both oscillators by two octaves. Push the Overdrive distortion to 60-70%. Swap the bandpass for a lowpass around 1 kHz so the crunch stays but the fizz goes. Amp decay up to 700-900 ms so notes ring into each other.
Then layer it. Keep a plain sine sub on Osc C, one octave below, no distortion, so the club system still gets clean low end. Route the sub to its own FX bus with nothing on it. That separation is exactly what the multiple FX buses in Serum 2 are for.
If your low end still sounds thin or muddy, the fix is usually the sub layer, not more distortion. I wrote a full walkthrough of that in my Serum 2 808 bass guide, and there’s a roundup of finished patches in our best Serum 2 bass presets if you’d rather start from something working.
Dark Detuned Leads
Phonk leads live in the space between a synth and a siren. The recipe is simple but the settings matter.
Osc A: a saw wavetable, unison 5, detune 0.15. Not 16 voices – that’s a trance supersaw, and it’ll eat CPU for nothing. Osc B: same saw, one octave down, unison 3, detune 0.10, level at 60%. Lowpass 24 dB filter at 3 kHz with a slow Env 3 sweep opening it over 2 bars.
Keys: stick to natural minor or Phrygian. Phrygian’s flat second is basically the phonk scale. Chorus at 20% mix, then a plate reverb, then – and this is the phonk part – a bitcrusher or gentle Overdrive after the reverb, so even the tail sounds degraded.
For harder tracks, some producers push these leads into growl territory with FM and heavy wavetable movement. That’s a different craft; my Serum 2 growls tutorial covers it if you want to go there.
And if you’d rather reverse-engineer than build from init: our free 250+ Serum 2 presets include dark leads, 808s and plucks you can tear apart and re-skin for phonk. Royalty-free, no strings.
Lo-Fi Character: Noise and Pitch Drift
A clean phonk track is a contradiction. The genre needs tape rot, and Serum 2 can fake it inside the patch instead of on the mix bus.
Two moves. First, the noise oscillator: load a vinyl or tape hiss noise sample, set its level around -25 dB, and leave keytracking off so it hisses at the same pitch on every note. It should be barely audible solo and obviously missing when you mute it.
Second, pitch drift. Take a slow LFO – 0.2 Hz, sine, bipolar – and drag it onto the master fine tune with a depth of about 12 cents. The patch now wobbles like a warped cassette. Go past 20 cents and it turns seasick; under 5 and nobody notices.
Add a subtle bitcrush (around 12-bit, full sample rate) on the lead bus and you’re done. This same toolkit works for chillhop and ambient too – I go deeper on it in the lo-fi Serum 2 tutorial.
House Phonk vs Drift Phonk
These two branches share the cowbell but almost nothing else, and mixing up their conventions is the fastest way to make a track feel off. Here’s how they differ in practice.
| Element | House Phonk | Drift Phonk |
|---|---|---|
| BPM | 125-130 | 130-150 |
| Kick | Four-on-the-floor | Trap-style pattern |
| Low end | Rolling sub, sidechained | Distorted cowbass upfront |
| Cowbell | Brighter, melodic hook | Darker, often pitched down |
| Mood | Bouncy, club-ready | Aggressive, cinematic |
| Mix | Cleaner, more headroom | Crushed and saturated |
House phonk borrows the groove from Brazilian and club music: a straight kick, a swung cowbell hook, cleaner mixing. If that’s your lane, our House Phonk sample pack with Serum presets was built exactly for it – loops, one-shots and patches at those tempos.
Drift phonk is the dark sibling: faster, meaner, cowbass front and center, everything saturated. For that flavor we made GAMMA, our Atomic Heart-inspired phonk pack – Soviet-retrofuturist textures that sit perfectly under drift phonk drums.
The phonk Serum 2 patches in this tutorial cover both branches. The difference is mostly tempo, drum pattern, and how hard you push the distortion.
Phonk Serum 2 FAQ
Can I make phonk in Serum 1, or do I need Serum 2?
Serum 1 can do the cowbell, cowbass and leads – phonk existed long before Serum 2 shipped in March 2025. But Serum 2 adds the noise oscillator options, multiple FX buses and the built-in sequencer, and the upgrade is free for Serum 1 owners. There’s no reason not to update.
What BPM should my phonk track be?
House phonk sits at 125-130 BPM. Drift phonk usually runs 130-150, with some aggressive tracks pushing past that. If you’re unsure, start at 130 – it works for both styles.
Why does my phonk cowbell sound thin?
Three usual suspects. Your bandpass filter is too narrow or too high – try 800 Hz with moderate resonance. You skipped the Env 2 pitch knock, which carries the metallic attack. Or you’re playing it too high – the hook usually sits around C4 to C5, not above.
Are these phonk Serum 2 patches heavy on CPU?
Not really. The cowbell and cowbass are one or two unison voices with light FX. The lead with unison 5 plus 3 is the heaviest, and Resample to Oscillator can bake its FX down if your machine struggles. Keep oversampling at 2x while writing and you’ll be fine.
Start With the Cowbell
Build the cowbell first. It’s the fastest patch on this page, and once it slides through a minor-key hook over any halfway-decent drum loop, the track already sounds like phonk. The cowbass, lead and drift layer are refinements on top.
If you want a shortcut, grab our free 250+ Serum 2 presets and open the bass and lead folders next to this article. Tear the patches apart, steal the envelope shapes, and re-skin them for your own phonk. That’s what they’re for.
I run Monosounds.studio and make the packs myself. Ten-plus years of producing, 97+ releases, 16,000+ downloads. Every Serum 2 preset we ship passes a CPU check on a mid-range laptop and gets used in a real track before release. If it does not survive a mix, it does not go in the pack.
More about Maxim & the studio →
