Tchad Blake is known for his wide and deep mixes. His deep is hip-hop deep. The trick here is to use a drum sample that supports the bass drum with deeper frequencies (read: around 40 Hz).
In Paris, I saw Tchad use two tools for this in ProTools: Massey DRT and ApTrigga3. Massey DRT he uses to export the trigger points from the bass drum track to a separate track in ProTools. He uses this extra track to drive a drum sample in ApTrigga3.
The samples Tchad uses for this are mostly 808-like bass drums that go deeper than a normal bass drum.
MK Slicer in Reaper
Massey DRT only works in ProTools. But a very good alternative is the free script MK Slicer that you can use in Reaper. You do need to add SWS Extensions to Reaper for that. That too is free and it is actually indispensable for every Reaper user. So chances are you have it already installed.
MK Slicer will detect transients based on a bass drum track. It can also do this based on a stereo mix of the drums if you don’t have a separate track. Play with the Threshold and/or Sensitivity and some other parameters and you will find out that the transients for the bass drum are found perfectly. Then click the MIDI button and a separate MIDI track is created for this in your Reaper project.
Check my settings above, you can see that I set the MIDI note to C2:kick because most drum machines and plugins reserve the C2 for the bass drum.
ReaSamplOmatic5000 in Reaper
I use the native ReaSamplOmatic5000 VSTi in Reaper for drum sample triggering (so as a sort of ApTrigga3 alternative) because I find it a super convenient (and free!) plugin for drum samples.
As a gift for the master class in Paris, we received the drum samples Tchad uses. So now I use them too! They are very fine samples for some serious subs.
Keep your subs clean!
Although Tchad likes distortion, his subs he keeps clean. So de does not send the extra sub channel to his drum bus but keeps it on its own channel. Sometimes he uses a transient shaper with that, for example the one from SPL. I don’t do that, I prefer to tweak the sample in the sampler.
That’s all. Have fun creating cool sounds!