Make Wave Phonk in Ableton Live, the atmospheric, hard-hitting subgenre popularized by artists like Skeler, Lxst Cxntury, and Juche.

1. The Atmospheric Foundation (The "Wave" Elements)

The soul of Wave Phonk rests in its massive, wide background textures.

Cinematic Pads: Use Ableton’s Wavetable or a third-party VST like [Xfer Serum](https://splice.com/plugins/15493-serum-vst-au-by-xfer-records). Choose a warm saw or detuned square wave, open up a low-pass filter, and add a long attack and release.
Reverb Washes: Load Ableton's stock Reverb or a spacious tool like [Valhalla Supermassive](https://valhalladsp.com/shop/reverb/valhalla-supermassive/). Turn the dry/wet high to drown the pads, creating a massive wall of sound.
Reese Bass: Program a low, detuned saw-wave bass line. To make it evolve, map an LFO to modulate the filter cutoff slightly so it feels alive.

2. High-Energy Leads (The Wave Pluck)

Unlike traditional Phonk which relies entirely on cowbells, Wave Phonk utilizes soaring synth plucks.

The Sound Design: Set up two oscillators (Saws or Squares) detuned heavily against each other (Hyper/Dimension in Serum works wonders). Give the volume envelope a very fast decay and zero sustain to create a sharp "pluck" shape.
The Melody: Write a melancholic, minor-key progression.
The Processing: Apply Echo or Delay set to dotted 1/8 notes, and wash it out with a high-quality plate reverb.

The Sample: Source a classic, gritty Memphis rap acapella. [5]
The Treatment: Drop it into an Ableton audio track. Pitch it down significantly (-3 to -5 semitones) and set the warp mode to Complex or Complex Pro. [5]
Lo-Fi Effect: Use EQ Eight to cut out all the low frequencies and crispy highs, creating a narrow, telephone-like bandpass effect. Add Ableton’s Saturator or Erosion to give it that vintage, degraded tape crunch.

The groove requires precision timing to cut through the massive cloud of reverbed synths.

The Pocket: Put your hard, transient-heavy snare or clap strictly on beat 3. Use short, crisp trap hi-hats with fast rolling triplets (right-click the MIDI editor and change the grid to 1/32 or triplets).
The 808: Use a short, punchy 808 sample rather than a long sub. Put an Overdrive or Saturator on it so the mid-range harmonics cut through mobile phone speakers.
The Cowbell: You can still use the classic Phonk cowbell, but treat it as a background accent rather than the main lead. Give it plenty of reverb and lower its volume in the mix.

Because your pads and reese bass are so massive, your kick and 808 will easily get drowned out. Sidechaining is mandatory.

Load Ableton's stock Compressor onto your Pad channel and your Reese Bass channel.
Click the small arrow on the top-left of the plugin to open the Sidechain panel.
Enable Sidechain and select your Kick Drum track as the audio input.
Set a fast Attack (0.1 ms) and a medium Release (~30-50 ms), then pull the Threshold down until the synths aggressively "duck" out of the way every time the kick hits.