making a synth kick

[jeskola01]

Hi, was just trying to make a synth kick in Massive. I just put in a sine wave with a fast attack and short decay. It sounded like a good start. What else makes a good kick?

The other thing is, as it was playing, the sound wasnt the same all the time, I cant think why, unless its this phase thing again, but I just had the one kick going. One sine wave and nothing else. But every few beats it would sound softer for a few beats.

If i think i understand correct it's a bug with massive/ableton.
If the end of a midi note touches the loop bracelet then it seems to do something funny to massive... , zoom in on the last midi note and opull it back just a fraction so it's not touching and it should work - sounds stupid... but works.

[EpikureeR]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laQZyMwDOC8
here you go

[Dr. Fluffenstein]

I've been trying to do the same recently and came across this tutorial: http://loudonstearns.berkleemusicblogs. ... n-sampler/. Just another way to get the attack portion.

I've also heard about pulse waves with a quick decay being used for the attack portion.

[Dr. Fluffenstein]

He's using frequency modulation with a very fast decay so that only the first few milliseconds get modulated, and I think he's adjusting the frequency of the modulating signal to tune it to the fundamental. I'd give it a try but I don't have sampler.

I'm pretty sure you'd be able to combine this technique with pitch envelopes, as long as you use a separate FM'd wave and layer it over your pitch ramp kick.


I also found this, but it requires more work than just turning a few knobs. It doesn't really deal with kick synthesis, instead it tells you how to process a kick you already have without using common effects. It's a pretty cool idea:

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/electron ... sdrum.html

Involves slicing your sample at zero crossings and normalizing the slices to make the kick loader without using a limiter/compressor.


Another nice trick is to cut your sine wave ahead of where it normally starts so you get a click, then raise the attack to 0.12-0.15 ms to remove some of the bite from it. This seems to me like a quick workaround, but I guess if it gives results then it's worth trying.


ps: if you're layering two oscillators for your kicks (where one of them is for the "click") you can afford to raise the pitch env attack of the kick's body a tiny bit, I found it gives the illusion of the kick having a bit more "pop".

[kev herb]

Hi there the problem you're having with the sound being different each time you play is as someone said the oscillator is not restarting the wave and just starting each time from where it left of on the wave.
The way to solve this in massive is click theOSC tab in the middle window and click the small restart tab in the oscillator phases section now the wave will start from the same point each time but you can now control where it starts with the sliders bellow so if making a layer to ther kicks you can move it along till the phase is bang on with the other sounds. I do this on all sounds in massive as it corrects phase issues in sounds with more than one oscillator and can also give alot of scope on changing the sound.

[3phase]

sure..why not.. on a 808 you do that all the time for example..

on other kick designs its not necessary..see 909 with the 2 oscilator circuit...

in general roland service manuals provide all invo you need to patch own realistic drumsounds..

ther was some articles in the sound on sound magazine covering drum sound synthesis on a pretty sophisticated level..

i think the articles are available on theire webpage...

[astroschnautzer]

The curve of the pitch env decay will make a great deal too, in a modular synth you would just modulate the pitch envs decay with the output of that same envelope, very crusial for getting different kicksounds.