Ableton Forum

stuck on a production of mine for some drum sounds, i'm sick of sampling drums from other songs.
what does everybody here do to make a kick drum? got any tips to share?
do people record themselves doing various things or is it all done in vsts?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0ptuFYseXg
any tips on achieving some kick like this?

much appreciated.
safe xx

Take a VST-Synth you like and make your own Drums.

Look here for how to make a Kick in NI-Massive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laQZyMwDOC8

Here for Operator:
http://www.google.com/#q=youtube+Drums+ ... b7e898d358

You can find more tutorials for all kind of VST-Synth on Youtube:


Here are some drums presets for Operator: http://www.ableton.com/designer-drums

Add your effects to them and you're coming closer to your own drum-kit...

Making a kick from scratch is a waste of time imo (unless you have an analog synth). Layering is easier if you want to change how a kick sounds, but making it from scratch is something you should leave to the people who specialize in making sample libraries. Nevertheless getting just a few really good kicks is worth it since they can become your goto samples, it just takes a long time to get there.

One way is to use a sine wave with multiple pitch envelopes. So apply one pitch envelope, render, apply a second one, render, and so on. You need fast and accurate envelopes though with the option of changing the curve's shape. I think you can do that with drumatic. Then use EQ to cut out any annoying frequencies to make it less harsh. Lot's of psytrance kicks are made this way, but you can get other kinds this way too.

Or use a drum softsynth to make different layers of a kick (the attack, the mids, and the lows). Your mids should pick up where the highs left of (in terms of both frequency and envelope timing) and the lows should pick up where the mids left off. It helps to have an oscilloscope and a spectrum analyzer after it all to make sure there's no phasing and that the kick's layers match the key of your song. This is a very, very, very, very, painful way of doing it though.

Here's a simpler option using just two layers: http://www.quasartrance.com/htmlsite/pa ... Quasar.pdf

If you wanna get anal about it, you could load the render into an editor like audacity and adjust the volumes of each cycle and cut out parts that aren't smooth, this involves using the draw tool (which you can also use to draw attacks for kickdrums).

My best result so far was made using KickXP for buzzmachines. I used a tiny slice of a sound recording to make the attack layer and adjusted the pitch envelope to make the two layers blend smoothly (the sound recording was a boot crunching on snow ). You can get a lot of interesting kick attacks by just going on freesound.org and browsing through random recordings to find something crunchy, like a typewriter for example.

i like to use the Vengence Metrum VST, an absolute powerhouse of a kick drum creator. Highly recommended!

Dr. Fluffenstein wrote:Making a kick from scratch is a waste of time imo (unless you have an analog synth). Layering is easier if you want to change how a kick sounds, but making it from scratch is something you should leave to the people who specialize in making sample libraries.

Huh? Do you mean you need a real analog synth? Im all out of popcorn here, but I would actually prefer doing it on a precise digital synth! No need to be a pro at all, its easy.

No you don't need one. Not saying it's better, I just think it would be more fun. I don't find making a kick with software that exciting, and it could get really time consuming. Plus there are things out there like the Mbase11 which are made for that one purpose, I've heard a lot of good things about it which is why I brought up the subject of analog. Some people find the variations interesting, but you could always render them and pick out the ones that work best. ps: Wave Alchemy has a free pack of Mbase samples.

Sorry, didn't mean to turn this into another analog vs. digital thread

jtdj wrote:i like to use the Vengence Metrum VST, an absolute powerhouse of a kick drum creator. Highly recommended!

Nothing it can do that cant be done with simplers and operator (and TBH - probbaly the same samples that ship with metrum). Seems very expensive for what it is.

ze2be wrote:

Dr. Fluffenstein wrote:Making a kick from scratch is a waste of time imo (unless you have an analog synth). Layering is easier if you want to change how a kick sounds, but making it from scratch is something you should leave to the people who specialize in making sample libraries.

Huh? Do you mean you need a real analog synth? Im all out of popcorn here, but I would actually prefer doing it on a precise digital synth! No need to be a pro at all, its easy.

The best example that you don't need a hardware synth for making drums is "Sonic Charge MicroTonic".
And there are more, like Image-line Drumaxx/Drumpad or AudioDamage Tattoo...

The next big player is coming soon called "Punch" from Rob Papen...!
All synthesis, but it also can load samples...

The real magic comes with the effects you use, together with the drums.

Operator is a beast when you use it right and with the right effect...
I love the envelopes on Operator !!!

Khazul wrote:

jtdj wrote:i like to use the Vengence Metrum VST, an absolute powerhouse of a kick drum creator. Highly recommended!

Nothing it can do that cant be done with simplers and operator (and TBH - probbaly the same samples that ship with metrum). Seems very expensive for what it is.

you obviously havent used it if you think that mate.

i've struggled with this for such a long time man, nothing was doing it for me and it's still the thing i struggle with the most to be honest.... i'm now mostly using a mixture of operator, microtonic, the drum machines from ableton and samples from freesound.org or from stuff i have recorded...
so mostly layering, eq, compressing, etc

jtdj wrote:

Khazul wrote:

jtdj wrote:i like to use the Vengence Metrum VST, an absolute powerhouse of a kick drum creator. Highly recommended!

Nothing it can do that cant be done with simplers and operator (and TBH - probbaly the same samples that ship with metrum). Seems very expensive for what it is.

you obviously havent used it if you think that mate.

No - I havnt used it they dont have a demo version - of course I have watched the videos etc. The only thing I see where it may have an edge in in its envelopes, other than that compared to how I layer kicks, the obvious features I couldnt see were phase and sample start adjustment (not good when things cancel each other).

The headache with operator is lack of slope contol on its amp envelopes, so nearly allways need a compressor after to fix that. Other than that - I fail to see what this adds (assuming you already have a load of vengence and other quality samples to work from as attacks and layers).