Kick drum design

[anne onymous]

Hi you all,

I was wondering if some of you would like to share there
kick drum design technics? Mostly for house and modern
minimalism...

Thanks in advance,
Anne

[rEalm]

Try downloading the free program Stomper, it's awesome for making your own kick sounds.

[noisetonepause]

Box of samples from basically everywhere. Layering and EQing, mainly. I like big beefy rock toms (don't tell anyone I said this but if you can get your hands on the Earthtone9 track 'Ni9e' you'll be sorted ) with the attack from an electronic-ish kick.

-Paws

[onnomon]

A simple method is take a sine wave (many wave editors can generate one), say 400 millseconds long at 50 hertz. Use your favorite wave editor's pitch envelope, in Live you can use the clip's transpose envelope. At the beginning of the sample you'll want to start the pitch shifting pretty high (+24 semitones or more), then quickly ramp down to zero or lower (say within 50 msec). This part is creating the hit part of the kick. Then, after the fast high-to-low sweep, gradually bring it to zero, or some value ameniable to the tune's key but keeping it in the deep bass region. This part gives the kick it's depth. You basically trying to create an impulse chirp, it quickly sweeps thru lots of frequencies. You'll then want to use amplitude envelopes to curtail it a bit, it's nice to have space between kick notes for definition. The thing should certainly decay out before the next one. Also, if it's a bit clicky or knocky on the front side, you can always adjust the start point later, or use a fast non-zero attack time on the envelope to soften it up a bit. Finally a little EQ'ing if you want a certain overtone to stick out a bit more. This is where you can make it more boomy, if that's your cup-of-tea. You might also use a compressor "for fatness". Frankly I don't think it's necessary that much of the time, but it's always good to check it out.

Also, instead of starting from high-to-low at the beginning of the kick, you can sweep from low-to-high, then high-to-low. A different kick character.

There are tons of adjustments that can be made, it's certainly gratifying to make your own.

On the other hand, attempt to isolate kicks from your favorite tracks, and use those samples as a starting point, or just verbetim.

lay waste to the PA's-

dean

[pepezabala]

Two kickdrums I created in the past weeks:

I have children playing soccer against a wall in the backyard. I recorded this from my window, isolated one slappy hit of the ball against the wall, a bit of compression, sounds great.

Then I had a live recording with the sound of someone plugging in a microphone while it was connected to the mixing desk. This made a very nice "Plogck"-sound, that only needed to be transposed some semitones lower and again compression ....

[Peropaal]

Then I had a live recording with the sound of someone plugging in a microphone while it was connected to the mixing desk. This made a very nice "Plogck"-sound, that only needed to be transposed some semitones lower and again compression ....

Excelent concept, and you dont need protools for that

[olafmol]

DR008 VSTi, use the synth modules

[saddam whosayin?]

you guys gave away all the tricks

they saved you like a year o f-in around


buy a Jomox

[mkb]

you need:
microphone
cardboard box
stick

place microphone in box
hit record
beat box with stick

[Spacerboy]

take a microphone
sit on toilet
press record
cut and tune the samples as you want
---> nice sound (very natural)

[5dots]

i've made a lot of good beat sounds out of just white (or pink) noise and effects.