Creating a cool snare/kick drum for electro music

[Christian_R]

Hello!

I'm trying to create a cool snare drum for house/electro/minimal music, but I'm having trouble finding a snare that fits this style from the library (I have Ableton Live 8 Suite BTW).

What is the secret? To me it sounds like people are using a mix of a regular snare drum and a hand-clap, but I'm not sure. I hope somebody can give me some good tips

PS! I have just used a sample from another song for the kick drum right now, but I would love to create a fat heavykick drum eventually, so if anybody wants to tip me om that too, you are welcome to do so!

[dton]

It usually helps a lot with this kind of questions if you link to something that sounds like the thing you have in mind.

[Christian_R]

It usually helps a lot with this kind of questions if you link to something that sounds like the thing you have in mind.

Good point

I had something like this in mind:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yA-_sp0Fevg

Or maybe like this, I know that he uses Ableton:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0N7TiUNd1k

It's probably an own technique?

[dton]

The first one really does sound like a clap with a snare put over it.
The second one is indeed a common sound in minimal, but unless you want to start tweaking with Operator, you should get either a software or hardware drum synthesizer/sampler. It's usually much faster than endlessly looking for samples sounding exactly like something that you want, and that will always be just using somebody else's work anyway.

[Dr. Fluffenstein]

Some kick synthesis tips I've picked up here and there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFiuKTOCdFk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IpWSIttXbw

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

The shape of the pitch envelope makes a pretty drastic difference, I like to add a tiny bit of attack to it to give more of a pop/thud.

I use a second oscillator for the click. A pulse wave with a fast decay can add an initial click, or some other harsh oscillator with various envelopes applied. You can get a similar result by just cutting the sine wave at a non-zero crossing and raising the attack a tiny bit to remove some of the harshness (don't know if you can do this in operator, so I just use simpler). Alternatively you could use a frequency modulated wave for the click, or any percussion, drum, or hat sample + a fast decay.

There are loads of other ways to make a kick, like using subtractive synthesis. You could even throw random sounds into simpler, pitch them down and tweak their envelopes until you get something that sounds like what you want.

Most of the raw kicks you make will have a sort of triangle like shape, if you want to give them some more body I find an EQ with a narrow boost near the fundamental frequency results in a rounder kick. Alternatively use a third sine oscillator with a slow attack so that it sort of swells near the kick's midpoint.

If you want the results to sound good though you need to invest a lot of time into it, it's easier to just layer samples (although a bit pointless imo). I haven't exactly reached the point yet where I can get my kicks sounding as good as some commercial sample libraries. But if you experiment enough your results will improve and you'll have something you could call your own. Better yet, avoid all the dirtywork and use a drum softsyth.

[Christian_R]

The first one really does sound like a clap with a snare put over it.
The second one is indeed a common sound in minimal, but unless you want to start tweaking with Operator, you should get either a software or hardware drum synthesizer/sampler. It's usually much faster than endlessly looking for samples sounding exactly like something that you want, and that will always be just using somebody else's work anyway.

That's true! I spend too much time scrolling through samples that I'm not 100% happy with.

Do you have any recommendations that's not too expensive?

[Christian_R]

Some kick synthesis tips I've picked up here and there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFiuKTOCdFk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IpWSIttXbw

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

The shape of the pitch envelope makes a pretty drastic difference, I like to add a tiny bit of attack to it to give more of a pop/thud.

I use a second oscillator for the click. A pulse wave with a fast decay can add an initial click, or some other harsh oscillator with various envelopes applied. You can get a similar result by just cutting the sine wave at a non-zero crossing and raising the attack a tiny bit to remove some of the harshness (don't know if you can do this in operator, so I just use simpler). Alternatively you could use a frequency modulated wave for the click, or any percussion, drum, or hat sample + a fast decay.

There are loads of other ways to make a kick, like using subtractive synthesis. You could even throw random sounds into simpler, pitch them down and tweak their envelopes until you get something that sounds like what you want.

Most of the raw kicks you make will have a sort of triangle like shape, if you want to give them some more body I find an EQ with a narrow boost near the fundamental frequency results in a rounder kick. Alternatively use a third sine oscillator with a slow attack so that it sort of swells near the kick's midpoint.

If you want the results to sound good though you need to invest a lot of time into it, it's easier to just layer samples (although a bit pointless imo). I haven't exactly reached the point yet where I can get my kicks sounding as good as some commercial sample libraries. But if you experiment enough your results will improve and you'll have something you could call your own. Better yet, avoid all the dirtywork and use a drum softsyth.

Many good tips there, I will definetly check them out

Thanks!

[anybody human]

Microtonic is an excellent drum synth.

If ur using samples, it helps to layer them. Eq them to separate frequencies. There are many videos out there on this.

[dton]

Do you have any recommendations that's not too expensive?

Not really, I don't spend that much time creating synthetic drums anymore, and if I need a kick or something, I visit my best pals Operator and EQ Eight.

There's much truth in what Doc Fluffy wrote (even though I personally prefer subtractive synthesis for kicks).

[hacktheplanet]

If you just want the snare and you are lazy like me , just sample it.

[Christian_R]

Some kick synthesis tips I've picked up here and there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFiuKTOCdFk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IpWSIttXbw

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

I tried those links, and that was very interesting! I will defenitly work more around those and try to create the sound that I'm looking for. But I feel that I need an even clearer and "in your face" kick drum, right now it kinda sounds like there's a "pillow over the speaker" so to speak. I have tried to twist the knobs in the Operator, but I can't get it quite right.

So I wonder what is more common with the professional users, to use the Operator like those links above, or to use a kick drum from the library (like kick 808) and modify that in some way? Or should I just buy a sample package or something with better drums for electro music than the ones that comes with Ableton Live 8 Suite?


Many questions for a little problem, but I just want to make the perfect kick (even though I originally asked for some snare help, hehe)

[davepermen]

for me, the key ingredient for "the perfect kick" was the pitch envelope. other than that, random messing around always surprises.

and saturator behind it is always fun. instant hardcore

i never get away from just using operator + ableton effects. i tried samples for a lot of things. but they're not mine, they don't feel like mine.

in my case, i start mostly with default operator, put pitch to +100%, the environment decay to 60-80ms, from +12 to -36. then play around g3.

as a next step, i often turn the second oscillator volume up a bit, and it's volume to decay within some milliseconds. - 20db or so max.

from this point on, it's messing around. saturators, eq8s, compressors, messing with the operator parameters + with the midi note length.

hihats and snares are mostly white noise based with different highpass filtering and different decay values.

claps so far are an issue. creating that in a synthetic way (with ableton's devices only) but not sound synthetic takes quite a bit.

great thing about building stuff that way: while you mess around, you'll find tons of other funny percussion sounds by accident. SAVE THEM ALL!

[Christian_R]

Has anyone tried SonicTransfer? http://sonictransfer.com/kick-drum-desi ... rial.shtml

Looks interesting, but is it worth downloading?

(I posted this in another topic of mine yesterday btw, but it was actually meant for this topic)