how about a nice thick bass kick?

[jonno128]

Thanks for the reply, Keith! I've uploaded one of the samples I was working with on Soundcloud if you'd like to give your opinion on it: http://soundcloud.com/jonno128/alesis-hr16a-04-test

From pitching it down in Arrangement view (with no other kind of processing), I think I've figured out what exactly I was listening to. It seems that the sample I was using wasn't exactly clean to begin with, so the noise that came with it was being slowed down to excruciatingly perceptible levels. This did not happen with cleaner samples. Even with some EQ'ing and noise removal software, the only way to get a clean sound was to use a different sample. I can't really think of any other way to get rid of the noise, but maybe in some other context a bit of noise might be desirable.

I was wondering for a while whether the noise had to do with artifacts associated with slowing down samples, or some other process I was unfamiliar with. I realize now I have to be very careful choosing samples, especially if there will be other processing down the line, such as compression.

From all of this, I've been trying to figure out which is the most efficient way of creating new drum kick samples. For example, I might like to use multiple versions of a kick with varying degrees of saturation. I was thinking freeze + flatten the MIDI track would be the easiest way, but it's a pain to have to find and move the frozen sample to my sample library, as opposed to just exporting to the desired location on my hard drive. Any thoughts on this? I apologize if this is a silly question to ask. In any case, the kick layering technique has proven to be an extremely productive and efficient workflow.

[drchoc]

Pitch envelopes

[Quantize]

Hi Jonno,

You've hit the nail on the head, it's down to the dirty nature of the sample. Good hits to use in tracks if that's the style that you want but they won't respond the best to pitching. If you roll of all of the high end to remove the noise, the kick will become very dull. One thing to consider though, the kick will sound very different when all of the elements of the track are in place and the noise will help it to cut through the mix ie don't discount it completely just yet

Regarding your questions, if I understand correctly you want to bounce down the kicks samples you are making. An easy way to put them straight into your sample library will be to use the export audio function. This way you can name them all accordingly and save them directly to your preferred folder.

Hope this helps

Keith

[jonno128]

Hi Jonno,

You've hit the nail on the head, it's down to the dirty nature of the sample. Good hits to use in tracks if that's the style that you want but they won't respond the best to pitching. If you roll of all of the high end to remove the noise, the kick will become very dull. One thing to consider though, the kick will sound very different when all of the elements of the track are in place and the noise will help it to cut through the mix ie don't discount it completely just yet

Regarding your questions, if I understand correctly you want to bounce down the kicks samples you are making. An easy way to put them straight into your sample library will be to use the export audio function. This way you can name them all accordingly and save them directly to your preferred folder.

Hope this helps

Keith

Yes, this has all been very helpful, thanks a lot ! I'm starting to realize now that the quality of a kick has a lot to do with the rest of the mix. Speaking of which, I am trying to do something similar with snares- would it be feasible to use the same kick layering rack but with the target frequencies transposed up, so to speak?

[Quantize]

Sorry for the late reply, i've been up to my eyes in it the last few days.

You can use the rack for snares without any problem although there are probably some better parameters to map and useful effects alongside changing the cross over points of the various bands. I'll chuck this on the list and see what I can come with