Producing a punchy kick drum with a "regular" synth?

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Is it possible to produce a punchy dance kick drum with a standard synth instead of options like Sonic Academy Kick and Vengeance Metrum? If so, any examples?
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Possible, yes. Every synth with a few oscillators, sine waves and a few envelopes (pitch, amp, filter) should be able to make usable kicks. Then you can shape them with effects...

Nevertheless, I prefer drum synths because they're optimized for programming drum sounds. That's why I bought Drumatic 4, and it doesn't cost the world...

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nevermind lol






TIMT
Last edited by TIMT on Mon Mar 10, 2014 10:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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TIMT wrote:If you resample them then yes.the problem with synthesized kicks in general that are based on just pitch enveloping waveforms is it has zero in common with how a kick drum actually moves air so they end up sounding pretty flat and thus don´t move the cones and eq wont solve this despite what people seem to think and neither will compression

a better option would be to use a synth with multi stage envelopes down to sample level e.g fm8 or absynth and use a sine wave and keep putting peaks in troughs in the envelope until it thuds

The otherway is to layer multiple pitch envelopes that kind of harmonize with one another and delay them by a few milliseconds here and there.then eq etc makes sense but don´t for a 2nd think you can use some shitty sinewave generator and some pitch envelopes add some eq and other processing and you´re going to breaking PA systems as you´ll be sorely dissapointed

If you want kicks synthesized from the ground up that move air,you´ve gotta put some serious work into it

Bit fed up of all the misinformation regarding bottom end in general so me and some friends are thinking of starting a youpube channel or website basically dispelling most of what is excepted as the general consensus,so like the anti-christ of music production tutorials :D



TIMT
Spot on, and, BTW, this is why the DSI Tempest sucks ass. Cymbals are more than white noise and kicks are more than a sharp envelope on a sine wave. An analog filter is far less useful, per voice, in a drum machine than for most other synth ounds. Study the 909 kick to get some insight.

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The 909 kick doesn't sound like a real acoustic kick, either, it's made with sine waves and some envelopes...

Should be possible to make a 909 kick with a decent synth with different envelopes and envelope curves...

Good cymbals are more difficult to synthesize, and convincing claps or shakers are much more difficult to recreate with synthesizers.

It isn't coincidence that some people programmed special drum synths to make this task easier... 8)

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Tricky-Loops wrote:The 909 kick doesn't sound like a real acoustic kick, either, it's made with sine waves and some envelopes...

Should be possible to make a 909 kick with a decent synth with different envelopes and envelope curves...

Good cymbals are more difficult to synthesize, and convincing claps or shakers are much more difficult to recreate with synthesizers.

It isn't coincidence that some people programmed special drum synths to make this task easier... 8)
When i think punchy drums i definitely don´t think 909,808 or any drum machine for that matter :)

Also rick rubin as one example came up with all sorts of methods to give drum machine sounds weight on his early defjam productions as did prince with his liberal use of the linndrum.so it was clearly something they was onto aswell

909s of the stock variety have this sitting in the cone vibe to them aswell,i suppose that explains why i dislike pretty much all 90ies techno then :roll:





TIMT
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Also the equalization is important...
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Tricky-Loops wrote:The 909 kick doesn't sound like a real acoustic kick, either, it's made with sine waves and some envelopes...
Sorry if you thought that I implied that, I didn't, the OP is asking about "dance" kick drums. It is "more punchy" than the 808 kick, for example.
Should be possible to make a 909 kick with a decent synth with different envelopes and envelope curves...
That will depend a lot on the envelopes.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Feb02/a ... ts0202.asp

As I said, it's a place to look for inspiration. I should have been more clear, I wasn't suggesting that the 909 is the answer to TINTs point, but that thinking about how to synthesize drums requires effort.

But you're right, the 909 is pitch envelopes and sin waves. But it's not just pitch envelopes and sin waves, and studying it gives you some insight. Perhaps TINT doesn't like 909 kicks, but a lot of other people do and if you're asking the question that the OP is asking, it's a good place to start.
Good cymbals are more difficult to synthesize, and convincing claps or shakers are much more difficult to recreate with synthesizers.

It isn't coincidence that some people programmed special drum synths to make this task easier... 8)
Exactly, or built. This is really what makes good analog drum machines stand out, they don't tend to use just one basic design for all sounds.
Last edited by ghettosynth on Mon Mar 10, 2014 10:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Considering the SOS article, even the programming of the pretty synthetic 909 kick seems to be much more complex than I thought... :o

So producing a PUNCHY, convincing kick drum with a conventional synth is at least difficult and needs much time (and the right waveforms - not only simple sines -, envelopes etc.).

But if DJAnthonyW has too much time, maybe he could succeed. Or he will buy a drum synth after some weeks of experimentation, nevertheless... :lol:

So far, MOST kick drum presets in conventional synthesizers (NOT drum synths) didn't convince me, they sound rather flat...

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Tricky-Loops wrote:Considering the SOS article, even the programming of the pretty synthetic 909 kick seems to be much more complex than I thought... :o
So, to be clear, you haven't studied the schematic? It's worth the effort. It's more subtle, IIRC, than the SOS article makes clear. Roland had good analog engineers back in the day.


Not my site, but, here's a simple analysis that highlights some of the subtlety.

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Bass Drum consists of two parts. One part simulates the clicking attack-phase of the sound, where the other part provides the bottom end, which is responsible for the well known punch of this Bass Drum. Main circuit design is the same as described detailed in the Snare Drum section.

When TRIG (>) is applied to the base of Q1, ENV-3 (part 6) is started by Q2 collector, releasing a pitch modulation of the VCO (part 2) by controlling the Control Voltage Generator (part1). Modulation depth can be adjusted by VR2 (TUNE). There's also a positive pulse at the base of Q11, discharging C14 and resetting VCO at every TRIG period. The triangle waveform of VCO output passes a diode clipper (part 3) to get a sine wave. The amount of this part is determined by VCA Q12 (part 4) whose gain follows ENV-1 (part 5) which is in turn controlled by an ACCENT coming through Q4. ENV-1 is actually an important part of this circuit. It's shape (see small diagram near ENV-1) looks like a compressed Drum sound and that's the reason for the big punch mentioned above.

The second part of this instrument is separated into Pulse and Noise.

Pulse (part 7) is generated by a circuit using a low pass filter (Q8, R5, R6, R14, C22) and a band pass filter (Q9, C2, C3, C4, R7, R8, R15, R16) to form the trigger signal into the right pulse shape. The noise part uses the common noise generator, whose signal (>) is low pass filtered and mixed with the signal coming from pulse generator. The resulting signal passes through a VCA Q6 (part 9) which is controlled by ENV-2 (part 10).

Finally ATTACK and VCO-signal are mixed and amplified at IC11a (part 11) to provide level control.
I did a similar analysis way back when I was disappointed with the TRUMSynth in the Nord G1. No matter what I couldn't get the kick to sound like a 909 and the hats to sound like an 808. The TRumSynth kick is pretty much just a pitch envelope on a sin wave. A simple pitch envelope on a sine wave doesn't have the punch of the 909 drum, or the attack.
So producing a PUNCHY, convincing kick drum with a conventional synth is at least difficult and needs much time (and the right waveforms - not only simple sines -, envelopes etc.).
And the right envelopes. Not all softsynths have them.
But if DJAnthonyW has too much time, maybe he could succeed. Or he will buy a drum synth after some weeks of experimentation, nevertheless... :lol:
Oh, I see, I thought we were talking about synthesizing drums. Yes, the answer to the OP's question is to buy a drum synth, or reaktor.
Last edited by ghettosynth on Mon Mar 10, 2014 10:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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If the oscillators are freerunning which they often are in VA synths, it can be good to sample a few runs of the kick and use the punchiest one, as each one should be slightly different.
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A good synth that could be used for kick drum synthesis, too, is Curve 2 (Cableguys) as it has free drawable waveforms and envelopes. I remember there were some good (i. e. usable) kick presets for the start...

But then, a drum synthesizer is probably less expensive, anyway, and is able to make better kicks...

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Wow, more replies than I thought. So in short looks like it's being recommended that something like SA Kick is the best option. I like Ultrabeat but have not been able to even get nice punchy kicks out of that either, while it sounds like SA Kick can produce Kicks just like you find off of commercial sample packs...
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You certainly can get great punchy, solid whatever ... the flexible the synth, the more options and/or accurate the result, so you don't really need a specialized synth..

Synth drum design demands pretty intensive skills IMO, it certainly isn't as simple as it 1st seems.

You usually need an osc, a distortion unit (filter with overdrive will do just fine instead), flexible envelopes and a modulation matrix. (optional: ring modulation, FM, AM ...etc)

envelope tips:
Envelope stages usually have different shapes instead of being linear. If you give negative env modulation to something, you are effectively inverting the shape.
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If you don't have access to modifying the curve/shape, modulate the different env stages (usually the decay stage) with another envelope or with itself.

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djanthonyw wrote:Wow, more replies than I thought. So in short looks like it's being recommended that something like SA Kick is the best option. I like Ultrabeat but have not been able to even get nice punchy kicks out of that either, while it sounds like SA Kick can produce Kicks just like you find off of commercial sample packs...
If you only want to make kicks, SA Kick is certainly a good solution. If you want to make other drum sounds, too, you could try Drumatic 4 which is available for Mac, too:

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The question is simply: how much time do you want to invest for programming kicks with conventional synths? It *IS* possible, and you won't even need decades for it, but some months at any event. Making sub kicks for layering below the main kicks isn't that difficult but to make real punchy convincing kicks with conventional synths demands much experimentation...

I rather prefer drum synths but then I'm a pretty impatient guy, anyway... :oops:

In the end, nobody of your listeners will ask you if you made all kicks yourself with a conventional synth or if they're from a sample pack. Maybe someone will ask you which synth you use, and then you'll say "Sylenth" or "Massive" like 95 % of all EDM producers... :hihi:

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