My own Kick/Bassdrum?

[panmarek]

Hello!
I wondering how to create low base of electronic Kick/Bassdrum. Check my example below, it's a low sine wave sliding from about 182 to 46 hz.

Which vst/audio editor or something will be able to simply reproduce this example?

How guys from Vengeance create their own kicks? How Klaas doing this?

Thanks.

http://www5.zippyshare.com/v/19616404/file.html

[mystran]

I'd try with any average synth, though it's easiest if you can mute all oscillators, and turn the filter resonance into self-oscillation.. because then it's a matter of two decaying envelopes and ... well you could mix some noise into the filter if you wanted it a bit more dirty.. apply some compression and/or distortion afterwards.

Then if you're doing this on a synth where the filter gives slightly unpredictable results (which would be at least almost any analog with this sort of patch) you probably want to record a couple of dozen kicks and maybe pick the best of them..

http://mystran.googlepages.com/kicks.mp3 is an example of some I cooked in 5 minutes to prove my method above. I opted for a noise less version, so it's essentially just a self oscillating lowpass filter (used as an envelope controlled sine wave oscillator really, so you could use that kind of thing as well), with instant attack and relatively fast decay on filter, and slight (about 5ms?) attack and a decay maybe two times that of the filter (or maybe less, not sure, you really have to adjust by ear, haha) run into soft saturation, and heavy into a brickwall limiter (some 15-25dB peak gain maybe, and the 10 ms release which is the minimum my 4L allows to really bring up the tail).

Note that you probably want to run some saturation (for harmonics) before a limiter, such that while the final amplitude decay is fairly "sustainy" there's a LOT of dynamics when it goes to the saturation, such that you get much more harmonic distortion to the beginning of the sustain. Without the limiter, you wouldn't hear much of a boom at all in the above sample, because it would decay too fast. You don't see it by looking at the waveform, but the beginning of it is actually more distorted than it seems.

Once you have the basic sound, you can easily adjust to taste by reducing volume envelopes attack (more click), by increasing envelope depth (for that psytrance "kick" that never really gets into bass) or increasing decays of volume (more boom) and filter (lazier sound in a sense). Just remember that small changes can make a huge difference.

That's the basic idea of it anyway. If I was to use the above kicks in a mix, I'd probably run them through some more distortion, and then shape it somewhat with a parametric EQ to bring up the click and cut the extra treble but.. you get the point.

[living sounds]

Most of the kicks distributed on sample CDs have been sampled from somewhere else already. These kicks are very often combinations of several other kicks, made with analog drum machines, sampled from vinyl, run through lot's of outboard (compressors, EQs), resampled with old samplers (with low bit/sample rates + analog VCAs) etc.
Recreating these in the box alone from scratch is impossible.

[dover666]

i'm working on a bassdrum synthesizer (again)... so if you've any features you'd want implemented please express them in the dedicated thread in modular synthesis. i've made a few bd synths, and i'm pretty sure the next one i make is a matter of what complications i should leave out, not what i could add. although the list of features would need to be convened in such a way.

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=234826

[panmarek]

Thanks for replys.

turn the filter resonance into self-oscillation

i don't understand this, can you explain mystran? OK let's start again. I have 3xOsc, Sytrus and V-station which use? What is next step?


dover666. Can i see your bd synths? Are you able to reproduce my example?

[ZenPunkHippy]

Thanks for replys.

turn the filter resonance into self-oscillation

i don't understand this, can you explain mystran? OK let's start again. I have 3xOsc, Sytrus and V-station which use? What is next step?

There are two essential techniques for creating a certain style of kick drum - one is using a pitched sine wave as you stated in your original post, but you need to sweep the frequency over several octaves (for a psy kick, 6 octaves is good, less for a more muted sounding kick). If your synth doesn't have the required range, you have to use two oscillators and split the sweep between two of them, and then mix the waves together to sound right.

The self-oscillation of filters referenced above is what happens when you turn the resonance of some (most) filters up high. Most famously, it is what makes the classic 303 high pitched scream or squeal what it is. As the resonance of any filter is turned up it is increasing the emphasis on the frequency around the filter cutoff setting, but eventually the filter starts to feed back on itself and this creates the self-resonance, or high pitched sound. It has different characteristics depending on the way the filter is designed (this is true of both hardware and software filters).

If you sweep the filter cutoff with the right shaped envelope i.e. zero attack, quick decay and zero sustain with the resonance turned up to just the right amount you will create a kick drum. It is similar in principal to the sine wave kick, but has a different sound because you are using a filter, and each filter sounds different (as mentioned above).

The synths you mention should make this possible, but I can't confirm because I don't use them. Zebra is probably one of the best synths out there for this kind of work - it has a lot of different filter types and very flexible modulation.

This plug in is designed specifically for doing what you want:

http://www.kvraudio.com/get/3359.html

Or wait of dover666 to finish his

Peace,
Andy.

[mystran]

Thanks for replys.

turn the filter resonance into self-oscillation

i don't understand this, can you explain mystran? OK let's start again. I have 3xOsc, Sytrus and V-station which use? What is next step?

Well self-oscillating filter simply means one where once you turn the resonance knob all the way up, it'll act like a sine wave oscillator without anything going into it. Neither 3xOsc or Sytrus have such filters so you can start by ignoring the filters, but you could use their sine wave oscillators if it wasn't for the fact that since they don't have real exponential envelopes either, they can't really produce the nice decay that tolerates further abuse by compressor without producing ugly noise..

Unfortunately I don't have V-station so can't say if it's more capable for that purpose. Now, I was going to suggest you download my Pink (that would be a free toy.. was already doing a patch for it) but turns out even that can't really do the job 'cos it cuts decaying notes out too early, so it can't take the limiter abuse either... so... quickly going through all the freeware synths I can't think of that might be able, the always great Asynth comes to rescue, and while one can't really disable the oscillators, it turns out that it doesn't matter when the oscillator is just tuned high enough that the lovely filter (which distorts nicely for this purpose, so don't necessarily need much post distortion ) will get rid of it... try this patch with Asynth as a starting point. Now you'll notice that it doesn't have much of a sustain, but if you then get 4L from my signature (or any other decent brickwall limiter to your taste, something like L1 or W1 should be fine.. in any case 4L was designed for this kind of abuse, haha), set threshold to really low (or if it has makeup gain control instead, raise that), and release to around 10ms or so) you can bring more of it audible (for 4L specifically, just turn threshold and release to minimum).

Then play around with Asynth's amp decay control, something between 30-60ms (maybe even more, depends) should get you something acceptable. If you want brighter sound, raise the envelope amount for filter. If you want it more clicky (say, after raising the envelope amount) you might wanna decrease the filter decay control. Another lovely thing about Asynth is that since it's got 3 different filter models, you can try switching between them to get 3 different flavors with the same settings.

[mystran]

The self-oscillation of filters referenced above is what happens when you turn the resonance of some (most) filters up high. Most famously, it is what makes the classic 303 high pitched scream or squeal what it is.

Actually unmodified 303 supposedly can't quite reach self-oscillation; it comes close though, which is enough to make it scream, but will eventually decay, where as something like a Moog ladder will happily scream 3 hours after you unplugged the input.

[ZenPunkHippy]

The self-oscillation of filters referenced above is what happens when you turn the resonance of some (most) filters up high. Most famously, it is what makes the classic 303 high pitched scream or squeal what it is.

Actually unmodified 303 supposedly can't quite reach self-oscillation; it comes close though, which is enough to make it scream, but will eventually decay, where as something like a Moog ladder will happily scream 3 hours after you unplugged the input.

Heh, thanks for the clarification! I'll stick to the SH101 and MS 20 for screaming filter resonance

Peace,
Andy.

[panmarek]

My perfect kick done! I will only change his attack/click. Bottom is amazing! Check:
http://www14.zippyshare.com/v/74089646/file.html
Thanks to all.

[ZenPunkHippy]

My perfect kick done! I will only change his attack/click. Bottom is amazing! Check:
http://www14.zippyshare.com/v/74089646/file.html
Thanks to all.

That's sick dude! Thanks for posting back with your success - it annoys me when people take the money and run

Peace,
Andy.

[Shicakah]

Here's my kick
phat kick.mp3

[ZenPunkHippy]

Nice!

If you look at this thread and this one will find some excellent tips from The Chase about how to process your kick further to make it dirtier / louder / more distorted / etc.

Peace,
Andy.

[panmarek]

Here's my kick
phat kick.mp3

Can be better!

CHECK THIS!
http://www2.zippyshare.com/v/39619842/file.html

[MaxSynths]

http://maxb.altervista.org/vsti.html#simonbassdrum