Guys I've watched a bunch of tutorials in which I've heard producers talk about 'Kick' samples in terms of scale. As in, a kick determining the scale of the song. I don't really understand how this works. If I pick a pick, how is it that it only works with one scale. It's not like a kick has to be in key or not, is it?

Not usually necessary to think about that, as I see it.

I guess some style of hiphop music where kick is ringing a couple of seconds each time. Then it might matter more.

This trick is also widely used in Trance music.

Basically any kick can be brought down to two components: click and low sine wave. This sine wave can be though of as being a fundamental frequency of that kick, so the kick has a certain pitch (frequency of that sine).

That lead us to the fact that we can tune kick in accordance with rest of the instruments in composition. But theres no clear standard about how this should be done.

Some suggest to tune it to root note, or one of the notes in a chord, or even five steps apart from bass (So that together they form a fifth.) Wildest suggestion that I heard was to split kick into three parts and tune each part so that together they form a chord.

IMHO tuning it to one of the notes in track's scale is more than enough. Also it's more sensible to tune long kicks in four to the floor beats (more apparent fundamental) and it's not that important with short kick in more syncopate rhytms.

This comes up pretty often and generally prompts passioned responses from both sides of the debate. There's an old thread with some interesting posts and links in here: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=346341&start=0

My own feelings on the subject are that, unless you're dealing with something like an 808 kick which has a smack-you-in-the-face obvious tone in there (I think the 808 kick is more like a bass synth than a percussion synth), don't bother. I think tuning for timbre is far more important than tuning for 'pitchiness', unless you're deliberately using your kick as a melodic element a-la hardstyle square wave kicks or hip-hop 808 booms. If I had unwanted harmonic tones in my percussion then my first inclination would be to get rid of them or pick different samples rather than try to tune them.

A short article re: tuning your kick by Mike Senior on SOS

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar10/articles/qanda0310_1.h tm

At the end of the day, when you tune your kick, does it sound better to you? Don't just do stuff to cross it off a list of stuff you think you should do. Try it and see if you like the effect

You can get away with not having a kick in tune to the rest of your music, depending on the context. Generally though I will always try to tune everything in my track

My workflow:

Start with bassline. Find the range you want. I find this is the part that suffers most if you have to start changing the key. In the past I have spent ages on a drumloop only to find that the bassline won't work in that key and I have to redo loads of drums

Get some basic drums down, kick and snare generally. Tune these into the bassline. If the pitch is way off and the drum would either have to be too high or too low, find a different sample to work with. Asjust bassline as much as required to get everything to fit without moving outside of the best range for the bassline.

When that all clicks into place you're good to go, synths can generally fit anywhere around what you have.

As others have stated, some kicks will need this kind of treatment more than others, but generally the more percussion etc you have in the track that are in their own random key, the more your music will have a 'wrongness' about it that you can't really put your finger on.

It's no harm to tune your kick around the other components - not necessarily to a specific key, but often a slight re-tuning can make a kick 'fit' better. Just use your ears. It only takes a couple of seconds but can make a big difference for me.
YMMV.

Toms I always tune to a key so that they alone can play a 'melody'.

I find tuning percussion can help it fit better with everything else. Not tuning to any particular key, just going by ear.

Ya know, there's been a TON of these kinds of threads/questions in the past year. I don't know what to think, but I have the el-cheap-o Melodyne, and it seems to be able to check the note of a kick drum (based on 3 I tried really quick like, only the one with the longer tail was notated as 2-notes).

So if anyone doesn't have a way to check the note/key that their favorite/super important kick drum sample is in, pm me, I'll give you my email address and you can send it to me. I'll check it in Melodyne for you, and even tune it to the nearest note and send it back to you. Then you can just hear for yourself if it really truly actually makes a difference.

My 2 cents: If you're making electronic music, tune your kick, every time. You said the kick dictates the key, not really, if you already have a key picked for your composition, just pick a kick that's in that key's scale or tune one to be in it. I say that it is absolutely necessary, even if you have a short kick with a hard to discern fundamental. There's a lot more going on in our brains when we listen to music than most people know... it makes a huge difference and it will help the kick fit in the track better if it's in the right key. This is a MUST in my opinion. Everybody has their opinion, but I truly believe you can't overlook this in electronic music... especially if it's going to be played in a club or on a big sound system. That kick frequency is going to be a lot more apparent and it will definitely sound weird if it's out of key. I personally put it at the root note or one of the main notes of the scale, like the 3 or 5. When I started tuning my kicks, it was one of those lightyear jumps in my tunes, they got a lot better, instantly.

Yeah ! Tune your kick to the song key.

Tune the kick to the root note or the fifth note.

Related post : http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=288130

Go here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_key_frequencies

Know what key your song is Find it on the chart. Say your song is in D#. That's a frequency of 77.8 Hz. Take a Peak filter, narrow Q, boost maybe 2db at 77.8 Hz.
Voila, tuned kick.
Easy peasy.

The Pitch knob is more effective than EQ to tune the kick.

If you know what key your kick is in the first place. I get notes all over the place when I try to analyze kick frequencies. This is faster.

yeah but thats not really going to tune the kick