Kickdrum creation and basic formula?

[ferdik]

After using sampled kickdrums for a while it's about time for me to dig into my favorite subject - How to create a dance kickdrum sound from scratch. Why I want to do this? It's about the only sound I can't create and think it's a nice feeling to have full control over the production.

If we forget about about eq and compression for a while, wich I think is add-ons after you got the sound you want, and concentrate on the sound structure and waves.

Listen to this basic dance kick drum:




I hear the following components:

1. Sine wave send to an pitch envelope a.k.a 909 kick >200 hz aprox

2. "Klick" attack sound <200 hz aprox. It match perfectly with the sine wave and there is no phase canecellations. What sound/wave is this? How do I create it? It can't be that hard? Can it?

Help me out and once and for all solve the most discussed topic among procucers - Secret of the Kickdrum.

[underface]

Since nobody's replied to this huge nebulous topic, I'll throw in my immediate thoughts. The sine wave w/ a quick (exp) pitch and volume drop is a good start. I've had decent success using other waveforms too (particularly sawtooths and triangles.)

In regards to the click attack sound, I'd probably reach for a compressor before I tried to tweak a synth into doing that.

[Audio Gnostic]

i dunno but that kick drum sounds pretty effin big. it really sounds liek a regular kick drum to me compressed and eqd lol. i dont know, i dont really agree that its neccessary to synthesize a kick at all , jsut get a good sample collection and make sure your drum sequencer can change length and pitch of samples adn waht not. i think you can do a lot mroe with that because the kicks start pretty complex to begin with, and its always easier to subtract than to add.

i also think that about 60 percent of what makes that kick sound so big are how it sits in the overall mix and pace of the track.

i find that the first thing to do to a kick once youve selected, short/lenth-ened, and tuned your kick is to completely cut out at full gain reduction and very narrow q liek the first 50 hz of the kick. this really helps tremendously. then after that i place a compressor, before or after the eq, however i feel lol and f**k with it more, usually i find things like long attack, short release to work best with some drive into the input.

then the last step is i usually will put a distortion unit somewhere in the chain, a lot of times after the last eq/compressor and then ill put eq after that. or ill set up a dedicated distortion unit passed through eq into the mixing bus sends. i use only limited amounts of distortion. but i find that if u start messing w. it and bring it to where it sounds just right, it makes your kick sound waaaay more powerful than it did beforehand, if you bypass ur distortion youll be liek whoa that sounds whimpy.

also plz dont lisetn to my songs and then judge my advice from my own results, instead i reccomend u try it urself, cuz i didnt really come up with most of this stuff myself lol and most of those were done before i even mixed my drums properly. although in the first song i did use the method i described, i dunno if its a great example because its not meant to be like the style which you gave in your example

[underface]

While sampled kicks have their place, there's something about the purity and control a synth'd kick offers. Check out this bad boy I made;

http://rapidshare.com/files/141484817/RKICK1.WAV.html

To really hear it shine give it a distortion, maybe an cabinet sim, and compress the life out of it (make sure it cuts itself off as it has a long throbbing tail.)

[Sascha Franck]

Im not sure what all the fuzz about synthesized kicks is all about, IMO Audio Gnostic already explained it properly - samplers are your friends here.
For me, one of the big advances of sampled mic'ed up kicks is that they feature a wide frequency range, so it's pretty easy to just use an EQ and enhance whatever you may need most out of that wide spectrum.
Admittedly, I'm not much into electronic music (whatever that might be), but in case I fool around I always tend to start with a sampled real kick and an EQ and/or filter (plus some envelope for both volume and filter).
I may later add some synthesized stuff for that extra "oomph" or so. But again, I sample them first, which, at least IMO, is giving you quite some soundshaping options you usually find in samplers (Battery 3 in my case). That way, mixing in whatever the synthesized kick might offer along with the sampled kick, is a piece of cake.

[xoxos]

Im not sure what all the fuzz about synthesized kicks is all about

sascha there aren't polite words for your poor "advice."

if you're "not much into electronic music" as you admit, you've got no business rendering your inadequate grasp thereof as "advice" on synthesis inquiries.

[xoxos]

later: sorry sascha, i'm not sure why i wished to express myself so stridently. when synthesis passion goes bad.

[living sounds]

Unless you've got a nice analog drum synth and compressor there's much more sense in using good samples IMHO. Reason being that those VCA envelopes add a punch to the sound that can't be done ITB right now. Same goes for the 808 kick (which doesn't use a VCA but gets a spectacular result as well). This attack cuts through and works much better in the mix context. If you still want one, you can build an 808 or 909 drum module yourself for little more than 20 €. I build an 808 kick drum module last month which sounds absolutely stunning and can be triggered by incoming audio.

[Melkor]

I think the OP has kick samples out the wazoo ..... he/she just wants the knowledge and power that comes with knowing yet another aspect of it.

Incidentally i always use samples of synth based kicks when i want that sound so i cant help.

Great question BTW

[zircon]

Not to be a jerk or anything, but I have to agree with xoxos here... this is the Sound Design forum. Not "Samples". It's not helpful to tell him to use samples when that isn't his question. If he wanted kick samples he would have posted in the Samples forum. I've gotten a similar response here before myself and I have to say it's pretty frustrating...

Anyway, I'm not too experienced on this topic myself outside of what the OP already said, but one thing I would recommend is using VERY small samples of noise (<10ms) possibly pitched up or down to help get more of an attack click.

[underface]

Good tip with the pitched up noise zircon; I'm looking forward to screwing around with that.

[living sounds]

OK, it's the sound design forums:

For that 909 kick use two sine waves. One is fairly low, it gets a pitch evelope that starts somewhere between 100-200 hz and goes down to aproximately 50 hz, the second one starts out higher 300-600 hz and goes down to somewhere like 80hz. You can try and add a sub bass at low amplitude that's around 50 hz all the way.
Both sines get an envelope resembling heavy compression. To get that typical smack at the beginning you need to add a very short envelope, so short in fact that the waveform looks it's assymetrical. It should point upwards on the wave editor (yes, absolute polarity matters).
Now add a very short, bandpass filtered piece of noise with a fast envelope going down.
That's it. I stand by what I said about the VCA before though.

[Sascha Franck]

later: sorry sascha, i'm not sure why i wished to express myself so stridently. when synthesis passion goes bad.

No worries. I realized too late that this was the sound design forum. My bad.
I do however believe that sampling (and layering samples) does sort of belong into sound design.

Apart from that, I was just looking at the issue from a pretty much practical POV. Regarding that, I think it's a lot easier to get you certain results using a sampler - even if you synthesize the used samples yourself.
I mean, layering different OSCs (whatever it might be, I'd probably go for 1-2 sines, maybe a square and defenitely some noise to have a broader frequency range at my disposal) in a synth will already cost you some "CPU money". That's why I usually sample these things and load them into whatever sampler - which, IMO, is perfectly valid, even from a synthesis POV. There's several things you can do in a sampler which aren't possible in a synth (of course, the opposite is true as well), such as precisely defining the starting point of a sample, IMO nothing to underestimate when it comes to kicks.
In addition, using a well-miked kick sample will already give you what you'd need quite some tweaking for, when using a synth.

But still, I apologize for not realizing that this was the sound design forum (even if I still believe that samples are a large part of sound design).

[xoxos]

synthesis will reign forever in the annals of music technology as being more expressive than sampling, long after the epherma of the late 20th century industrial popularisation of sampler technology is forgotten. hurrah synthesis hurrah. the molecular construct of pure flaming volition on the cusp of conception.

[Audio Gnostic]

well sound design involves working with samples duuuuuh. the key to useing the samples is that you dont just leave them how they are lolol.

although i think u should stick w. samples for the most part, recording a real kick drum will get you nowehre in making dance kicks, cuz in comparison it sounsd weak as f**k, use samples synth kicks instead.

also HOW THE HELL do you build an 808 or 909 for 20 euro?!!!???!!!??!