OK, this tip is for all of you who are already up on sidechain techniques – particularly using sidechain compression on your bass track, keyed to the kick drum. What I’ve discovered is that, at times it’s useful to use sidechained filtering instead. Take a look at the following setup: If this Auto filter is […]
KICK DRUM WORKSHOP: THE BASICS
For the next few tips, we’re going to take a look at kick drum synthesis. What started all of this was a tip submission that came in a week or so ago… If you’re new to synthesizing drums, today’s tip is a great one to get you started. Once you’ve gotten up to speed with […]
KICK DRUM WORKSHOP: THE BASICS, pt. 2
And now…here’s the conclusion of David D.L.‘s tip covering the basics of kick drum synthesis… OK, it’s time to get this thing to sound like a Kick! (If you have listened to it so far, it’s pretty much a dull low-pitched thud). The trick is to use the pitch envelope to make the sound rapidly […]
KICK DRUM WORKSHOP: PITCH ENV DECAY
The kick drum we’ve made so far is nice and punchy, but it doesn’t have a ton of low end. For some situations, this can work well. The kick can be a sub-heavy monster that holds down the bottom of a track, or it can be a higher pitched accent that leaves room for a […]
KICK DRUM WORKSHOP: ABOUT PITCH
An important fact about the kick drum we’ve built so far is that its pitch changes depending on the MIDI note that’s triggering it. That, of course, has a big impact on the results we get from tweaking the decay of the pitch envelope. For example, if you drop this Operator patch into a Drum […]
KICK DRUM WORKSHOP: FIXED PITCH KICK
Ok, where were we? I’ve been a little distracted getting my new release, This Is The Place out and into the world. Part of the distraction was the decision to master the record myself – a fascinating and ill-advised practice that I’ll talk more about in an upcoming tip. Now, picking up where we left […]
KICK DRUM WORKSHOP: TRIGGER MODE
If you’ve been following along so far, you might have realized an important fact about the kick we’ve been building: the duration of the kick is affected by the length of the MIDI note that is triggering it. It’s not that this is necessarily right or wrong – it’s just important. Remember, we’re determining the […]
KICK DRUM WORKSHOP: THE SWEET SPOT
In the prior tip, I mentioned that you might not be getting the expected result out of cranking up the Decay of the volume envelope… Even though Decay is at almost two seconds, the kick still sounds like it’s fading out really quickly. This has to do with the pitch of the kick rather than […]
KICK DRUM WORKSHOP: WORKIN THE SWEET SPOT
So, it might seem like I’m taking a very long route to get to Kickdrum Ave, but it’s all for a reason. It always amazes me how many variables and subtleties there are with sound design. My hope is to share a workable process for managing those possibilities, rather than just presenting a recipe to […]
KICK DRUM WORKSHOP: HIGH PASS FILTER
Ok – we’re almost done with this kick drum series! I didn’t realize quite how much there was to say on this topic… The high pass filter might seem like a counterintuitive element to incorporate into designing a kick drum sound, but it’s a very useful tool. This is because a resonant high pass filter […]
