How do you make good sounding kicks? When i make kicks 9 out of 10 of them are not really pleasing to the ear and one actually sounds pretty nice. I just can’t get my head wrapped around what it is that makes this difference since there are so many parameters that can be tweaked to make a kick. So if you have any tips they are very welcome!
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Don’t evaluate the kick by itself. Try adjusting the micro-timing of the kick within the mix. If bass sounds happen simultaneously with the kick, maybe try lengthening the attack phase of the bass sound. Generally speaking, when I first put tracks together on the Digitone, the drums are kind of washed out. Avoid turning up the drums when this happens. By cleaning up other elements of the mix, the drum sounds start having more definition, and I find myself even turning their volume down later in the game. At the end of the process, when I play the drums by themselves, they may not sound particularly good. But the important thing is that they sound good in the mix.
If you are waiting to find a perfect sounding kick…before moving onto other aspects of music making, this, imo, is a problem. Context matters.
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I recently saw a Dan Worrall video about the Cableguys SnapBack plugin, which puts a little pffwwwt before the transient. It’s easy enough to replicate on a drum machine with a nudged, enveloped, filtered, etc version on the same track as the kick. It’s kinda silly how big it sounds, though I imagine it’s easy to overuse.
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Take the original kick and layer it with a 909 kick, then delete the original kick.
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This is good, but rather than delete the original kick, I like to duplicate it and invert its phase. It looks more impressive in the DAW.
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Are you talking about synthesizing kicks specifically? Perhaps describing your current process will help people with suggestions for you.
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Me personally? I dont waste my time synthesizing kicks because kicks aren’t the main feature of my music. I just use the 909, 606, or 707 in my TR8-S. Tweaked to my taste using the onboard fx. Sounds bangin.
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By using good sounding kicks.
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I recently made the decision to stop effing around tweaking endlessly messing with kicks, and just go ahead and almost exclusively use the kicks from the amazing F9 Kicks! Sample pack.
Imported them into my TR-6S and boom. Nothing but well-made, incredible sounding kicks in my life and I feel free. Freeeee! Occasionally I’ll throw in some 909/707 kicks as well.
I guess this doesn’t help you if you specifically asking about sound design. But just wanted to offer a different perspective as someone who isn’t a professional musician and only has so much time to make music. I decided to offload that stress and just go with kicks that I know I can always trust, and Just. Work.
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On my Syntakt, my best standard kick sounds are usually layered, and I like alternating between triggering both layers at once for the main beat, with some “ghost” kicks being one or the other solo if the beat calls for it. I get a lot of variety and the sounds I want this way. The main thing I know to tell you about my sound design, I mostly do filter / filter envelope tweaking and not too much else on the stock BD machines.
And I don’t know, they might still sound like ass. I like them well enough
This.
Thats how I work. Use the same 3 kicks I know inside out. They’ll always work, always fit a mix, always punch just right.
Lifes too short.
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Syntakt and Rytm are great for quickly making dope 909 sounding kicks. I often use the BD Sharp machine for house music.
What kind of kick are you looking for? Doesn’t any of the preset sounds sound good to you?
All you need to know has been said already.
I have been in a similar situation not so long a go. I built literally hundreds of kick variations and the next day I was never convinced it was really good. I made a lot of mistakes, too. Transients too loud, too boomy, too short, too long, too muddy, … you name it.
Finally, for the last few months I settled on ONE single kick that is basically a short noise burst that pings the filter set to 48Hz or 60Hz. Sometimes I layer both. Sometimes I make variations to the decay. That’s it. Done.
Kicks don’t need to sound impressive when isolated. They need to shine in context of a track.
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Good starting point.
Also make decisions what kick you would like, more boomy if you have good bass but less sub, or shorter and clicky if having strong sub.
Also you should pay attention to the rest of drums and song in general and how this kick sits within whole song.
Also depends on a genre
Also if you have daw, check kick3 vst.
You have bunch of kick presets as a starting point , and can make your own.
And you can never go wrong with 909, 808, 707 kicks
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Buy the Kimura Taro A4 drum packs, look at the parameters, profit
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There are lots of YT videos explaining this. I’d recommend watching some.
In a nutshell I think it’s very common to treat the following:
- Transient of the kick to also reach a higher frequency spectrum
- Side chain compression to duck other elements when the kick hits in
- Saturation
- Eqing the kick itself and other elements so that everything including the kick gets its own space
You also need to hear what you’re doing, so good (or many different) headphones to evaluate on or monitor speakers/subs are very helpful tools.
my current process is pretty hard to discribe. i start with init patch and make osc 1 triangle and set a pitch envelope and set filter one to almost zero with a high resonance and turn up filter envelope, and then i try adding an lfo with exponential curve and then i keep tweaking everyithing until i feel like i can’t get it better. sometimes i try changing some settings i started with like the waveform or do things with sync, and sometimes velocity mods. i always get lost in tweaking lots and lots of things. Maybe i need a prober step by step procedure to begin with. I don’t know. My friend who i make music with said there is always something exhausting about Elektron kicks. I kinda feel what he means. But don’t know what exactly this is. Just trying to see if i can find out how to make them sound really good. I must say i always find it a bit of a challenge with the A4 to make it sound good. But i know it can for sure
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that’s right)
good sample packs + good monitoring
with bad monitoring it’s very easy to turn a good kick into shit with eq)
but as for synthesis in daw…life is too short to synthesize kicks - use sample packs.
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i like to synthesize my own kick sounds. i just want to learn how to make really nice sounding kicks from scratch. i just find it fascinating
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