I want those KICKS, baby - Digitone? Syntakt? JOMOX?

[qqq]

Tanzbar kicks should also be in this conversation. I’ve had a lot of fun recently layering the Tanzbar 2 kicks with a noise sample loaded into a Tanzbar 2 sampler track (which has an analog filter and bitcrushing).

That being said, the MBase is probably the more sensible option

[LyingDalai]

Learn the Digitone.
Might be the most powerful synth you own and you don’t know it.

FM is not hard, you just have to keep looking for the right entrance door.
This was mine:

Digitone inbound. Suggested resources?

My best read about FM:

I’ve tried an explanation here:

Your approach to FM synthesis?

Hey, @glooms, exploring blindly can be fun too ^^ This said, FM synthesis is not that hard, despite being very deep. Reading the “Tao of FM synthesis” is fun and gave me some basis to retain some knowledge and know more and more / learn from what I was doing. FM vocabulary is often improper, as if someone had tried to obfuscate the knowledge. Just get the vocabulary right and you start understanding. A few tricks: FM is a composition of “operators”. Simplest is two, start from here and e…

Now the kick is an easy thing to synthesize.
The right one may take time, but you should imo take some time to explore what you can do with what you have.

[your_lamp]

Piggybacking on Dalai’s recommendations to add Dave Mech’s Digitone course — in Part 1 there’s a series of videos walking through the creation of a kick from scratch, you can see which parameters to reach for if you want to achieve a certain kind of sound or edit a particular aspect of your kick. Really great stuff.

[klaustrophil]

TR-8S The insert effects work wonders + you can have a master compressor on top.

@Florid

I’m not sure what style of music you’re making but it’s definitely not unreasonable to pick one or two kicks(presets or samples) and build a whole career out of them. Find what works for your style and use it in everything

But actually this. Focus on your general musical output. You’re hearing this from someone who was obsessed with the rumble in hardware for a year.

[sinedied]

I’ve never used the same kick twice, for the past 25 years since I’ve started making music. And I mostly make psytrance, where it’s common to do what you’re suggesting

On the topic:

• DN is the most flexible kick machine ever. And I say that having searched for the kick graal for years, I prefer it to all dedicated kick vst I tried. But you need to deep dive and learn how to shape it as you like.
• ST is great when you need a bit of kick flexibility, but don’t want to tweak for hours.
• Finally, don’t sleep on DT: even with samples, you can easily shape any base kick drastically different using pitch, filters, OD and most importantly LFO shaped as exp decay envelope

[SouvlakiPlaystation]

No. I gave a disclaimer at the beginning of this thread. Take your FM witchcraft and leave this place.

(ok I’ll check out the links you provided)

[sinedied]

You can use the DN as a regular subtractive synth, in fact for kicks you mainly want a pitch modulated sine wave (or triangle for Xtra grunge) which is easy on the DN

[SouvlakiPlaystation]

I appreciate the advice, everyone. I’m going to do a deep dive on wavetable synthesis for the Digitakt (really love the sounds I’m hearing people make with that) and mess about with the Digitone more. It’s honestly hard to imagine what I’m looking for isn’t in there somewhere!

[biggerovski13]

The Jomox 09 contains some of the most devastating kicks I’ve heard. Take Blawan’s word for it. I know this might be an odd opinion but the DN has always felt like the most complete Elektron machine for me. It’s one of my favorite FM synths w/the chromatic keys, and the percussion is just ridiculous. Super sine-y subs and chirpy hats. The snares don’t really smack or thwack, but everything else is so lush.

[Andreas_R]

Jomox gear sounds monstrous! Get the MBase

[videomusik]

Just because it has to be said on an Elektron forum in a post about kicks: Analog Rytm.
With the new update the kicks are awesome.

[LyingDalai]

@SouvlakiPlaystation

No. I gave a disclaimer at the beginning of this thread. Take your FM witchcraft and leave this place.

Just to be clear: I’ve been there!
I’ve actually been deeply hating FM for decades. Until I understood that it was also a way to get incredible sounds. I started reading about it right before the Digitone came out, and have been a FM lover since.

So yeah, just try again! You already got awesome tools!
In a year from here, when you’re a FM master that can do metal, glass, plastic or wooden kicks, you’ll forgive me for having insisted…

[pumpkin_head]

Try this on the DN : innit sound, mess around for two minutes with the parameters so you don’t have a pure sine wave anymore, then activate portamento and set a portamento time. Play a very high note, then a very low one. There, you have a decent starting point to a good kick without being an FM wizard. Sample it with the DT. Voilà.

[LyingDalai]

Receipt for a kick is

1. a transient
2. a sweep down
3. some simple note on release

On DN, you choose e.g. the algo (aka configuration) with two independent channels as a start point.

Use one for a sharp short noise.
The other one for the sweep (you may also use the filter with some resonance for this).

Actually, I’ve just found that the post I had linked above had some indications for the kick recipe ^^

@LyingDalai

when you synthesize a kick, you’ll most likely want a sharp transient, maybe even some slightly longer noise, and a body the pitch of which decreases. That makes 3 different sounds, so you’ll choose a configuration (aka an “algorithm”) with 3 outputs (aka “carriers”). On the body, you’ll want a decreasing exponential envelope on the pitch of a simple sine wave for instance.
To get noise, an operator that modulates itself (“feedback”) at a high level is perfect. You can add a decreasing sharper envelope on this feedback. Or on this operator’s volume if you simply want to shut it down.
The transient will be similar but even sharper. On M8 we have a click waveform, very well suited. In FM synthesis you don’t always have to use clever ratios, nor use modulators. A simple composition of waveforms might be all you need for a sound.

[swanage_fan]

this really opened my mind and gave me peace, thank you

@Florid

it’s definitely not unreasonable to pick one or two kicks(presets or samples) and build a whole career out of them. Find what works for your style and use it in everything

[swanage_fan]

best kick drums i’ve got have been from:

Syntakt (but didn’t like the other sounds)
TR-6S / 8S (not just the x0x kicks either)
DRM-1

the worst:

Machinedrum (hitting tinfoil with a chopstick)
DAW presets (always feel lifeless to me)

[Inakito]

If the Digitakt is handling drum duties, why is it taking care of the kicks too?

By the way, are you using the Digitakt only to play samples, or to design sounds as it was a synth?

[SouvlakiPlaystation]

Update: I bought an 0-Coast

[license]

Great choice. That thing makes slammin’ kicks. Edit: Don’t sleep on that linear FM input, that’s where the kick magic is.

This is all 0-Coast and Erbe-Verb, no sequencer or anything: https://weeklybeats.com/license/music/thumper

My favorite kicks right now are from STO modulated by a snappy envelope, which isn’t far off.

[uhstevenk]

The Volca Kick… it’s absolutely my favorite. I’ll arm wrestle over this