Today I dug into some sound design on kick drums, and one thing I found interesting is that the HP filter works really well on kicks. It depends on your sample, but most have high frequencies cut.
Usually a filter on my kicks looks more like this:
I know we all dream of more filter options on the DT (BP pretty please! ), but there’s good flexibility in what we have.
Here’s what those settings in the screens above sound like on the same kick sample (BD Natural from the factory sounds). The beefier one is using HP.
I find that if I have a sample with too much range I re-sample with HP or LP to get exactly what I want, and maybe there will be a more direct way to do that in the future.
One idea I had is the ability to specify a static filter that’s applied when a sample is loaded from the +Drive to RAM. Might be a compromise if the DT can’t accomplish more filters in real-time.
Love the HP filter on the DT for kicks, especially with the resonance cranked. Have you used the exponential LFO as a one shot on the pitch? Really gets you into some heavy territory.
I feel most of the time a solid base sample is key, from there on it‘s usually the right way of calling attention to the kick.
Sometimes also just giving a very short noisy transient via bitreduction and exponential LFO to the kick is nice too.
Somehow I‘m not fond of the exponential LFO going to tune on the Digitakt. I believe there‘s some kind of hardwired limit to the tuning that doesn’t give the exponential LFO enough reach.
But using the highpass is absolutely essential to shaping the low end!
I used to think this way but I’ve heard a lot of fantastic kick sounds that are low passed to hell and back. Think lo-fi hip hop or “heart beat” kind of kick sounds. So lately I’ve been using LPFs on kicks with lots of HF, “clicky” content and have been enjoying the warmth it brings.
Now that being said–and to add to the OP–using an HPF with a peak resonance is a classic trick to make certain low frequencies pop out in a kick drum. I don’t knock either technique
Now picture a high pass filter traveling from 0dB to 400 dB.
Now variate how fast this high pass filter travels. This would be the decay time, except it would be negative–because the HPF is set to 400 and it’s quickly going “backward” to 0 aka the starting point. If it was set to positive the HPF would travel from (say) 800dB to 400dB.
Negative envelopes are just the opposite of positive envelopes It’s just that when we think of the default orientation of envelopes, it tends to be positive.
So now apply this to a much more common LPF set to 400Hz. What typically happens when you have a (positive) envelope set? You hear a bit of the higher frequencies decaying to lower frequencies, with the speed dependent on the decay time. And what do you imagine might happen if you have the envelope set to a negative value?
Now imagine how these ideas might apply to a kick drum vs a snare drum and why you might prefer one type of configuration for one part over another. But most importantly–experiment and find out what you like.
Huh, I almost hesitated to write, because I thought this would be a common thing. I tend to keep the LFO real real real short though, otherwise I could just layer a hihat ontop haha. Good that you found it useful
), but there’s good flexibility in what we have.
