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Hi all, and thanks for these tips !
OK, first message here, so these 2 cents will be my introduction.
Glad to meet you all.

My every day kick design process,… Ha ha, so corporate style, sorry :wink:

First I choose the synth machine…

  • BD Hard most of the time, for techno, mental techno, hardtechno, trance
  • BD Classic for soft acid or techno, but mainly for hardcore, as a long deep laser sweep can be more crunched with distorsion !
  • BD FM for all kind of different and weird kicks (or other sounds)

Notice I have some common settings for almost all my kicks :
Synth section :

  • No click at all (I use filter enveloppe to shape this, see below), or sometimes just a tiny bit to sound sharper than filter enveloppe
    Filter section :
  • Peak filer, cutoff 36, res 64 (this mades loud sub bass, at least in my room)
  • Filter attack, sustain & release : default values (can’t remember them)
  • Amp attack, hold : default values
  • Synth level 90-127, but most of the time I don’t care because I always use a bit of distorsion, and it changes level so much !
  • Amp level 127

Then I have parameters that I tweak, but usually within a specific range.
For BD Hard :

  • tune -24/+12, depending on track key, other bass sounds, feeling, etc. usually below 0 sounds darker, and above 0 sounds louder and more resonnant, especially with my filter settings
  • sweep time 80-110, sweep amount 90-127, depending on which “punch” I need
  • decay 0-110, depending on track style and mood (for instance I like long decays for mental bouncing kick/bass, short for acid techno or trance, middle for hardtechno, combinated with another track for bass sound)
  • wav 0, 1 or 2 for timber, but I like them all ! usually wav 1 sounds cool for psy-trance, as attack sounds sharper and snappier to me
  • attack 0-127, yeah, short range :wink: it really depends on kick style, but I usually keep it above 64, I like plain sounding kicks ; although sometimes when tune at 0 or above, I keep attack low to prevent too much resonnance or loudness ; and when decay is long, I tend to reduce attack to have a beautiful bouncing tail
  • filter decay 0-20, filter enveloppe, 0-40, I use them to shape punch attack or click, for instance +30-35 for env can bring some crisp smashed trance or psy-trance attack (sorry for my english, hope it makes sense) ; but usually keep them low, like dec & env 0-10 (good old solid kicks)
  • amp decay 0-127, I sometimes use it to shape tail, with combination of synth decay, but usually I leave to 127 and use only synth decay
  • distorsion 5-20 for soft kicks, 20-60 for stronger, and up to 127 for hard ones !
    For BD Classic, same as above except :
  • filter cutoff lower, like 10-30, to prevent too much resonance
  • sweep time under 60 for classic and soft kicks (can be powerfull though, but stay “clean”), sweep amount as you wish, depending on punch you need
  • sweep time 60-80 for hardcore kicks, over 80 for laser fun :wink:
    For BD FM :
  • well I just tweak FM params and well… it’s not always successfull and I often switch back to Classic or Hard :wink:

All this was for the body of the kick. Then I use LFO to modulate pitch or volume (or sometimes filter) to get some really bouncing

About levels… Well, I tried to keep headroom in the beginning, but now I just set 127 for synth & amp level, and play with distorsion to adjust loudness, for I noticed than adding a bit of distorsion was the same as increasing volume (when volume between 90 and 110 for instance).

So this is pure theory, and I think you can do pretty much any kick with any machine, fitting any track style… Just a way to make draft kicks faster, and then I adjust (well, unfortunately adjusting can sometimes take a few days !).

I try to give you examples in the next message !
Cheers from Toulouse, France !

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