Hi,
was listening to a few tracks lately and found some very interesting kick sounds. They sound so pleasant and satisfying. I suppose my questions would be, how do I edit an existing kick sample to give it these qualities, and more curiously, how would I create something like this from scratch? They sound so different from normal kicks that I usually hear.

 

Sine wave -> pitch env -> filter

 

Kick2, browse through presets find something with the same punch, then play with the PITCH ENVELOPE + a whole lot of tube distortion + clipping

 

serum is nice for kicks
try it with virus ti sinerider wavetable

 

drag the audio into your DAW, scan through the audio to the where there is a kick with minimal or no other elements around it. consolidate the kick. then in kick 2 add that new audio clip as a click file, and then mute it but make it so the sound wave is visible. you will want to max out the envelope of that click oscillator, so the kick you are copying is the same size as the one youre about to make. then start copying the sound wave by editing the pitch, envelope and length of the kick. you will end up with a similar sounding, but also unique kick.

 

its this one with a slightly diffrent filter . But i also hear that the producer used heavy sidechaining. thats it

 

Defo 808 with kick drum! Loads of pitched kick drum presets about now

 

Last edited: Sep 10, 2022

I'm not good at sound design and accurately identifying things, but I think that what makes them sound "so pleasant" is the way they are blending with the bass, so working on the sidechain and the relationship between the bass and the kick will be at a higher priority, the kicks also seem a bit high pitched.
This is my attempt at doing something a bit similar with Phase Plant: https://voca.ro/1new8ozuYirU

 

Hey everyone, thank you for taking the time to write your responses, I didn't expect to get so many, so that is going to be helpful, thank you. I must admit that with the exception of Serum I don't know any of these tools, especially dedicated kick plugins, would probably make a lot of sense to use something like that as a starting point. I didn't realize this can be done with a sine wave, really interesting.

@Void* gotta say that is really fairly close, I'm very impressed with this. Should probably check out Phaseplant, been meaning to do it because I've heard so many good things about it and I love the way kilohearts treat their customers to begin with.

@Fausage Sattener
(nice name btw) Where is that from? Also it seems to be hard panned to the left.

@No Avenger
Wouldn't have thought ADD would be good for drums like that, always assumed it would be more for acoustic drums and stuff.

@ilovepresets @Sinus Well
Thank you for that, that's beyond what I currently grasp but I'll be looking into it. Gotta get those tools. If you only use a sine wave, how do you get the kick to 'hit' and have an 'oomph' to begin with though?

@AKAIBOY
Seems like the 808 is a very popular drum machine, I've seen it referenced countless times. Wouldn't even have thought it would be relevant for a modern kick sound like that. Nice!

 

It's really not that complicated. It is sounddesign beginner level. Of course, synthesizing a kick, 808, etc. can be done with varying degrees of complexity. But the basics are always the same. Just search on YT for kick sounddesign tutorials for serum.

 

If you're interested, Rob Papen's Punch 2 has all those drums among it's presets, not just the Kick.

 

You should, in my opinion it replaces all of the "drum synthesizers" around like Kick2, PunchBox, etc. And it's not that hard to learn even though the semi-modular aspect to it feels daunting at first because of the high amount of choices to make. Also, something like ADD or Superior Drummer/EZdrummer is very good to have because you can use it to layer acoustic drums with your electronic drums, a lot of Drum and Bass artists do that.

 

well @Sylenth.Will.Fall said they are from Punch2 and with other guesses of it being an 808, I am wondering if its from the JoMoX Xbase888 then.

 

It's all in the pitch change over such a short period of time. Going from a high pitch to a low pitch that quickly will create the pop, the thump and everything in-between.