Kick drums using synths

[fitzoyo]

Does anyone know of a tutorial about creating kick drums using synths?

[RDR]

have a go at using drumsynth.. its free, easy to use and can create some AWESOME drum sounds, both conventional and unconventional, its also got a decent gui and will help you to understand how kick drums work.

http://www.threechords.com/hammerhead/drumsynth.shtml

If you want to use a synth to make a kick i recommend the maelstrum from Reason V2. Using a sweeping modulation envelop is important.

If you look at how a kick sweeps down in frequency you need to think about what happens when a kick pedal beater hits the skin. It goes something like this..

beater makes contact with the skin. this pushes the skin forward... in a sense it 'irritates' the skin. this takes around 10-20ms in my estimation.

The skin then returns backwards after the beater has started on its return journey.. and its continues to vibrate.

This is the important bit... the freqeuncy of the vibrations are not static, they quickly dive down into the sub territory.

As far as i can remember the 'click' of the kick's first part is high frequencey, and the sub us the end low frequency.

HTH... ;)

[RDR]

All of this happens in about 50-150ms+ its possible to create kick drums from scratch that sit perfectly with the tonality of your piece.

[loopdon]

synthesis

I thought i write up a decent 808 tutorial as its one of those things people ask about.

The 808's a classic sound, and if you know how to synthesize it, it opens up lots of oppurtunies for creativity. As its very simple patch to learn, if you're new to synths this could be a handy learning experience.

I will be using the subtractor (reason), but you can do it with any half arse synth.

Synthesizing 808s:
1. Load up your synth, with the default/initialized patch
2. make sure any LFOs are off, FM is off, any velocity controls are at zero.
3. Select a LP filter, no resonance.
4. Enter a lowish bass note (somewhere around C1/C2) on the sequencer, and loop the sequencer playback, so you can hear it as you make changes.
5. You need one sinewave oscillator (the regular '~' curve shaped wave).
6. Turn off any other oscillators, and set the mix to osc 1 (if it has this function).
7. On your amplitude envelope, set decay to about half (this may vary on synths, but find a setting so it has a nice fade out). Set any other amp-env variables to zero - attack, sustain etc.
8. Ok, it should sound pretty 808-like now, but here's the important bit.
9. On your modulation envelope, wire it to control osc1 or pitch (same thing really).
10. Raise decay to about a quarter of the way up.
11. Set the envelope amount about 2 thirds up (or adjust to choice).

This pitch envelope drops the pitch sharply at the beginning of the sound, causing that nice 808 thud.

10. BUMP BUMP BUMP. Tune to the correct key

Now, if you want a more 909 sound:
1. Set amp decay much shorter
2. Frequency envelope - decay up about the same as the pitch env.
3. Amount about a third
4. Low pass filter, anywhere between zero-quarter way up, resonance any between zero and full, depending on what tone you want your thud. (adjust these to your taste).
5. Tune
6. Save your patch.

Quick Tricks:
• Play two adjascent notes on your keyboard for that wobbling noise like in Kenny Ken & Andy C - 'the quest'
• Raise pitch env decay for that classic BOOooom bass
• Switch to a saw or square wave and fiddle with the filters, envelope and LFOs have fun with it
• Try using more than one osc for thicker sounds (remember to envelope both their pitches, and adjust the mix balance)

Processing:
• When distorting, it usually helps to hipass the distorted channel at around 300hz, and then layer with an original clean channel to retain clean bass freqs.
• In Reason i tend to use the foldback distortion or scream overdrive as these produce cleaner harmonics and tones. Try using two foldbacks in a chain for interesting results.
• Mixing down bass and distorted frequencies: 808 Bass-channel should be as loud as your kick drum (standard mixing), and the distorted 808 channel should be anywhere between 50-75% of the bass-channels volume. This seems to sit well for me, but experiment.

Further Info:
There we go, you should have some nice thumping sounds. The pitch envelope technique can be applied to almost anything to create that thump sound, reeses, pads, you can even do it in a sampler if you like. I find if i have a kick sample lacking thud, a quick pitch decay adds a thump easily without bothering with EQ.

The same sort of technique can be applied if you're trying to make a natural 'plucked' string sort of sound. A subtle LFO and reverb will make it sound more natural aswell.

When im looking for a kick to layer, i find its easier to load up my 808/909 patch and personalize it to how I want, rather than search through a folder of kick samples.


or....


Try this:

- Load up Soundforge

- Choose where you want your bass drum to boom... I've been using this technique to make sort of Psytrance bass drums, so I'd usually go for 45hz...

- Make a 1 second sine wave (Simple Synthesis) double that frequency - So 90hz sine wave;

- I'll usually mute the second half of it, so I've got a 90hz sine wave, then half a second of quiet;

- Go into Pitch Bend and get experimenting drawing pitch curves - You want to go from +12 semitones to -12, and draw a kind of sharp attack envelope/curve... You can spend all day here, there's a million different sounds you can get, from subby 808 bass drums (almost indistinguishable from the real thing!) to zappy Trance bass drums to realistic sounding thuds;

- Last stage is to apply an Envelope and design the dynamics...

[loopdon]

sorry. forgot to say they aren't my tuts :lol:

[loopdon]

this was answered in the thread i posted it from (corrections):

Step 10 sounded strange with that huge decay and when I heard the sample it was clear... 808 kick doesen't have that kind of a thud in the begining, that longish pitch-modulated thud is more of a 909 thing. 808 had a very short thud at the begining. You could somehow emulate it by having decay very little (depending on synth off course) in your 10th step and some hold (if provided i.e. if you have AHDSR envelope) in a way that it efectively creates just one or two cycles of higher pitched sines, and then settles down to about a G3. Another important part of 808 sound is that it starts with wave at full positive (Pi/2 cycle) rather than at zero crossing.

As for 909, you'll need a synth with triangle wave, filter and AD envelope for pitch modulation. Here you can have a longer pitch decay and a short pitch attack, and you need to saturate prior to filter, and then filter out the triangle but you need to take care that the filter is tuned to oscilator frequency at any point (this is how the sinewave is generated from a triangle in 909, they saturate the triangle into a hexagonal wave, then filter out into a sine). 909 also had a short burst of filtered noise for the initial click.

For both sounds pitch envelope needs to go quite a bit.

It's much easier doing it in an audio editor as J swift suggested. You could also create a long sample of overloaded and then filtered triangle wave for some authentic roland dirt, rather than clean deep sinewave, and then mess with that. Tuning at G3 (or G2 depending on synth) is pretty close to the default 808 tuning. As for 909 you need to experiment since you could tune 909 to many frequencies. Tuned about E3 it's close to default 909 tuning.

Anyway, here are some of my examples, FXP programs for Synth 1 and tuned samples made in audio editor (Audition in my case). FXP Synth 1 examples are closest in sound to originals on G2 (808) and E3 (909), on Fruity if you put the amp sustain all the way down. Other hosts may be octave lower or higher, not sure. Audio editor chops were done at 55Hz (A1) because it's the easiest tuned frequency to remember.

I created the original sine by making a 55Hz triangle, squasing it at about 6dB into the wave, and then applying a 4th order Butterworth Lowpass at 60Hz. It came out almost a clean sine. Nice for 808 but for 909 you may want to set the cutoff higher and try a 2nd order filter.

synth1 presets (you prolly need to register @dogsonacid.com):

http://www.dogsonacid.com/attachment.php?s=09f0f6392d2f2a72d806912fe3ae6320& postid=4349499

[fitzoyo]

Thanks for that i'll give both of them a try.