That ever-so-impossible-to-create Club Kick D:

[tpantano]

Did I discuss bass/kick drums before? I forget, so excuse me if this is a repeat thread.

But I can't get a good club kick!

Sure, I can take a sine wave in Ultrabeat, modulate it's amp downwards so that it punches in before dropping to a subbass drone, as well as adding in some pitch modulation for extra punch. But doing just this is not nearly as powerful as I'd like!

How do you get those lovely Deadmau5, house-music kicks?

There seems to be a lot more to them then a dropping sine wave; there's always a bit of high end, as if some sort of muted snare sample was mashed into the kick drum.

So:
-Any tips for creating and properly mixing those big club kicks?
~or~
-Any good sample packs out there for massive club kicks?

This is the best I've been able to create, using Logic's ES2 synth; it feels really lacking to me:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1715217/lamekick.wav

[X-Trade]

I've got this sound nailed quite nicely on a sampler I've been building in Reaktor.

I've taken kick drum samples and modulated the pitch just like you say for a sine wave - to get even more punch and a nice sub sustain section as it tails off - so I think the trick here is an exaggeratedly exponential envelope curve. You could possibly fake it if you have an ADBDSR EG by setting the breakpoint below halfway and having the decay times the same. or even the second decay time longer. I effectively get it done just by resampling.

Finally, I've noticed to get that high 'tap' or 'hit' sound, I need to use a closed hi-hat sample, again pitch modulated in a similar but less aggressive way.

You could possibly try to emulate this with a fairly resonant filter at a high frequency on the kick, or by using EQ. I think I use the filter on my EQ anyway to thin out the hihat sound so that you're just getting the top end.


Oh, and a ridiculous amount of compression. I don't particularly condone it, but everything in this genre is compressed to death. Drums sound particularly good compressed because if you get it right, the kick pumps and the tails of all the hits are brought out so that you literally hear every detail (or lack of).

[tpantano]

I've literally spent hours working on this *eyetwitch*

Nothing good has come out of it.

Any compression tips? Whenever I dabble into it (aka randomly mess with the threshold and ratio), I always seem to make the sub-end disappear entirely; whatever I'm doing doesn't seem to enhance the sound.

Also, mind-pointing me in the direction of a good sample to start with?

[SanderXpander]

Easiest solution would just be sampling a kick that you like. Many tracks in that genre have perfectly good isolated beat bits.

[krazy78]

Try layering 2 or more sounds together, the tricks that pros use is
layering sounds that compliment each other, to get a fat sound, try
combining a sound with a good attack & one with body, then
compress/ Eq

[dayuri]

I use samples from this site quite a bit: http://machines.hyperreal.org/samples.html

The 909 kit from that website probably has the best kicks, but I think they need a bit of compression and eq twiddling to make them decent. Doubling up can work too. The other way I get drums is by taking presets from other synths like Reaktor and Kore and doing things with them.

To be honest I'm sort of in the same boat as you on this one when it comes to building my own sounds. I find using softsynths to make kicks pretty tough, but I can make a great kick on pretty much any subtractive analog synth within seconds. Quite frustrating.

[X-Trade]

I've shared a few loops I made in my Reaktor ensemble with tpantano.

If anyone else wants them, they're here too:
http://www.bradleygray.co.uk/hostedfiles/kickloops.zip

[dayuri]

I've shared a few loops I made in my Reaktor ensemble with tpantano.

If anyone else wants them, they're here too:
http://www.bradleygray.co.uk/hostedfiles/kickloops.zip

Thanks X-Trade, I'll check them out.