5. Adding punch to a drum sound with basic amplitude shaping

1 Before diving into the world of compression, limiting and transient shaping, the easiest way to make a static sample more punchy is by simply shaping a signal’s amplitude over time. This is easily done in any sampler with a built-in ADSR envelope. Start by setting your BPM to 132 and importing the files beginning “Bassline…” from the Tutorial Files folder.

2 Load any sampler onto a fresh MIDI track, and import Kick.wav ready for tweaks. We’ll drag Kick.mid onto the channel to trigger the sample, then navigate to the sampler’s ADSR envelope. If your sampler lowers the sample’s level by default, push up the initial level so that the envelope is at maximum volume when triggered, bringing out the sample’s punch from the word go.

3 Bringing the Sustain level down (- 20dB here) will reduce the kick’s tail, giving it a tighter, punchier sound. After this, push the Decay time up so the kick has the right amount of body and depth – we settle upon 1.2 seconds for this particular kick. To finish, readjust the sampler’s Volume (in our case, -3dB) to bring the kick’s gain back up. Simple but effective!