Design, program and mix killer bass drums for any genre,

The primal, beating heart of contemporary music ever since rock ’n’ roll standardised the backbeat as its dominant percussive format in the middle of the 20th century, the kick drum is the simplest but arguably most important element of the drum kit. Whether it’s the real acoustic thing providing weight, power and forward momentum to a live band, or a synthesised alternative shaking a nightclub to its foundations, it’s the kick that drives the groove, hits you in the chest and makes you want to dance.

Today’s software-based producer has access to a plethora of tools for emulating acoustic kick drums and synthesising electronic ones, from dynamically responsive sample players and virtual classic drum machines, to innovative new instruments and generators that could only exist in the box. However, even the most well-stocked kick drum-focused plugins folder counts for nought if you don’t know how to properly program the patterns that trigger these amazing devices. Get the kick wrong, and your tracks will suffer.

In the first section of this feature, we’ll show you how to program kick drum patterns in a range of styles. We’ll start by working up some authenticsounding live ‘performances’, before moving onto the established beats that serve as the backbones of various electronic genres. After that, we’ll explore some programming and processing tricks guaranteed to make your kicks stand out, before wrapping up with the pinnacle of the pedal-hoofing arts: double kick drums. Very metal.

After that, we’ll move into dance music territory, and look at the kicks that have underpinned the subgenres we know and love. After exploring the classic hardware drum machines – new and old – that have produced some of the most iconic electronic bass drums of the past few decades, we’ll fire up some of today’s leading software options and delve into modern kick drum design and mixing. Can we kick it? Yes, we can!