Three categories of classic kick drum sounds
First, let’s state the obvious: there are three main ways to get kick sounds. You can record a live drummer; you can use some form of drum synthesis, such as a drum machine or drum synth plugin; or you can use samples, which could be samples of either real drums or synthesised hits.
The question of how you actually use these kick sounds in a track is where things get more complicated, but if we wanted to group them into styles, most fall into one of three groups: unprocessed, processed and layered.
Raw
It’s surprising how many tracks employ kicks that are largely raw and unprocessed. A lot of classic rock and pop takes this approach, of course, with straight-up recordings of a live drummer doing their thing. It also works perfectly well in styles of electronic music such as old-school house and techno, where the focus is on the machines themselves. Check out tracks like Mr Fingers’ Can You Feel It and you’ll hear the raw sound of a TR-909 kick with very little processing other than maybe some compression or EQ, which helps it sit nicely in the mix.
Processed
Alternatively, you can process heavily, but you need to tread carefully with effects on kick drums, as some go-to tools such as reverb can very easily muddy the mix. Likewise, delay effects are very tricky to get right without confusing the rhythm of the track. Filtering, distortion and modulation are usually more effective, but don’t forget the very basics of drum sounds, such as automating tuning and decay times. Björk’s Hunter, for example, is largely based on 909 samples, but there’s a huge amount of real-time tweaking going on. For the kick, this takes the form of microadjustments to the decay time, allowing short, staccato hits to interplay with longer decay tails. There’s no limit to the potential of this approach when using a decent sampler plugin.
Layered
Layering sounds is almost always effective, allowing you to get the best of both worlds: live character and synthetic weight. In the case of kick drums, the character of a live drum hit can often be beefed up with a synthesised drum machine hit underneath. This is now a staple of modern rock production in particular, with a live drummer’s kit reinforced using samples.
Similar techniques work just as well for electronic styles, with two or three kick sounds layered to bring different things to the table in terms of character, body and transient characteristics.