Roll your own

Whether your latest electronic production demands a thudding ‘knock’ or a fullfrequency pulse to underpin the rhythm, the kick drum is one of the most important elements to get right. Find the perfect bass drum to suit your other parts, and everything else will slot into place.

This necessity for perfection is why many producers get bored of browsing through their bloated folder of ready-rolled kick samples, and instead choose to explore the art of kick drum design. Building your own bass drum from individual elements gives a far greater degree of control compared to using pre-made sounds, allowing you to piece each component together to your exact specification. Fine-tune your kick’s pitch, amp/pitch envelope and length, then mix in your desired flavour of ‘click’ to customise the attack to your requirements. How you go about this is up to you: either combine synthetic and sampled layers on different channels in your DAW, or streamline the process by calling up one of the many ‘kick designer’ plugins available today – a selection of which we’ll explore later.

This artisan approach to drum sculpture has myriad benefits. Aside from giving you the ultimate control over a kick’s shape, timbre and character, it’s a great way to refine your own palette of sounds, which will help set you apart from other producers. Another legitimate reason is that you can custombuild specific layers to bolster an existing sample – if a great sampled kick is missing, say, some bottom end, it’s often easier to mix in some synthetic low-end than reach for an EQ or bass booster plugin.