Sub, punch and honk
Together with mid and high click, the balance and length of the sub, punch and honk elements are what shape the bass drum sound. These combine to give you a either a long, subby, 808-style kick, a house-esque, clicky all-rounder, or a topheavy Metallica rocker. Start with the nearest thing you can find to what you ultimately want – whether that’s a sampled sound or a synthesised one – then go ahead and sculpt away.
Sub happens at around 60Hz. Make sure you cut or boost in this area using a narrow Q, otherwise you might unhelpfully add or remove frequencies on either side of your chosen range – even small adjustments at 30Hz or 100Hz will have a surprisingly big effect on the sound. The sub element is what makes the kick drum really sound like it’s deep, and it’s the main element of any 808-type kick.
Punch happens around 150Hz, providing the ‘thwack’ of the bass drum sound. Adjusting this frequency area of the kick at the same time as playing with a compressor placed on the drum kit bus can be very effective when working out how to make your kick ‘voice’ the way you want. Punch is essential in both rock and dance genres.
The honk element of the sound is very important, as it really determines the character of the kick. If you remove everything at 350Hz from a kick, you’ll hear it become increasingly ‘dead’ or
‘solid’. A lot of old-school hip-hop and jazz/ vintage-type kick sounds have a lot of honk, so cranking up this element will help evoke these styles.