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8. Helping 808 kick and bass coexist with amplitude envelope tweaks

1 If you’re layering a punchy kick drum with a melodic 808 bass tone to create a trap-esque kick and bass combo, you might find that the two sounds need a bit of work to gel. Here, we’ve got a punchy kick and 808 bass loaded into individual samplers, so we can adjust the volume envelope of each independently.

2 Open the 808 bass sampler’s amplitude envelope, then increase Attack to 20ms. As the ear struggles to hear timing differences less than 30ms apart, our kick and bass combo still sounds like one element, but with more separation. Changing the Attack slope to -50% increases the effect.

3 Tighten the kick by adjusting its amp envelope, too. A short Decay of 150ms, alongside minimum sustain and a fast release, gives a punchier kick sound. Setting the Decay slope to around -70% adds body back into the kick. We’ve used Ableton Live 10’s Sampler here, but these tips apply to other samplers, too.