> Step by step

1. Synthesising a kick drum in Thorn CM

1

Let’s synthesise a kick using the Thorn CM synth. You can hear how it should develop with the tutorial files from FileSilo. On a new MIDI track, draw a 16th-long low F note on every beat of the bar. Load Thorn CM. In the synth’s Poly section, switch it from Poly to Mono, then change Osc 1’ s waveform to a basic Sine.

2

This deep, subby sine wave will form the foundation of our kick. But listen closely – notice how the sine’s front-end ‘click’ occurs inconsistently on some notes, but not others? That’s because the oscillator’s Phase Mode is set to Random ( Rnd), meaning that the sine’s phase changes each time a new note fires.

3

Click the Phase Mode dropdown and select Gate. The sine now retriggers from the start of its cycle every time. But that nice ‘click’ that some of the randomlyphased notes had is gone! Previously, the sine was starting at different points in its waveform; now, it’s consistently starting at the click-less beginning of the sine’s cycle each time…

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So, to shift the waveform’s ‘start point’, change Osc 1’ s Phase amount. At

25%, the sine starts a quarter of the way into its cycle, so we get that initial click every time. When synthesising melodic synth sounds, this type of click can be annoying, but for a kick drum, this gives its nose a pleasing ‘tick’.

5

A basic bass drum is taking shape. Time to add beefier harmonics with saturation – in Thorn CM, switch the Filter’s Mode to Dirty LP, then crank up Drive to around +18dB. Saturation greatly defines a kick’s timbre, so try out different drive flavours in your synth, or insert saturation plugins on the synth’s channel.

6

Play up and down the keyboard, and the kick’s pitch changes. Want pitch to remain at a fixed value? Deactivate Osc 1’ s KeyTrack button (the bottom-right keyboard icon). Now tune the kick’s body with Osc 1’ s Octave and Semitone controls – we pull Oct down to -2 to get back to our original pitch.