THE PERFECT BASSLINE
Dave Clews gets funky with the backbone of your track
While the original rhythm boxes of legend were based on analogue synthesis, and their successors on sampling, the modern sound designer has far more sophisticated tools at their disposal. Obviously, sample-based drum plugins are numerous – FXPansion's BFD, Toontrack's Superior Drummer and other similar tools seek to provide the most realistic experience. However, sample-based drums come at a cost. Even sounds that short can take up vast amounts of space on your hard drive, since the only way to ensure authenticity is to sample a range of hits at varying velocities for each drum. Of course, this is part of the sales pitch: more and bigger samples is the mantra of the commercial sample industry. Yet no matter how many times you sample a drum, the individual samples will be static and will require some external method to change that fact.
Synthesis, even now, offers many possibilities that veer from the analogue beat box. Take FM synthesis. Unfairly maligned as sterile, FM (frequency modulation) synthesis can produce perc sounds of stunning authenticity. Clever FM patching enables dynamic timbral variance, and a good FM synth has enough operators (oscillators) to craft densely layered, expressive sounds.
Convincing electronic percussion requires convincing performance, and the synthesis method known as physical modelling aims to emulate this. Physical modelling uses mathematical models of each generating element of a sound, each reacting specifically to dynamic input. Sounds are made up of ‘exciters' and ‘resonators'. Resonators are simulations of, say, a taut drum head or a hollow wooden shell. An exciter is that which excites both into action – a drum stick or palm smacking the skin, for example. A good physical model of an exciter allows variation of the exciter's strength and even the material from which it is made. A resonator will include parameters for material, size, stiffness and other things that affect the reaction to the exciter. Modelling allows you to create entirely new yet very real-sounding percussion instruments.