good softsynth for making kick drum sounds

[zardoz677]

I am having a hard time finding kick drum samples that I really like. It seems that so many sample packs just come with kicks designed for loud dance music with a hard attack and lots of snap or sound effects. Myself, I really tend to like deep pop sounding or lp filtered more character-less kicks like you hear with artists like burial and flying lotus (check these guys out if you dont know what I mean).
I have been thinking that maybe I should get into making my own kicks so I guess I just wanted to ask what you think of this as an alternative to using samples and if you could recommend a good softsynth for such a purpose...

Thanks folks!

[KrEaTiV]

Maybe Beat Box Anthology is interesting for you ..... :

http://www.uvisoundsource.com/product_i ... ucts_id=53

Almost every drumsound you need in one plugin.
Lot of soft and characterfull sounds in there too - not only punching kicks and stuff.

OK, it´s not made to make your own kicks, but the sounds are very useful and you have some needfull FX
in there to manipulate your choosen sounds....


[btw: If you like it, I have one for sale ]

[dblondin]

I like a kick to have a subliminal presence - warm and punchy but low down in frequency and not attention grabbing. For software, Sonic Charge uTonic has worked well for me.

I also use Jomox MBase11, which is pretty nice if you don't mind doing it with hardware. It's a quirky device but it has quite a lot of flexibility and it's small enough not to get in your way.

[Ashe37]

I'm in the process of reviewing FXPansion's Tremor for Wusik Sound Magazine and I really like its capabilities.

[zardoz677]

thank you all very much for your suggestions. Those software drum machines look really cool. However to be honest I am pretty much happy with everything except for kicks.
Maybe this may be a better idea. Here two examples of strange kick sounds that I am sort of trying to strive for, perhaps you folks could tell me how you think these are made and maybe we could go from there...




- notice how this kick sounds all floppy in a way almost like hitting some sort of drum with a loose skin but then no sustain? Is this some sort of warped drum machine drum sample or something?



then the kick in this song, doesnt sound like the other one, but again it sounds unlike any of the drum machine samples I have. for some reason these kicks sound like real recorded sounds but not an acoustic kick drum.

Perhaps if you could share your thoughts on what you think I am missing here that would help me to determine what path to take in terms of synth vs sample vs actually recording something...???

[CS_TBL]

To most VSE visitors it'll be like a record on repeat, but I'd say 'FM8', simply because there're thousands of ways to shape your sound. If you dissect a bass drum into two aspects, the short snap and the deep tone, then there're these thousands of ways to create both of them. Especially the snap sound; a little extra feedback here, a slightly sharper decay envelope there, a little twist of the EQ in the effects section.. the options are endless. Surely there's a useful sound in there..

[griffin avid]

A minor reach on the theme, but De La Mancha has some nice plugs for cheap.

http://www.delamancha.co.uk/plugins.htm
Under instruments there are...
for kicks and Bass
subhuman $15
sub bass synth
2 Osc synth for deep subby basslines, kicks and drops

and samples you can manipulate once you find the right tone....
Impakter $24
vintage drum module
320 analogue vintage drum sounds packaged in a player with randomizing and effects for variation per loop and sound design

[dblondin]

Oh, ok. I like the sounds you are going for. I wouldn't try doing these with plugins though. I mean you could but you would be trying to emulate a real instrument, and a rather unique one, so it could be time consuming.

Perhaps this is not what you want but I'd just grab a microphone and start hitting big cardboard boxes, plastic storage crates, plexiglass windows, etc. Then run the sounds through a compressor and EQ to make them fatter and punchier. Flux Bittersweet could help you refine the attack transient.

I do a lot of foley recording at work and I've made the microphone one of my main tools for sound design. I go to junk yards and collect all this random c**p and I"m surrounded by it all day. For me, it would be counter-productive to emulate the sound of hitting such things with a plugin.

[zardoz677]

Oh, ok. I like the sounds you are going for. I wouldn't try doing these with plugins though. I mean you could but you would be trying to emulate a real instrument, and a rather unique one, so it could be time consuming.

Perhaps this is not what you want but I'd just grab a microphone and start hitting big cardboard boxes, plastic storage crates, plexiglass windows, etc. Then run the sounds through a compressor and EQ to make them fatter and punchier. Flux Bittersweet could help you refine the attack transient.

I do a lot of foley recording at work and I've made the microphone one of my main tools for sound design. I go to junk yards and collect all this random c**p and I"m surrounded by it all day. For me, it would be counter-productive to emulate the sound of hitting such things with a plugin.

YES! I like your thinking!
I do a whole lot of found percussion recording now and I love it! I also like to take such sounds from movies (doors closing, people flipping through papers etc) but the problem is the kicks!

Thats a good idea about fattening with a compressor though, I should try that since I found that hitting a box and tub didnt have much bass and then layering with an 808 just sounded like a noise layered with an 808. I think the key may lie in some sort of fattening or deepening of the sound via compressor or layering then somehow blending it with a transient shaper. I will have to check out this "flux bittersweet" as I have never ever heard of that.

I think we are getting somewhere now, so any other tips in this area would be really helpful.


*also thanks to everyones elses suggestions I will still look into these.

[ninja6485]

You could try burying a microphone, and then stomping on the ground above it / wack it with stuff. Set off those little "pop" firecrackers over it, etc.

[Hybrid88]

http://www.robpapen.com/punch.html

Maybe this could be what you're after?

[tekkentool]

Considering the requirement for multiple layered elements of a different construction I would probably agree and say Fm8 if you don't mind using FM.

For example Infected Mushroom use fm8 for their kicks.

[dblondin]

As you may have discovered, a lot of the low end energy gets lost in recordings. You hit a large resonant body and it creates this gut wrenching explosion that you feel throughout your body. Then you play the recording back and it sounds like a small thud. I think it's all about the post processing to bring the recorded sound to life as it sounded when you were there.

There are many tricks. For example, if you record at a very high sample rate and your mic has enough range - 96KHz or more - you can pitch sounds way down without making them sound muffled, provided there is some high frequency content in there to begin with. And the sounds just get bigger and and bigger. Sometimes I'll layer in a pitched down version an octave or two down, -6dB or lower in volume to help accentuate the low end. If you time stretch that low pitch version to match the length of the original sound, it's completely indistinguishable as a separate sound - it creates subharmonics mathematically linked to the original. This sort of stuff is insanely fun. I love trying to defeat the challenges of live recording.

Well l guess this topic has gone off course for the plugin section but I do think you're on the right track and an interesting one!

[zardoz677]

As you may have discovered, a lot of the low end energy gets lost in recordings. You hit a large resonant body and it creates this gut wrenching explosion that you feel throughout your body. Then you play the recording back and it sounds like a small thud. I think it's all about the post processing to bring the recorded sound to life as it sounded when you were there.

There are many tricks. For example, if you record at a very high sample rate and your mic has enough range - 96KHz or more - you can pitch sounds way down without making them sound muffled, provided there is some high frequency content in there to begin with. And the sounds just get bigger and and bigger. Sometimes I'll layer in a pitched down version an octave or two down, -6dB or lower in volume to help accentuate the low end. If you time stretch that low pitch version to match the length of the original sound, it's completely indistinguishable as a separate sound - it creates subharmonics mathematically linked to the original. This sort of stuff is insanely fun. I love trying to defeat the challenges of live recording.

Well l guess this topic has gone off course for the plugin section but I do think you're on the right track and an interesting one!

Thank! This info is of infinitely valuable to me seriously. One problem... I record into the computer a mixer that is 16 bit... Anyways Im going to try it anyways. So do you feel that layering it with a pitched down version of itself is better than layering with an 808 or just a thud kick? How about eqing, do you eq the two versions of the sample different like cutting lows in the normal version and boosting lows in the pitched down one?

Anyways I find this world of found percussion and organic sounds to be stunning. Ever since I heard Nine Inch Nails's the Fragile and now with Flying Lotus and Burial it seems like this has opened up a whole new aspect of music almost in a way that is defining an era.

Thanks again!

[dblondin]

By the questions your asking, I can tell you're going to be doing the right kinds of experiments. I wouldn't say there is a particular best practice for this sort of thing. I've had great experiences using 808 kicks and other times it's just been the wrong thing. Same with thickening samples by way of layers.

You can do a lot of that tweaking on the object itself. For example, I keep a pile of large wooden clamps for changing the acoustic qualities of things. If it resonates too much at some frequency I'll put a clamp on it and then it might sound different in some way. You can also combine objects, such as putting the the thing your hitting, like a plastic bucket, against a wall. Then you get some different resonances in there, deeper frequencies, or even an unexpected rattle from across the room that might work. It's surprising sometimes what you end up with.

I'm going to a sound design lecture that Chris Vrenna is doing at UW next week. I'm curious the things he may cover about recording and mastering drum sounds. If I learn anything related to your project, I'll report here.