Does this mean that most people don't compress the kick? I find it very difficult to get a good bite without compressing it, even if I sample direct from a really good kick on a vinyl. Whether that's because I'm losing some of the quality when I sample I'm not sure, but I can't get a professional sound without adding compressions, then (tiny amount of) distortion and reverb.

oh yeah i forgot to mention that i have compressed my kicks before!

if sound is native..like 909 then i compress..but if kick is ready made..then i dont copress it.. becouse it's 99% sure allready compressed

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I prefer to use samples. Synthesizing kicks for every track makes me kinda tired. In Fruity Loops, the "pogo" knob in the sample editor helps pretty much with kicks if you want to soften or harden them a little.

Sometimes I use Rhythms BD which is a pretty cool Bass Drum synthesizer.

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I usually take two (sometimes) three kick samples and layer them - tweaking until it's just right - just what everyone else said. for me it's mostly hit or miss, though. I haven't found a tried-and-true way yet of getting a great kick, but usually with some persistence and a bit of tweaking I get a great sound.
I usually do a touch of compression, but not that much. One of my friends told me to do the bass and the kick together - haven't tried that yet, though.

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I replied to a similar thread a while back HERE

This is my way of producing decent punchy kicks:

I tend to layer two kicks - a punchy kick coupled with a subish kick to make it breath a little and add depth, (use the in and out dials - ‘precomputed effects‘ in the channel settings on a sample instance in FL). These vary the amount of volume either at the start or end of the sample - very helpful! You have to be very careful when you choose your kicks when you layer them. You can’t choose any old kicks. What happens is the two bass frequencies of the kicks cancel each other out resulting in a dip (rather than a tapered waveform) which sounds mashy and real crap! When you've got a nice tapered waveform kick you can add rim shots which add a little punch or add a hi hat to give it that ‘tiss’ sound at the start of the kick (G&M Project style).

I use that cheeky little plugin in FL Studio called 'Fruity Blood Overdrive'! My advice to anyone programming kicks is not to overdrive a kick sample too much because the kick starts to sound 'skwishy' (pardon the expression) and you lose the punchness.

Generally that’s how I program kicks, basically explained in a nutshell! Sometimes I layer 5-6 different samples and render them many times to get a kick I like so, patience is a virtue!

Last edited by retiro on Aug-18-2005 at 18:16

I always start from a raw kickdrum sample I can find, either on the net or from a sample cd. Then I process it in GoldWave, getting rid of all unnecessary noise and artefacts. I also make sure it is saved as mono.

That's all there is too it on my side. I RARELY ever layer kicks, because I don't want the sound to become unstable inside my sequencer. I sometimes has some phase cancellations because of it. Of course, sometimes I did make a completely new kick out of a couple outside FL Studio (GoldWave once more).

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Battery is nice because you can layer the kicks and preview them...that way in a quickness you'll know what will work and what won't.

909 boom + real drum sampled from a disco record....

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Slightly off-topic, but is it necessary to have the snare in mono too? I think I've heard tunes when the snares are deliberately in wide angle stereo - this doesn't have a negative effect when it's pressed or anything does it (ie. like spreading the bass makes the needle skip)?

I still find I have to compress the samples even if they're from another tune in order to get a good drum sound that cuts through the rest of the instruments. Ah well, whatever works I guess.

KICK AND SNARE ALWAYS MONO!!

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