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Yeh for me tuning is what really "locks" the kick into the track and I never really fucked around with tuning kicks for the first 8 years of producing which was a huge mistake.
People always told me to do it by ear but I just couldn't tell when it was on key 100%. The odd thing however is I can tell pretty fast when a kicks off key. I am just never sure tuning it by ear when its officially tuned right. It always use to seem to be off a few tones no matter how hard I tried.
Now I use FL's detect pitch regions, set the key and then just adjust in FL's piano roll. Last night I had a kick that was G#, a GREAT kick, also sounded great in the mix. Very huge sounding and had real nice transients/teeth that cut through the mix. But tuning back & forth it just never sounded pro and I couldn't set it right. The key of the track itself was G. I had no idea the kick was already that close to key. And doing it by ear I could not tell it was a sharp key. Once I have the mix set how I want, I always have to worry that the kick will be too far off key as it seems if I tune it more than 2-3 keys from its root it never sounds right. But this kick was not only great sounding off key, but it also only had to be tuned a half a semitone to get it on key. Once I moved it from G# to G I was like "WOW, *that* sounds professional FINALLY!" I just think tuning kicks is awesome because for year after year after year I layered kicks, went INSANE on equalizer settings, compression settings, even overdrive getting them to sound "right". And it turns out after all these years it really wasn't any of that shit but my kicks were just always off key. So yeh, I get excited like a little school girl now when I tune things, I just love doing it. But on the other hand when it comes to a lot of drum sounds I rarely mess with tuning. Unless its a fat perc sound that has some sort of dominating tone. Otherwise I guess I mostly just do it on my kicks, as I have found that is one thing that will definitely suffer if its not somewhat on key. And I also understand kicks are a mix of different keys, but there is still always a dominating pitch that FL is able to detect. And when I use that main pitch (which is usually right after the attack phase of the kick its the longest stable/nonchanging pitch region of the kick) my kicks always come out sounding perfect (at least in that specific mix which is all that matters).
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Sequencers: FL Studio 9XXL & Reason 3.
Main Synth Bass GTs - Pro-53, V-Station, Sytrus, Subtractor, Trilian, Blue, Sylenth & Z3ta.
Main Synth Lead/Pad GTs - Z3ta, Sytrus, Sylenth, Vangard, Albino & Nexus.
Main FXs GTs - Waves Plugins, Soundtoys, Volcano, FL Native FX.
Hardware - Truths, Echo Audiofire, Virus Snow, & Novation Xio Midi-Synth.
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