Kick Drum Synthesis

During our class using operator within Ableton, I generated a layered kick track which incorporated what we covered in class regarding filters and envelopes. I used a total of 5 tracks, 4 being the operator plugin with which I moulded the kick sounds.

The first of these layers consists of a shape driven sine tone, done with the filter cutting frequency at 10.8khz to remove clicks, with an single operator outputting a low-end frequency mixed to a 499Hz output, EQ’d and passed then through an Enphasor to create a clean rubbery tone to layer up onto of. As this bass kick layer will need to be quite clean to layer onto of successfully, the envelope filters were used to drop it’s level after the initial hit : using a low decay and release time.

To answer to this beat, I added in a higher off-beat tone to create an answering rhythm, this used a much longer decay time (61.9ms) to push it through the mix, as well as the i-built operator LFO to create movement. The third layer consisting of a double-speed kick to add to the pumping effect, this required a notch filter to reduce boom and allow for the other elements of the mix to cut through, as the repeated low end hits created lots of mud without. Using the operator LFO again for this, I added in a Sine wave at a rate of 64.51hz at the maximum amount to really try highlight the rising tones through each of the hits.

As well as these kick layers, the operator tool was also used to add the under-layer to the snare, another utilising the LFO rising tones, this took reverb and rubber band echo to set into the mix sonically, and was finally layered with the ride and snare from the soft saturation audio inserts, adjusted accordingly in pitch, with an increase on decay to add transients into the space after each hit to tie together the higher sonic elements.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eumYbZs_idgwhRijWN19UX5-9WfXjoqS/view?usp=sharing