Creating drum sounds – kicks that really hit

When it comes to creating kick drum sounds, there are two main types of kick sounds that you will create:

• The first type of kick is what we call a “generic” kick; this is a kick sound that can work with any production style because it simply is a well-rounded and balanced sound that fits with 808 basses, traditional bass guitars, and sub-bass noises.
• The second type of kick is what we call a “textured” kick. Textured kicks are drum noises that have a bit of attack to them, a specific sound that accompanies the underlying kick sound. Timbaland’s production catalog is full of textured kicks. They sound unique and are extremely creative in sound design nature. However, these need to be used properly to be able to fit within the bass range of certain frequencies. Certain textured kicks won’t gel sonically with certain 808 bass sounds, sub-basses, or bass guitars.

Let’s find a great FL Studio stock kick that already achieves a base of what we want.

Adding a generic kick

After going through FL Studio’s stock kick sounds, I have chosen Jung Kick. It offers a balanced and well-rounded starting place for creating a custom generic kick noise we can use in our productions. Let’s add it to our Channel Rack:

Figure 3.7: Browser | Packs | Drums | Kicks

Jung Kick has a good feel to it, it’s generic, and can fit into almost any type of track. The key to making this a go-to kick is giving it that heavy bottom you hear in modern production styles. Every producer needs a go-to generic kick with heavy bottom!

Now that we have loaded it into the Channel Rack, we are going to add this sound to the Mixing Channel slot 1:

Figure 3.8: Jung Kick channel routing | Mixer

Now, let’s proceed to add Fruity Parametric EQ 2 to the mixing channel of the kick. To do this, we will select slot 1 to add the plugin tool:

Figure 3.9: Mixer | slot 1 | insert plugin | Fruity Parametric EQ 2

As I discussed in Chapter 1, we want to give the stock kick sound a “noxx” boost by using the 2 key and moving it to approximately 114 hertz. This adds bottom weight to the lower frequency range of the kick and will make it shine.

Figure 3.10: Fruity Parametric EQ 2 | editing key slider 2

Now we want to add a little top to the bottom-mid range frequency. This additional technique will depend on the specific kick noise you use. As for Jung Kick, we want to add a little more punch to its mid-low range frequency. We do this by moving the 3 key to 219 hertz and making the EQ slightly tighter at 23%:

Figure 3.11: Fruity Parametric EQ 2 | editing key slider 3

Now to add Fruity Parametric EQ 2 to our Channel Browser for future use, we are going to export this file as a one-off in the Channel Rack directly into our Power User Drum Kit as we did in the Using and organizing the Browser and Channel Rack section of Chapter 1. To do this, we simply export the .wav file (wave sound) with the mixing plugin enabled as a single sound in the Playlist tool:

Figure 3.12: File | export .wav file | Power User Drum Kit

Great! We have now created a signature generic kick – simple, I know, but trust me, you only need one great generic kick to start building a great sound design library and signature sound.

Now that we have a baseline kick that you can use in almost every production you start, let’s dive into how to make textured kicks.

Adding textured kicks

Remember, textured kicks are nuanced, and only really work with specific types of production styles. I don’t recommend using them for every type of track, and encourage you to start your productions with your generic kick sound.

The key to textured kicks is layering top-end sound on top of your generic kick sounds to create a crispy or attack-led hit. This can be accomplished with numerous top-end sounds depending on what you want to accomplish with your sound design selection. I recommend starting with percussion sounds, things such as clicks, bells, or a specific snare sound. Remember – I’m giving you a formula. What you choose and how is what will make your signature sound unique.

Let’s go to the Channel Rack with our newly created generic kick from the Adding a generic kick section.

We are going to use the kick in the Channel Rack and then the mixing channel. This ensures that the Fruity Parametric EQ 2 mix is already active, so we don’t need to re-create the kick noise.

I’ve found Ambass Snare as a perfect top range to add on top of the kick to give it a textured feel:

Figure 3.13: Browser | Packs | Drums | Snares | Channel Rack

In the Channel Rack, we want to enable the kick on the one bar and add the snare on the one bar so that they play when you hit the space bar in sequence as a single sound, as seen in the red box in Figure 3.13.

Now, add your snare sound to the Channel Rack and add it to Mixing Channel slot 2, as seen in Figure 3.14:

Figure 3.14: Mixer | slot 2 | insert Ambass Snare

Add Fruity Parametric EQ 2 to the mixing channel into the snare sound channel:

Figure 3.15: Mixer | slot 2 | insert Fruity Parametric EQ 2

Now we are going to remove the bottom range of the snare so that it fits on top of the generic kick. This requires a bit of playing around depending on the sound – a general rule of thumb is to place slider key 1 at 52 hertz, at 68%:

Figure 3.16: Fruity Parametric EQ 2 | edit slider 1

Now that we have removed the bottom range of the mixing frequency, we are going to add some punch to the low-mid range:

Figure 3.17: Fruity Parametric EQ 2 | edit slider 3 | 127 hertz | 39%

Perfect! Now hit the space bar to hear what you have created. This is your first textured kick sound!

Adding more texture to kicks

This can be done by incorporating additional snare sounds and following a similar EQ technic, or by leveraging FL Studio’s mixing plugins to add more feel to the snare (the top end of your textured kick). We are going to add a second layer of texture to the kick to be spaced using the FL Studio delay spacer.

We are going to use the Fruity Stereo Spacer preset setting to widen the kick in stereo to give it a larger, special feeling:

Figure 3.18: Mixer | slot 2 | add Fruity Stereo Shaper

Perfect – now, we want to find and select the preset entitled Fruity Delay 2:

Figure 3.19: Fruity Stereo Shaper | preset selection | Delay setting

This will give the sound wave a spaced feel in the left and right headphones, increasing the range of the kick’s overall sound. It should be noted that this doesn’t work every time you fit it into a track because of competing bass sounds, but if you are creating kicks, this is a great way to get creative and build up a collection of usable sounds in the future.

Now, we have created a textured kick with stereo space!