Beat Box: Weak Kicks in Your Sample Folder? Synthesize Your Own!

If you think the kicks in your samples folder on your hard drive are a little lacking, and no amounts of EQ or compression will bring them to life, check out this video. This tutorial is by Love Capacitor, and he demonstrates how to generate a kick from scratch in Ableton using two oscillators from the Operator synth (which comes with the full suite or is a $159 add-on). 

Adjust the envelopes so there is a short decay/sustain, and increase the pitch envelope a bit to give an up-front “thump”. Make sure you use the algorithm where each operator generates it’s own sound (as opposed to the default, where one operator modulates the next, which modulates the next, etc.)

One thing to keep in mind here is that he also tunes his kicks using the course/fine knobs on each operator, make sure you click “fixed” in order to be able to do this. He copies the parameters from operator/oscillator A to B. C and D are turned off. He uses specific frequencies to ensure the kicks match the key of the rest of the song; there are charts you can find online that show you which frequencies relate to each scale to help you tune your drum sounds!

To finish, he also applies some gentle compression and uses an auto filter to roll off the high end a bit.