Programming a bass drum on synth

Alas, I don’t have the expertise to train you in creating some interesting bass drum sounds on a synth, but Ki Gray has written a useful piece in the American Chronicle giving some suggestions for doing just that.

He intros:

One of the most overlooked and powerful tools for creating percussion sounds in this modern age of soft samplers, emulators, and other sophisticated tools is the humble subtractive analog synthesizer. Learning how to generate exciting drum sounds also takes a lot of the mystery out of creating other percussive sounds, such as basses and plucked-string type sounds, as well as providing an exciting way to personalize your music.

First, let’s make a basic kick drum type sound. Most any analog or virtual/soft analog synth with one or more of the following will suffice: An oscillator,preferably with a sine wave generator, a resonant filter, a white noise generator, and an envelope (that preferably can be routed to the filter as well as the amplifier). With these simple parameters a wide range of percussion can be achieved.

Continued below...

Well worth a read, with plenty of experimentation on your favourite synth.

(Via American Chronicle)