The problem with using sampled drum sounds is that we are largely stuck with the tone and character of the sampled sound. This can be a significant limitation for electronic drum sounds, preventing us from moulding the sound to fit the track we’re producing, and offering few ways to tweak and modulate the sound for expressive variation.
The solution is to use synths to create electronic drum sounds. It is important, when building an entire drum kit this way, to use a synth that’s easy on the host system, thereby allowing numerous instances of the synth to be loaded – one for each drum sound. The processing efficiency of BLEASS Monolit makes it a perfect solution!
A classic analogue kick sound starts with a sine wave, so turn down all of OSC 1’s waveforms, and turn up OSC 2’s output. Ensure the WAVE dial is turned fully to the left (anticlockwise) so that it produces a pure sine wave.
The AMPLITUDE envelope needs to produce a punchy, percussive response. This means an instant or near-instant attack and a fast decay with no sustain.
Instant attack can create a “clicky” sound. If you don’t want this then increase the attack slightly – 2-4ms should do it. Also, the decay time can be honed to fit the music – shorter for higher tempo tracks, longer for slower tracks.
It’s possible to use either a low-pass or a high-pass filter for analogue kicks – when using high-pass, a high resonance can be used to create a strong, low-frequency focus in the sound. However, in our example we’re going to use a low-pass filter (the left-most option shown in Monolit’s FILTER section) to give an overall fatter sound. A steep filter slope will give the best results, so be sure to enable the filter’s “2x” mode. The filter cutoff frequency should be set quite low with a relatively strong resonance. Given that, so far, we only have a sine wave sounding, don’t expect the filter to have a powerful effect.
The initial transient of the sound is accentuated using a fast envelope to modulate the overall pitch and the filter cutoff frequency. Set this up using the ASSIGNABLE EG – typically, this should be shorter and punchier than the AMPLITUDE envelope. Map the envelope to both PITCH and FILTER CUTOFF. Adjust the ASSIGNABLE EG’s AMOUNT dials until you hear a sound that you like. Increasing or decreasing the filter resonance will impact the prominence of the transient, so be sure to experiment with this too.
For a boomier sound, try increasing the filter’s DRIVE setting. You can also add an edgier, more pitched character to the sound by adjusting OSC 2’s waveform towards a triangle wave, or mixing in a triangle wave from OSC 1.
