Still pretty new to kick design. Been using samples alot but my basic tweaking would just be eqing and compressing if needed. Been playing around with sonic academy's kick too! Gotten pretty good results especially when needing to tune the kick!

I learned to do kick synthesis yesterday. I use Serum and some basic sinewaves + a bit (read: a lot) of distortion/saturation. I'm currently going for a Sagan/Losco style trap sound so being able to play different notes with my kick/808 helps a lot.

Serum has a very nice wavetable called Analog_BD_Sin, which is basically sinewaves with a bit of harmonic colouring. I modulate the pitch of this oscillator with one of the LFO's (so i can lock it to the tracks tempo) to get that sweet punch and thump, and then i add a noise oscillator and modulate it in the same fashion to get some click if i'm feeling frisky.

I call my drumkit the Frankykit (for Frankenstein), I tend to re-use it most of the time as a bit of a signature sound.


I use EQ isolation to pick out the different parts of the drum (see my attached hertz chart)... so, I may take the punch from that one, the click from this other one, etc. 


It's a fair amount of work to do it this way, mostly because you have to keep trying your drum sounds in realistic situations to get a proper feel for how it will work.  It took me quite a few iterations to fix my kit up because it wasn't subtle enough... but I'm pretty happy with where it is now.

Am I the only one that thinks tuning a kick (apart from big room or trap kicks) is pointless? Like, I understand the reason, but for me keeping the kick tuneless makes it just a punch, rather than another melody in a way

I can never get kicks to sound the way I want through layering. I usually find a sample with the transient and highs that I like the most, and then find a kick with the lows that I like the most. then I eq them together but they always seem "disconnected" from each other no matter how I eq them. does anyone have any advice on fixing this/getting better at layering kicks?

There's a very simple yet efficient method for always getting perfect kicks. It requires a little bit of preparation but it's easy and it's worth it.

1. Pick out some of your favourite kicks from whatever sample pack you're using. Or snatch the kicks of your favourite songs if possible.

2. Filter out all the high content of the kicks. Listen to the character of the kick and look at the waveform to get the pitch and length right, then use a synthesizer with a sine wave quickly dropping 3 or 4 octaves. Make one for each kick. Adjust the envelopes to get closer to your reference kicks.
What you need to do next is bounce each synth patch out into audio samples of different pitch (d, f, g, and a are usually best). Now you have awesome kick bodies for pretty much any track. Save them in a dedicated folder.

3. Get some top layers. Acoustic kicks, hihats, white noise bursts, various kinds of clicks, pops and knocks. High pass them and save in a dedicated folder.
You can also make really great clicks with simple FM synthesis.

4. Mixer presets. Make a specific mixer preset for your top kicks, with some saturation, short wide subtle reverb, and compression.

5. Time to use these things. Before your mixdown, replace your placeholder kick with the kick body that fits the best. Then start stacking a couple of top layers. EQ and compress to taste. Make your perfect kick in a few minutes.

Each time you finish a kick, save the complete kick to another dedicated folder. And also bounce a high passed version for your top layer folder.
After using this method on a few tracks, you'll have built up a collection of really good composite layers that can be used in almost any track. It becomes really fast and easy after a while.

I've tried it all... from using a kick straight out of a sample pack, to hand-creating my own using white noise / FM / Kick audio content and topping & tailing. Recently i purchased Kick from Sonic Academy / Nicky Romero. I have not yet used it to any effect, I haven't had the chance, but i am eager to. I feel like my kicks could use more personality.

If you do spend time in the area of "I want to recreate that drum/snare by Noisia/Koan/Prydz/Ford/Xilent", then you'll be inspecting some incredible audio. The high frequency content they add in the first transient is such a huge part of the magic, it can make your head spin. This is a very clever art form.

Sample packs like Leviathan and VR can take you so far, but you will fall prey to standard sample pack fatigue. I tend to avoid these for that reason *except* drums like kick, snare etc... You can use them if you want, but there's no room to do parallel compression on them, or to do just about anything to them without distortion. These are finalized, finished sounds that take away any flexibility you may want. Still, these are good tools to making your own, as companies like Black Octopus are wizards in their own right and know how to make punchy, attractive drums.

I've spent some time and $ at WarpAcademy with Vesper's tuts on creating your own drums. Incredible information there, and an insight into the industry I never thought i would get. Vespers is up in BC where Black Octopus is (And Monstercat, etc...) and they have some level of interaction, so the info he gives about those experiences is priceless.