Here's what I know:
You will want to use the Heisenberg for a majority of these sounds, as it offers the most flexibility with pitch modulation. Pitch modulation is what allows the sounds to have the short click at the beginning of the sound. This is known as the Transient. A good drum sound has a well defined, and well incorporated transient in it that gives the sound a punch that it needs to fit in your mix easily.
Kicks:
The general idea of kick drums is to have a very quick movement from a high frequency to a low frequency. Most kicks are sine-wave based.
What you want to do is place a MIDI note in your timeline roughly the duration you want your kick drum length to be. Anywhere from 1/4 to 1/16 notes should do just fine in most scenarios. You also want it to be in the C-3 to B-3 range. I will explain this in a little bit.
Then you want to activate the Pitch Modulation setting in all active oscillators. You can change how the pitch is modulated in the Pitch window in the Envelopes region. What you want is a very short pitch attack (around 10-50 ms) with the Release, Sustain, and Decay semitone values being all the way down. You also want to set the semitone range for the pitch modulation all the way up to the maximum (36 Semitones).
Now, you might recall that I said the notes should be around C-3 to B-3. The reason for this is because of the fact that the range of semitones goes up by 36, AND down by 36, so the total range is 72 semitones. You want the notes to end up hitting the sub bass frequency range (below 60 Hz).
Everything you do to your kicks after this point is entirely up to you. You should have a clicky sound that has a deep bass afterwards.
Snares:
A snare needs 2 things: A fundamental tone (the resonant frequency in the snare) and white noise.
You'll want to use 1 - 2 oscillators that are just a sine wave. Any other wave will make it sound messy. Now you want to place your MIDI notes around the F-5 to F-6 range of notes. The reason for this is the same as the placement of the MIDI notes for kick drums. The only difference is that you want a tone rather than a bass.
You'll then want to use another oscillator to create the white noise. Set all of your phase modulations to the maximum setting on the desired oscillator, and you've got yourself a basic snare. Make sure your noise trails off for longer than your tone. You can use the Envelopes feature to achieve this.
The effects you want will include an EQ with a band that bumps up the fundamental tone (Curve is amazing for this), and reverb.
Hihats:
The most essential part of a hihat is white noise. Take an oscillator, and set the phase modulation to 100% on each box that corresponds to the oscillator. Do this to each active oscillator. You should have a purely noise based sound with little to no tonality to it. Changing the waveforms of the oscillators can assist in achieving this.
Just like with each other sound, you want to modulate the pitch with a very quick attack. The higher the pitch range, the more clicky the sounds become.
Afterwards, you will want to put some reverb, and an EQ that boosts the treble range on your sound. This creates a ringing similar to how an organic hihat sounds.
Extra:
There is an incredibly informative, and helpful video that I found that should help you if you are wanting to learn drum synthesis yourself.
- Punchy Drums with Operator by Au5: (link is only visible to registered users)
This video goes over how synthesizing drums works with Ableton stock plugins, but the processes can easily be applied to Audiotool.
Final Note:
I have an album of demo tracks that showcase my own thought processes for drum synthesis. You can remix all of them so that you can see how I made the sounds. (link is only visible to registered users)
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Wow this is alot of info i never knew i will try it out but i need to learn it too
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This is the most helpful guide on AT I've read so far! Thank you.
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I also reccomend using waveshaper on snares. Anything from light saturation to hard clipping can help shape sounds. Lately, I've been really interested in cross-over distortion. (link is only visible to registered users)
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Yeah, I can make a project. I'll do it later today if I have any time, then I'll put a link up here.
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Cool guide. I actually learned an alternate way of making hi hats a while ago:
If you filter 4 to 6 harmonically unrelated square waves and layer them with your white noise, you can get a more metallic sounding hat. This is the same strategy that many of the old analog drum machines used, including the TR-808 and the Boss Dr-110. Just make sure you play around with it for a while; tuning it can be hard, and you don't want your hi hats sounding cheap and cheesy like mine did when I attempted this experiment over a year ago. Here's a table of potential frequencies you could use to tune your square waves (listed in Hz): (link is only visible to registered users)
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Wee, you missed one big thing, especially with snares, using white noise as the base creates a much more organic touch to the overall completion of the sound, not introducing white noise can result in loss of frequencies if not properly modulated. But, I will listen to some of these demos and see your method
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This is SO helpful
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I have to get a midi keyboard but so far i get what your trying to tell me...kinda XD
i thinking i am learning more about it but i want to what is the short pitch and all of that for a trap kick sound?