Instruments
Free online kick drum designer
Two kicks can sit at the same pitch and the same volume, and one of them still holds a room while the other disappears into the mix. The difference is almost never the level. Build a kick here from its parts and hear each part move on its own.
Try it
- Hit Loop 4/4 and leave it running. Every judgement below is easier inside a pulse than on a single hit.
- Cycle the four genres without touching anything else: House, Techno, Organic House, Afro House. Each one loads its own tempo too.
- Go back to House. Drag Amp Decay up towards where techno sits and listen to how much more of the bar the kick now occupies.
- Take Click down to zero, then back up. That layer is what survives on a laptop speaker, where the fundamental barely reproduces at all.
- Push Drive past halfway and watch the spectrum panel fill in above the fundamental. When it sounds like yours, Export .wav.
What to listen for
Tune sets the note the kick lands on. Pitch Decay decides how fast it falls to that note, and that fall is what your ear reads as punch: shorten it and the kick hits harder without getting louder. Amp Decay decides how much of the bar the kick takes up, and it separates a house kick from a techno kick more than any other single control. The waveform panel shows you the shape, the spectrum shows you where the weight actually sits.
Body 150Hz is a peaking filter, not a tone knob. Positive values thicken the region just above the fundamental, which is what makes a kick feel warm on small speakers. Negative values scoop it, which is how a techno kick leaves a hole for the bass to sit in. The BPM field beside the loop button changes with the genre on purpose: a kick that sits perfectly at 121 can smear into the next beat at 138, and you only hear that at the right tempo.
This tool is one part of the picture. Electronic Music Production for Beginners covers the rest.