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.
This is a free online kick drum designer. Seven controls, four genre presets, and a .wav export you can drag straight into your DAW. Tune sets the fundamental, click and pitch decay shape the attack at the front, amp decay sets how long the tail rings, and drive adds the harmonics that let a kick survive a phone speaker. Turn on the 4/4 loop and you judge the kick in a rhythm, at the preset's own tempo, instead of in isolation.
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.
Questions
What makes a techno kick different from a house kick?
Mostly the tail and the drive. Load the two presets and compare the amp decay and the drive values: techno holds longer and pushes harder, house gets out of the way so the groove can breathe. The numbers are on screen, so you can copy them into your own kick.
Why does my kick disappear on laptop and phone speakers?
Because small speakers cannot reproduce the fundamental at all. What they play back is the harmonic content above it, which is what drive and click generate. Lower the tune, keep the drive, and check again.
Does it export MIDI?
No, it exports a .wav. A kick is a sound, not a note: what you want in your session is the audio file, dropped into a sampler on its own track.
What do I do with the file once I have it?
Drag it onto a Simpler on a track of its own, so the kick stays separate from the rest of the drum rack and you can process it alone.
This tool is one part of the picture. Electronic Music Production for Beginners covers the rest.