Progressive trance kick drum

[chk071]

The more I pile the processing onto homemade kicks the more I end up bitterly disappointed. For me the best approach, and probably the one Armin uses, is to find the best samples you can and experiment with layering.

According to some videos i watched from him, he has about 20 or so kick drums he frequently uses. So, yeah, it's samples, probably either from sample libraries, or sampled from tracks.

I'm not an expert, but, the best kick drums i heard so far were in the Vengeance Essential Club Sounds packs. Maybe there's something in one of those which is close.

[Zexila]

According to some videos i watched from him, he has about 20 or so kick drums he frequently uses. So, yeah, it's samples, probably either from sample libraries, or sampled from tracks.

Here maybe, around 2 minute
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5C3tCufcnQ

[chk071]

That's the one.

[Zexila]

Sometimes just the touch of bitcrusher on kick (also on bass) make wonders, 24 bit depth with just a bit of downsampling (x3 works the best IMO), amount of drive and type of distortion to taste, Logic/Cubase stock bitcrusher could do the job perfectly or CMT Bitcrusher freebie.

[javarisdsp]

Usually drum samples have details that make each one of them truly unique, beyond what is easily in our control (envelope, layering, EQ). Most modern electronic kicks have some well-chosen hi-hat or transient layer to excite and provide some 'real world' complexity over the top of the synthetic boom/zap sounds that dominated early trance etc

What I want to know is what specialised tools exist to analyse drum samples. An FFT spectrogram isn't good enough because the fine-grained time details usually have more going on than what can be recognised as sustained frequencies (other than the boom)

[Ari-S]

What I want to know is what specialised tools exist to analyse drum samples. An FFT spectrogram isn't good enough because the fine-grained time details usually have more going on than what can be recognised as sustained frequencies (other than the boom)

It might sound silly, but I'd just analyse by looking at the waveform. You can see the way the envelopes are shaped, how the transients behave, how the low-end behaves (useful for kicks), and a lot more.

[BURN-ADDiCT]

The more I pile the processing onto homemade kicks the more I end up bitterly disappointed. For me the best approach, and probably the one Armin uses, is to find the best samples you can and experiment with layering.

According to some videos i watched from him, he has about 20 or so kick drums he frequently uses. So, yeah, it's samples, probably either from sample libraries, or sampled from tracks.

I'm not an expert, but, the best kick drums i heard so far were in the Vengeance Essential Club Sounds packs. Maybe there's something in one of those which is close.

two packs I've brought and never regreted are Leviathan 2 and Wicked Drums (both sold by blackoctopus-sound.com).

After purchasing these, I quickly realized that even when you have great sounding, HQ sample packs, you still might not be able to make them shine in your song.

Maybe a bit more time spent learning to mix songs would allow those stock samples (or homemade kicks) to glow in your music. I'm not promoting laziness like saying that you just put the kick in there without effort in processing, but I mean that maybe looking too hard to replicate a sound (or kick) that's mainstream or working for big producers might be a waste of time compared to honing the skill of good mixing.
just my 2 cents.