A sample-free kick drum synthesizer. You shape a kick the way kick tools let you think about one: how its pitch falls, how its level falls, how much body and sub it has, how sharp the click on top is, and how hard it is driven. Kicker comes with 24 factory kicks to start from.
The idea
A synthesised kick is mostly two curves. The pitch starts high and drops fast to a low note, and that sweep is what makes it sound like a struck drum rather than a bass note. The level rises, holds briefly and decays. Kicker gives you both curves directly, then layers a short punch, a sub oscillator for weight and a filtered noise click for the beater, and runs the whole thing through a drive stage and an output clipper.
Every hit is repeatable: the same settings, note and velocity give the same kick every time. Velocity changes more than volume, too: harder hits get a brighter click and more energy after the drive.
Controls
- Pitch: Start and End frequencies of the sweep, Drop (how long the fall takes) and Curve (its shape). MIDI note tracks pitch lets the keyboard transpose the kick chromatically instead of every key playing the same drum.
- Amplitude: Attack, Hold, Decay and Curve of the level envelope, up to four seconds long.
- Body: Wave (sine, triangle or rounded square), Tone (a filter on the body), Punch (a short harmonic kick at the front) and Sub.
- Click: Amount, Length and Color of the noise transient.
- Drive: amount and Shape (Soft, Hard or Fold).
- Output: Clip, a final bounded clipper, and Level.
The panel draws the pitch and level curves from the current settings.
Getting started
Play Kicker from a MIDI keyboard, pads or a drum pattern; each note is a one-shot, and releasing the key does not cut the tail. Up to eight kicks can ring at once.
The presets are grouped into five families: Tight, Club, Acoustic, Sub and Experimental. Good first stops are Foundation (the default), Short Punch, Deep Club, Warehouse, Round Eight, Sub Drop, Dry Studio, Felt and Broken Speaker.
Kicker is an original design. Its presets and audition sounds are its own, not copies of another product's factory content.
