Kick Designer Rack
Instrument Rack that synthesises a kick from three chains — Operator body, Drum Sampler transient, noise click — with macros for pitch envelope, decay, click, drive, rumble send and tone.
A kick is three events that happen in the first 60 ms: a pitch drop, a transient, and a click. This rack gives each one its own chain so you can dial them separately and then glue them with Drive. The body is a synthesised Operator sine with a steep pitch envelope — no sample, so it retunes cleanly to your set’s key. The transient is a Drum Sampler one-shot (any kick sample you like, cut to 30 ms), and the click is filtered noise. Six macros cover what actually changes between genres: Pitch Env for the knock, Decay for the tail, Click for top-end definition, Drive for density, Rumble send for the techno hall tail, and Tone as a single tilt. It covers deep techno, industrial, hard techno, dubstep, DnB and house; the Variations section changes the defaults per genre.
Layout
How it's built
- Empty Instrument Rack, four chains: Body, Transient, Click, Rumble send. Set every chain’s key zone to C1–C1 (Key tab, drag the zone to one note) so other notes do nothing — this keeps the kick safe inside a Drum Rack pad later.
- Body: Operator, algorithm 1, Osc A sine at 0 dB, Coarse 1, Fine 0. Global Transpose −24 so C1 lands around 32 Hz as the resting frequency — that is the sustaining tone of a techno kick, lower than you think. Voices 1, Retrigger on.
- Pitch envelope (in Operator’s global Pitch section): Pitch Env amount +36 st (starts three octaves up), Initial 100%, Peak 100%, Time 45 ms. Amp envelope A 0 ms, D 400 ms, S 0, R 50 ms. Operator LFO off. This is already 80% of a kick.
- Saturator after Operator: Soft Sine, Drive 6 dB, Soft Clip on, Output −4 dB. Then EQ Eight: low cut 12 dB/oct at 30 Hz, bell +2 dB at 60 Hz Q 1.0, bell 0 dB at 2.5 kHz Q 0.8 (the Tone macro will move both bells).
- Transient: Drum Sampler with a short acoustic or 909-style kick sample. Start at the first transient, Decay 30 ms so only the attack survives, Pitch −3 st, filter LP at 6 kHz, and the Punch effect at 40%. Then EQ Eight: low cut 24 dB/oct at 150 Hz so this chain adds no body of its own.
- Click: Operator, Osc A waveform Noise, amp envelope A 0, D 4 ms, S 0, R 2 ms. Operator filter band-pass at 3 kHz, resonance 30%. Utility −12 dB. Velocity zone 64–127 so ghost kicks have no click.
- Rumble send: Operator (sine, Transpose −24, A 0, D 200 ms) into Hybrid Reverb set to Algorithm Dark Hall, Decay 1.8 s, Dry/Wet 100%, Low Cut 30 Hz. Then Auto Filter LP 24 dB at 160 Hz, then Compressor with sidechain input from the Body chain (choose the rack’s own chain in the sidechain selector), ratio 8:1, attack 0.1 ms, release 120 ms, threshold −30 dB. The rumble ducks on every hit and swells between hits.
- Chain volumes: Body 0 dB, Transient −9 dB, Click −12 dB, Rumble −inf (macro opens it).
- Macro 1 Pitch Env: Body Operator Pitch Env amount Min 0, Max +48 st; Pitch Env Time Min 20 ms, Max 90 ms. Both on one knob: more drop also takes longer, which is how real drum tuning feels.
- Macro 2 Decay: Body Amp Decay Min 150 ms, Max 900 ms; Rumble Hybrid Reverb Decay Min 0.8 s, Max 3 s.
- Macro 3 Click: Click chain volume Min −inf, Max −6 dB; Drum Sampler Punch Min 0%, Max 80%.
- Macro 4 Drive: Body Saturator Drive Min 0 dB, Max 20 dB; Transient EQ Eight low pass frequency Min 6 kHz, Max 12 kHz (so the transient brightens as the body saturates — one knob reads as “harder”).
- Macro 5 Rumble: Rumble chain volume Min −inf, Max −8 dB.
- Macro 6 Tone: Body EQ Eight bell gain at 60 Hz Min +4 dB, Max −4 dB (inverted: Min higher than Max is allowed in the mapping browser) and bell gain at 2.5 kHz Min −4 dB, Max +4 dB. The knob is a tilt: left is dark and heavy, right is thin and punchy.
- Right-click Pitch Env and Decay → Exclude Macro from Randomization. Randomizing those changes the kick’s tuning relationship to the sub; everything else is fair game for the dice.
- Store Macro Variations: Deep (Pitch Env 35%, Decay 60%, Click 20%, Drive 15%, Rumble 50%, Tone 30%), Hard (60/35/70/80/20/65), Dubstep (50/30/60/40/0/50), House (25/40/50/20/0/55).
- Save as Kick Designer Rack. To use inside a Drum Rack, drop the whole rack on a pad; the C1-only zones mean the pad note is remapped by the Drum Rack’s receive note automatically.
Macro map
| Macro | Device.parameter | Min | Max | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pitch Env | Operator.Pitch Env amount / time (Body) | 0 st / 20 ms | +48 st / 90 ms | Knock = how far and how fast the pitch falls; coupling them keeps the drop musical. |
| Decay | Operator.Amp Decay (Body) / Hybrid Reverb.Decay | 150 ms / 0.8 s | 900 ms / 3 s | Tail of the body and tail of the rumble move together. |
| Click | Chain Click.Volume / Drum Sampler.Punch | −inf / 0% | −6 dB / 80% | Definition on small speakers; Punch adds sampled transient weight. |
| Drive | Saturator.Drive / EQ Eight.LP freq (Transient) | 0 dB / 6 kHz | 20 dB / 12 kHz | Density plus brightness = perceived hardness. |
| Rumble | Chain Rumble send.Volume | −inf | −8 dB | Techno hall tail that ducks under the hit. |
| Tone | EQ Eight bells 60 Hz / 2.5 kHz (Body) | +4 / −4 dB | −4 / +4 dB | Single-knob spectral tilt for quick fitting against the sub. |
Signal flow notes
Body
The pitch sweep IS the transient. A sine that falls through 300 → 32 Hz in 45 ms produces a broadband click at its start simply because frequency is changing faster than the ear can resolve a pitch. That is why you can get away with a sampled transient at −9 dB rather than louder.
Transient and Click
Rumble send
If the rumble chain pumps audibly against the sub bass, shorten the compressor release to 60 ms or lower the Hybrid Reverb decay. The rumble must sit under the sub, not fight it; see sidechain ducking.
Variations
- Deep / dub techno: Transpose −26 so the kick rests near 29 Hz, Decay 70%, Drive 10%, Click 15%, Rumble 60%. Replace Dark Hall with Hybrid Reverb Tides for a slower bloom. See deep techno and dub techno.
- Industrial / hard techno: insert Roar on the Body chain after Saturator (Serial routing, stage 1 Soft Sine, stage 2 Hard, Drive 10 dB) and map its Drive to the Drive macro too. Pitch Env 70%, Decay 30%, Tone 70%. Put Drum Buss on the rack output with Crunch 30%. See industrial and hard techno.
- Dubstep / 140: Decay 25% so the kick clears the sub by beat 2, Click 60%, Rumble 0. Add a second Drum Sampler chain with a short 808 snap, −6 dB, HP 200 Hz. See dubstep.
- DnB: Transpose −18 (rests near 50 Hz) because the sub occupies 30–45 Hz; Decay 15%, Pitch Env 55%, Click 80%, Tone 75%. Shorten Drum Sampler Decay to 15 ms. See drum and bass.
- House / garage: replace the Transient Drum Sampler sample with a 909 kick and let it play 120 ms (Decay macro mapping extended to the sampler’s Decay). Drive 20%, Rumble 0. See deep house and UK garage.
Performance notes
- Push: macros 1–6 fill the first bank. Rumble and Decay are the two you ride in a set; Pitch Env is the one you set at soundcheck against the room and then lock (Exclude from randomization already protects it from the dice).
- Automation vs macro: the drop into a section usually wants Rumble automated in the Arrangement; Click and Drive respond better to a hand on an encoder. In Session View, use Macro Variations per scene instead.
- Velocity: because the Click chain is velocity-zoned, the pattern itself shapes the sound: program a 16th-note ghost at velocity 40 before the downbeat and it adds body without click.
- Layering with a sampled kick: if you need a specific sample’s character, put it in the Transient chain and keep the synthesised Body; tune the sample with Drum Sampler Pitch so its ring matches the Operator rest note. See layering rules.
- CPU: the Hybrid Reverb in the Rumble chain is the only real cost. If you run three of these racks in a set, move the reverb to a return and map the Rumble macro to the chain’s send instead.
- Resample when done: once the kick is right for a track, resample it to a Drum Sampler so later changes to the sub rack can’t accidentally detune it. See resampling workflow.