Creating electronic kick drum sound from scratch with UVI Falcon
Today we’re looking at creating some electronic kick drum sound from scratch, using UVI Falcon’s intuitive layers system.
If you’ve been following my tutorials you will probably know that I have recently fallen in love with UVI Falcon’s hybrid sampling and synthesis engine. It’s an incredibly vast environment capable of creating almost any sound imaginable. The power of UVI Falcon lies in the ability to create multiple layers within a single part, this allows you to split up elements like a kick drum sound into various pieces, such as the transient and the tail, and then apply different sound design techniques to fine-tune each element to fit perfectly.
In most forms of dance music the kick drum sound is arguably the most important aspect of the track, it’s the backbone that holds everything together and keeps the audience dancing. Being able to craft both the tone and transient response of your kick drum sound is a hugely beneficial skill, as it gives you the ultimate control over such an important element. You’re not at the mercy of a sample, that can produce unwanted issues when you transpose the pitch or warp the transient response.
Onto the techniques in the tutorial…
So the concept in today’s tutorial is to use two “keygroup” layers, one that creates the transient of the kick drum sound, with a very fast decay setting using one of UVI Falcon’s more advanced envelopes. Then a second layer creating the sub tone of the kick drum sound, again using the envelope we can use the attack setting to fade the sub tone in while the transient is fading out.
You’re not limited to using a synth layer as the transient, UVI Falcon also has the ability to use samples alongside synth layers to further bolster the punch of the transient. This is also a great way of quickly adding variation to the patch.
Check out the tutorial video for an in-depth walkthrough of the process:
