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I have heard several people mention they synthesize their own kicks and then use parts of samples (such as a snare rimshot to add as the attack of the kick) in order to make "clean" sounding drums. Sorry if this seems vague but would anyone care to help explain how to go about this process. Do you EQ, layer and use filters on the sample and how do you go about placing them as the attack/tail of a kick that you have already synthesized.

Read in a few different places about "unclean" samples that are highly processed already such as vengeance and deadmau5. Are these necessarily bad to use? Can they be EQ'd, compressed and layered to sound good, clean and phat in the mix still?

New to the forums, appreciate any responses. lots of good info here.

try all of em... see what sounds good

personally on the rare occasion i synth kicks, its using 2 or 3 oscilators to make short bursts of noise with a quick decaying pitch envelope
sine/square for body and white/pink noise for the crunch over top.
Then compress, EQ, tape saturate and resample...... usually =/

You can get some gnarly weight and tone from synthesizing kicks. I tend to try and replicate the 808 kick, or just use and 808 sample(It is relatively clean sine wave sub) and layer some samples on top of it for the high to mid thump. EQ and compress for a bit of glue and you can get that thunder

thanks. appreciate the responses.

I will go about synthesizing a few kicks to see how they sound.

what samples do you typically use to layer the attack of your kick with? a snare rim? can someone direct me to a good sample pack with some "click" sounds that can be used for this? thx.

I bought that Goldbaby "When Alien Drum Robots Attack" sample pack a while ago, and it's got a folder of layering tools (clicks for kick drums, noise for snares etc). I don't use them much though, usually I just flick through my kick samples until I find one that fits, then filter out the bits I don't need.

love the name of that pack haha. will check it out. thanks