I’d say it’s 50/50 song/melody/hook vs sound/production.
Maybe you should colab with someone who has great production and sound design chops and you can work in the song / chords /!melody.
You don’t have to do it all yourself.
Is there a course to explain what the hell everyone is talking about? I.e. what nodes are? What the different pitches indicate in relation to the actual pitch of the kick and which is important and why? I’m lost, I feel like I’m at a conference for NASA engineers who already understand space physics discussing the advantages plutonium based radiation quirks in the sratum layered omniphere. How does the layman get a grip? In short, I just want to use this plugin for all my kicks but do not have an engineering degree.
The PDF manual which is accessible from Kick 2 's GUI menu is a good place to start to get more familiar with some terms and features of the plug-in. Honestly we all skip manuals ( at least most of us I believe ) but when it’s not something like 500 pages to learn about your DAW, I think it worth the reading.
In case of Kick 2 it’s only 17 pages long and is a good place to start and getting reference for the GUI & features.
Next to that there’s the walk-through video that you’ve been watching and you might want to get back to it several times, there’s nothing wrong with that and again that’s also where reading the manual would be very complimentary.
Then you can dive more into it watching those 2 other courses :
-
Tech Tips Volume 26 ( Special Kick 2 )
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Assimilating Kicks in Kick 2 with Phil Johnston
I think what’s really important is how a kick works ( or not ) within each track and what’s the relationship between the kick, the bass line and other audio elements of your track. There’s also a correlation between music genres using specific kicks, like Techno using a lot of 909 type of kicks, Hip-Hop using more 808 type of sound for example.
It comes down to pitch, length and tonality of the kick in the end, any “decent” kick preset whether it’s a sample or a plug-in preset will sound good on it’s own or with very few other audio elements but might sound completely wrong when adding other elements and the relationship between Kick & Bass ( especially ) is key point to get a good mix foundation. Many producers will tell you that they start with a basic kick to get things going and develop ideas but then they will replace it and make adjustments later on.
Here’s another interesting course to check out IMO but again, watch this at your own pace, come back to it several times, it’s part of the music production learning process, there’s a lot to grab, it comes with time & practice and the parts of the puzzle will soon make sense and reveal the all picture at some point. Nothing wrong to feel overwhelmed with terminology and techniques you grab from tutorials 
- Mixing Kick and Bass with Protoculture
Thank you for these helpful and informative replies - and dont I feel stupid not having read the manual as first step 
Will dive in. Guess some tutorials act as visual manuals, I think video manuals might also be a good idea from manufacturers as the visual speeds things up. Appreciated.
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thx nice
thank you for explanation
Nice!
Thank you for such an informative walkthrough video. Definitely looking forward to trying this plugin.
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Well explained
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Good overview and walkthrough
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Great tutorial
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Nice plugin! It really helps you to fine tune your kicks in real time, that’s a huge time saver!
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the Best VST
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kick it
Great tutorial!
Nice!
nice
Lots of nice new features in this version.
Very usefull Features…