Kick Drum

What is the easiest way to determine the pitch of a kick drum? Is is just hitting a note w/ a synth and matching the kick to the synth note? Side note: I ran a kick sample through mixed in key and it gave me a pitch for the kick. Is this accurate or no? Thanks!:smiley:

a kick drum is a normally created with a pitch bend Sine wave (for the most part)… sometimes it will rest on a low pitch and a lot of the time wont.



808s have a distinctive bottom pitch whereas 909s and lotas of other house , trance kicks dont.



I would do it all by ear… i never think “is this kick the same pitch as the bass” I think “does this kick sound right with the bass”



Its more than just the pitch that will determine if a kick “fits” with the bass. It can be attack, decay, punchlines, weight, tonal quality etc.

That’s a good answer Phil. A lot of the time before I was spending time deliberating whether a particular kick was in key with the bassline. Or whether the kick should be on the root note of the key I was working in. Now, I tend to think as you said “does this sound right?”.