Quick Tip: Kick Drum Eurorack Modular Synthesizer Patch Tutorial

Published on Feb 12, 2019 Perfect Circuit

"Here is a quick tip on how to make a kick drum with a eurorack modular synthesizer.

You will need:
- a trigger source (clock or sequencer)
- two envelope generators (snappy exponential ones)
- a VCO (voltage controlled oscillator)
- a VCA (voltage controlled amplifier)

The patch:
- trigger source to trigger input of both envelope generators
- envelope generator 1 output to VCA CV control
- envelope generator 2 output to VCO 1v/oct input
- VCO audio out to VCA audio input
- audio output of VCA is your kick drum

To start set the VCO pitch very low, even subsonic, use sine or triangle waves for mellow kicks and saws or squares for distorted sounding gabber kicks.

Tweak your envelopes to get countless variations of kick drums. Use more exponential envelopes for punchier drums, or add a little bit of attack to the VCA envelope to mellow out the attack of the drum. Attenuate the amount of the pitch envelope to go from lazer beam drum to a droning drum. Try a fast pitch envelope and a slow amplitude envelope for a long 808 style kick.

Modules used (left to right):
Malekko Varigate 4+: https://www.perfectcircuit.com/variga...
Make Noise Maths: https://www.perfectcircuit.com/make-n...
Intellijel Dixie 2+: https://www.perfectcircuit.com/intell...
Intellijel Quad VCA: https://www.perfectcircuit.com/intell..."

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