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396 Chapter 24 Ultrabeat
Creating Drum Sounds in Ultrabeat
The following section covers a few specific sound creation tips. Please take the time to
explore the vast and complex possibilities available to you in Ultrabeat, using the
following programing tips as a starting point. You’ll discover that there is hardly a
category of electronic drum sound that Ultrabeat can’t create easily.
Note: In Ultrabeat’s Settings > Factory > Tutorial Settings folder, you will find a drum kit
called Tutorial Kit. This drum kit contains all drum sounds discussed in this tutorial. It
also includes a drum sound called Standard Tut(orial), which is a default set of neutral
parameters that provide an excellent starting point for many of the following examples.
Creating Kick Drums
Electronically produced kick drum sounds are primarily based on the sound of a deeply
tuned sine wave.
To program a kick drum in Ultrabeat:
1 Load the Standard Tutorial setting.
Note that Oscillator 1 is in Phase Oscillator mode.
2 Find a suitably tuned pitch in the lower octaves by soloing the bass drum along with
other important tonal elements of the song (a bass or pad sound, for example). Use the
Osc 1 Pitch slider to adjust the pitch until appropriate.
3 Use Env 4 to shape the volume of the bass drum.
For slower beats you’ll want a longer decay phase, while at faster tempos you’ll choose
a shorter decay time. The attack time of Env 4 should be very short in any case (zero, in
most cases) or the sound will lose its percussiveness, and its ability to be clearly heard
in the mix.
The kick drum still sounds very soft and is somewhat reminiscent of the famous TR 808
bass drum. It’s still missing a clearly defined attack.