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Chapter 14 Ultrabeat 382
Create Ultrabeat kick drums
Electronically produced kick drum sounds are based primarily on the sound of a deeply tuned
sine wave. Follow the tutorials sequentially to get the most from these examples.
Program a basic kick drum in Ultrabeat
1 Choose Settings > 03 Tutorial Settings > Tutorial Kit, and select Standard Tut from the
Assignment section.
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). Drag 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, whereas at faster tempos you’ll choose a
shorter decay time. The attack time of Env 4 should be very short in any case (0, in most cases) or
the sound will lose its percussiveness and its ability to be clearly heard in the mix.
Give your drum more kick by controlling the pitch with an envelope
The kick drum still sounds very soft and is somewhat reminiscent of the famous TR-808 bass
drum. It’s still missing a clearly dened attack.
1 Make sure that Env 1 is chosen from the mod pop-up menu of oscillator 1’s Pitch parameter.
2 Set the degree of modulation by dragging the blue Mod slider approximately 3 to 4 octaves
above the original pitch.
3 Set the attack time in Env 1 to 0 by dragging the leftmost of the two junction points on the
x-axis all the way to the left.
4 Experiment with the decay time by dragging the rightmost of the two junction points on the
x-axis. You’ll discover that higher decay values (shifting the Bezier handle to the right) result
in sounds similar to synth toms, whereas shorter decay values (shifting to the left) provide the
kick character.
5 Change the Mod amount (the blue slider) of Osc 1 Pitch again (see step 2).
The interaction of this parameter with the envelope’s decay time provides numerous possibilities
for shaping the kick or punch of the bass drum sound.
Note: This simple bass drum sound is listed as Kick 1 in the Tutorial Kit, at a pitch of C1.