Synth Kick

A punchy electronic kick drum — the default sound on Track 1. Goes from deep sub thumps to short clicky transients.

Available on: Track 1
Built on: Mutable Instruments Plaits — synthetic_bass_drum model.

Character

A model-based synth kick rather than an analog emulation. The tone control pushes the transient from soft and round to bright and snappy; the decay reshapes the body from a percussive click to a long sustained boom.

Parameters

Parameter Range What it does
f0 low → high Base pitch of the kick body
tone soft → clicky Transient brightness
decay short → long Body decay length
dirtiness clean → dirty Adds grit / noise to the body (low-pitched kicks only)
fm_envelope_amount 0 → high Strength of the pitch-sweep at the attack
fm_envelope_decay short → long Speed of the pitch sweep
accent soft → hard Overall emphasis / velocity scaling

Set a short decay with a mid tone for fast techno kicks; long decay with higher f0 for tom-like body hits.

See also

Origin & credits

Based on Mutable Instruments Plaits’ synthetic_bass_drum voice (Émilie Gillet, MIT-licensed). The TBD-16 integration by Robert Manzke / CTAG (GPL 3.0) adds the trigger pipeline, accent scaling and the preset/parameter surface.

  • DSP source: plaits/dsp/drums/synthetic_bass_drum.h
  • TBD-16 wrapper: rack/RackDBD.hpp / .cpp