Hi !

After many years, a great DAWs overview, I just downloaded pd-extended. I tried a few times, without motivation and without a good project...

I think it's different now.

So, I have many textfiles, notes, plans, to make a single improv environment (my own "sex machine") ; I have plans to make a good DIY midi controller (with the best implementation in my software solution), so...

I begin... with the Kick module.

Not a kick ; a good Kick... Like NI FM8, or close to ;

I post here because 1 - it's a good and creative board ; 2 - I don't know where to begin. FM, AM, Substractive, I don't know what kind of synthesis I have to use. What is the best for kick sounds ? (I mean, for powerful and straight kicks, like FM8)

I'll try some things, and I'll be back later.

When I build kick patches in synths I tend to appreciate having tight envelopes. The attack phase has to be nice and crisp.

Besides that, I'd say I'm usually most successful with fm kicks. Start with a sine and add just a touch of phase modulation to dirty it up. Then a real sharp filter with another fast envelope.

If you're doing a whole environment definitely don't pass up on sidechaining the kick, ducking etc. with a compressor.

Thanks

Hum.. Actually, I'm not successful with envelopes. I'm trying to make it correctly. I have a lot of work to do on this machine (years) !

About envelopes ;

Should I use [t3_bpe] objects for faster envelopes ? (When I'll master envelope principles. Don't give me solutions, I want to discover myself..)

I found it here : http://footils.org/tut/pddrums/pddrums.html

About sound ;

Could I listen to your kick ? (The fattest one ^^)

As far as the mechanics of the envelopes go, I can't really help you with pd stuff. I've only been working with it for a week or two and so far have only dealt with oscillator configuration.
So yeah, I still don't know much about the pd envelopes.

I can post a couple kicks though.
The first is actually based off of a sample. The sound mostly comes from a high-resonance bandpass filter sweeping down quickly
The second was built with two sine-like oscillators with different filter set-ups. The one has a more gradual attack on the filter and pitch envelopes to give it more of a whoosh.

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/twokicks.wav

You don't need [t3_bpe] or [t3_line~] anymore. That article and those externals were written before [vline~], which now comes with Pd-vanilla and is much more widely used. You should definitely use [vline~] for percussion sounds whenever possible because the timing is more accurate and you can get finer control of attacks.

A couple of envelope tips:

1. Squaring the output of the envelope will give you an exponential decay, which is much more natural sounding.

[vline~]
| \
[*~ ]

2. Squaring the output also gives you an exponential attack, which may not be so natural sounding and actually kind of sucks for percussion. However, I've been using a nice little trick to get better attacks from this. You can use a low-pass filter to smooth out the envelope (or any signal). By giving the envelope an instant attack and sending it through a [lop~], you can use the cut-off frequency to define you a short, quick attack that has a more natural rise while keeping the exponential decay:

[1 0, 0 100 0( <--instantly jump to one, go back to zero after 100 ms
|
[vline~]
| \
[*~]
|
[lop~ 100]

take a look at ead~ its an exponential attack/decay envelope
creb/pd extended

would love to see a more complex version adsr.....

my kick i made a couple of years ago still sounds ok to me, and i have not needed to modify it much. it's basically modelled on the 909 and has a bit more editability than the real thing.

http://puredata.hurleur.com/sujet-1982-diy2-effects-sample-players-synths-sound-synthesis

Oh thanks guys !

I don't understand [vline~] yet, so I used [ead~]. But I don't know how to do a pitch envelope. I still search ^^

Here is my patch :

@ mod :

Your kick is really nice to use.

But I don't understand the patch for now ! I'll try to make my own, and maybe in a few monthes I'll understand your kick ^^ I'll search explanations on the web.

here was the guide i followed:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Feb02/articles/synthsecrets0202.asp

diagrams like this one are very similar to pd, and easy to recreate: