Synthesizing your own drum samples can be a fun and challenging experience that results in one-of-a-kind sounds.

Downloading drum samples from a premium library or off of a website like Splice is easy. But sometimes it’s difficult to find the exact type of sample you’re looking for. And even if you do, you’ll know it’s a sample that’s not unique to you.

Synthesizing your own drums is a fun and creative way to get your hands on the kinds of samples you’re after for free. With a little bit of an upfront investment on synths, you can save yourself countless dollars in the long run by creating your own drum samples all while cultivating sounds that are utterly unique to you.

Granted, you don’t have to create your own drum samples to make great music, but it does add an extra dimension of originality to the process.

Sometimes it’s even faster to create synthetic drum samples yourself than it is to spend hours looking for ones that sound exactly like you need them to. This can be the case frequently for sound designers and engineers charged with making “sound alike” productions for their clients.

As a quick example, the following drum loop was made using the methods I’ll be walking you through in this guide:

I’ve included a download link for all the patches I used in the loop. Due to its popularity, I used Serum to create each patch, but the same concepts can be applied to other synths as well. 

I encourage you to look through the presets I made as you read this guide. That should help to clarify the process even further for you. Feel free to modify these presets, get your hands dirty, and experiment with creating your own drum samples. All of these presets will playback exactly as originally intended at key F1 on your MIDI device.

Synthesizing Kicks

Kick 2 by Sonic Academy is by far the most intuitive and streamlined drum synthesizer I’ve found. It’s simple to use and provides direct control over many important parameters that you need to access when designing a kick.

Sure, other synths are capable of producing kicks, but when the synth isn’t explicitly made for drum synthesis, I find that the excess controls tend to get in the way more than they assist you in the process.

A synthesized kick is essentially a sine wave that is processed in various ways. The exact processing you’ll apply depends entirely on the type of kick you’re trying to create, and this program contains a whole suite of controls that are tailored just for the task.

Kick 2 gives you direct control over the kick’s pitch envelope and amp envelope, as well as the pitch and length of 3 different clicks. Additionally, there are global controls including an EQ, distortion unit, compressor, and limiter. To top it off, there’s a sub control that allows you to manipulate the harmonics that are generated on top of the fundamental pitch.

If you’d prefer to make a kick in a synth that you already have—such as Serum or any other—it can be done quite easily using two sine waves. Just load a basic sine wave into Oscillator A and pitch it down an octave. Then, modify Envelope 1 so that it has a short attack, short decay, no sustain, and a very short release time.

You should now have something that resembles a kick every time you press a key, but it will likely be too round and dull for any practical purpose. 

Next, load another sine wave into Oscillator B, but don’t pitch this one down an octave. This Oscillator will be used to make the kick sound punchier. Use the same envelope settings on Envelope 2 as you did for Envelope 1, but shorten the decay time a bit more. Apply this envelope to the Level knob of Oscillator B. Applying an envelope to a level knob will cause its value to increase and decrease over time, based on the ADSR you’ve set for the envelope.

Going a step further, use the same settings from Envelope 2 for Envelope 3, shorten the decay even more, and apply Envelope 3 to the coarse pitch of Oscillator B. This will pitch Oscillator B up really quickly, giving it a sort of “thwack.” What you’re doing here with the envelopes is automating various parameters within Serum. Envelopes allow you to control these parameters to varying degrees, and shape your sound.

To make this kick more realistic, add a bit of gated noise. Apply Envelope 2—in moderation—to the Level knob of the Noise section as well. The more noise you add to this kick, the more “live” it’s going to sound. Adding a little bit of something like Serum’s “Soft Clip” distortion in the FX section of your synth will help to dirty up the signal a bit, and make the kick sound less digital.

For final polishing, use an EQ in the FX section to boost the kick’s fundamental and emphasize some upper harmonic content. This will help to shape the tone. Finally, add a little bit of compression to tighten up the tail end of the kick and you should have something very workable that you can tailor to your tastes.

As you can see, there’s not a whole lot that goes into creating a synth kick. When doing intentional sound design, it’s essential to break down each component of the sound you’re trying to make, and then figure out how you can add the quality you hear to the sound you’re sculpting. The solution is often simple if you know where to look. Learning more about how synthesis works will aid you tremendously when creating patches with a defined outcome.

Synthesizing Snares

A lot of drum machines are sample-based, which can be great and make it really easy to generate snares. However, it’s possible to make a snare without relying on sample manipulation at all. Similar to kicks, synthesized snares are based primarily on processing sine waves, but with the addition of white noise and distortion. While you could very well convert the kick you made into a snare, I think you’ll have an easier time starting from scratch.

To start, load a sine wave into Oscillator A. Modify Envelope 2 so that it has a fast attack and decay.

In a synth like Serum, you can shape decay slope which gives you extra control over the envelope. Turn the sustain and release all the way down. First apply Envelope 2 to the Level knob of Oscillator A. (In Serum, you can do this with a simple drag and drop.) Then, turn that level knob down to 0, and boost the Depth of Envelope 2 on the Level knob to maximum. This causes the level of Oscillator A to start at 0, and then increase/decrease based on the ADSR you’ve set for Envelope 2. The resulting sound should be something that resembles a snare, at least in the way that its amplitude evolves over time.

The next step is to adjust the pitch’s envelope. The approach once again is to add a “click” to the sound you already have.

Using LFO 1, create a shape similar to the one you used on Envelope 2, with a fast attack and decay. Drag LFO 1 onto the coarse pitch of Oscillator A, and boost the depth of the effect to maximum. This should result in a short click at the beginning of your snare.

Now you’ll want to add some noise to your snare. Engage the noise section of Serum and load up a noise sample. Cycle through the different noise samples until you find one that you like. I find that I can actually get different types of “snap” based on the noise sample I choose.

Pull the Level knob of the noise section down to 0 and drag Envelope 3 onto it. You can shape the noise section’s volume envelope to taste, but typically, the decay time of the noise is slightly longer than that of the sine wave.

You may also want to apply Envelope 3 to the cutoff of Serum’s filter. Ensure that the filter is only affecting the noise section of Serum, and take a little bit off the top end of the noise signal. This can reduce that harsh high end of the noise you’ve selected, and significantly change the character of the snare.

By now, your snare should really sound like a snare. It’s time to dirty it up and shape it further in the FX section of Serum. Start with distortion, and feel free to really drive it. I particularly like using Serum’s Diode 1 for this application. Next, target the fundamental frequency of the note you’re playing and boost it around 5-10 dB; this will provide it with a very defined tone.

After this you can use a compressor to tighten up your snare. Try using a ratio of 4:1 with an attack long enough to let the transient through (30+ ms) and a release long enough to compress the entire tail of the snare (300+ ms) to start, and adjust from there. Bring the threshold down until you’re happy with the effect the compressor is having.

The part of this sound design process that really makes the snare you’ve made believable is the distortion you apply to it. The distortion included in Serum does an alright job, but I’d recommend trying out some of the stock distortion units that come with your DAW, or giving a third party plugin like Devastor 2, Decapitator, or even Camel Crusher a try. The goal here is to distort the signal enough so that it no longer sounds stale and inorganic.

Synthesizing Toms

The nice thing about toms is that if you already have a snare, it’s not too much work to change it into a tom.

Once you’ve followed the directions above and created a snare, the first step to tom-ifying it is to reduce the amount of noise you apply. Pitch Oscillator A down an octave or two and increase the decay time of Envelopes 1, 2, and 3. It will immediately sound much more like a tom.

From there, it’s really just a matter of shaping the volume envelope until you end up with a more full-bodied sound. Much of this is achieved by modifying the slope of the decay time in Envelope 2.

In addition, reducing the amount of distortion you apply will result in a much gentler and less aggressive sound. 

One extra thing you can do is add a high shelf EQ and bring the higher frequencies down a couple dB, perhaps from around 2-3kHz and above. This will further round out the top end of your tom.

Syntheszing Claps

Claps are easy to make because they only require you to use your synth’s Noise section. No pitch is necessary. 

(For this exercise, you’ll be creating a new patch, so if you’re using the Serum presets provided, clear the plugin using “Init Preset” in Serum’s “Menu.”) 

To get started, set Envelope 1 up with a short attack and short decay time. Reduce the Level knob in Serum’s noise section and apply Envelope 1 to it. Increase the depth all the way and adjust the decay time of Envelope 1 until it dies out the way that you want.

The noise you use plays a vital role in shaping the quality of the clap you make. The “ALPHANZ” noise sample in Serum is one that I particularly like because of how snappy it is. Feel free to add any other sort of processing you want to the clap you’ve made. A short delay and a healthy amount of reverb can make a small clap sound like multiple hands clapping. This really helps to open up the sound and make it appear larger than it is.

Synthesizing Hi-Hats

To make a closed hi-hat sample, you can start with the same approach as a clap. To change your tone from clap to hi-hat, first remove any FX processing that you had applied. Then, adjust Envelope 1 and significantly shorten its decay time.

Now, you’re just about there. To make it more convincing, you may want to raise the pitch of the sample. In Serum, an easy way to do this is by enabling key tracking in the Noise section. Serum won’t automatically pitch noise samples to correspond with the key you press unless you enable this feature.

Synthesizing Cymbals

Cymbals are by far the most challenging piece of a drum kit to synthesize. They often turn out sounding synthesized—but this isn’t necessarily always a bad thing.

Some sounds are just meant to be recorded, and if you’re trying to achieve a realistic cymbal, you’re best off finding a recording of a cymbal, or making one yourself. However, if you’re looking for a synthesized-sounding cymbal anyway, you can definitely achieve that with this technique.

I’ve included a video below with Matt Urmenyi from Wave Alchemy making a cymbal on his Korg MS-20 Mini. He does quite a good job, but the process he goes through is quite elaborate, and the patch he ends up with is extremely sensitive. He demonstrates how slightly moving the pitch knob on his Korg can completely destroy the cymbal patch.

Summing it Up

I’ll often bounce my drum samples to audio once I’ve created them so that I don’t have to run multiple instances of a synth to access all of my percussion. This process also frees up a significant amount of CPU. The downside to bouncing out my drum samples like this is that if I forget to append the note they’re playing to the name of the audio file, I have to identify the note later on. I’ve written a guide that explains how to tune your drum samples, which covers how you can identify the pitch of any drum sample, and ensure that it ends up within the key of your song.

Synthesizing your own drum samples can be a fun and challenging experience that results in useful samples that are unique to you. By now, you should have a decent grasp on the principles that will allow you to make synth samples of all the primary pieces from a drum kit in their purest form. The best thing to do from here is to take this information and start experimenting with what you’ve learned. Understanding the basics of drum synthesis can open up a whole world of creative possibilities, but it’s up to you to walk through that door.

Charles Hoffman is a Mixing and Mastering Engineer at Black Ghost Audio. After graduating from the University of Manitoba with an English degree, Charles completed his education at Icon Collective in Los Angeles, CA.

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