How to Sample the Kick Drum from Any Track

Here’s how you can sample the kick drum from any track, even if there’s some elements playing at the same time:

Step 1 of 4

Put the track inside Ableton and find a kick with as little elements playing at the same time as you can. Drum intros or outros are perfect for this.

To precisely select the kick zoom in in the Clip View & move the Start Marker to the kick position. You’ll be able to move the Start Marker more freely if the Warp button is off.

Here’s the kick I chose:

Step 2 of 4

Create an Audio Track and put the EQ Three effect on it. Duplicate the track twice (cmd/ctrl+D) and put the kick onto all three tracks.

We’re going to use the tracks for different layers of the kick. On the first track turn off M & H buttons on EQ Three (to use just the low frequency band). Repeat the process for the mid and high layers. When you have the tracks make sure you copy the kick onto each of them.

Step 3 of 4

Click on the kick on the „Low frequency” track and press cmd+option+F (mac) or ctrl+alt+F (win). That’s going to activate the Fades. You can use the Fades to fade samples in and out.

On the bass layer, delete the starting fade completely and fade out the sample just slightly. Repeat the process for mid and high layers like this:

You want the high layer to be the shortest and the low layer to be the longest. That’s because kicks consist of two elements: the transient and tail. The transient is the very beginning of the sample and consists of higher frequency content than the bass tail.

Step 4 of 4

Create a new audio track and resample the kick onto it. To do this it’s best to group the 3 layers and route the group to the new track (1), which I called Resample.

Make sure that on the Resampling track you have Auto Monitoring (2) & Arm (3) turned on.

When you have it set up just press the record button and the kick should be saved on the Resample track.

Now you can process your kick (for example make it louder with a limiter), freeze & flatten the track and save it inside your sample folder!

Here’s my end result (the sample we started from at the end for reference)

Tips:

Try to create your own samples from different layers of different kicks.

Save this project file for future use.

Tweak the FreqLow/Hi knobs inside EQ Three.

Mess around with different fade shapes.

Process some layers with effects like stereo wideners or saturation.

If you don’t like the transient of the kick, put a kick with a transient you like on the high layer.

Experiment with using different samples for the transient, like percussion sounds or hihats.

If the kick lacks strong bass tail, layer it with another sample or put a sinewave under it. 

k-pizza

I’m a music maker who likes to share his experiences with other producers. I regularly show up with tutorials, articles & project files at PML.

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