How to Change the Pitch on your Kick Drums

One of the genres I'm most into is hip hop and the changing pitches that come with the kick drums intrigued me right off the bat. One of my favourite examples of this can be found in the Travis Scott song "WHO? WHAT?". It's not just hip hop though where you find these changing kick drums; another example being in Daft Punks "Doin' it Right (ft. Panda Bear)".

It really seems to add another level of texture and cohesiveness  by helping the kick drums stay more in line pitch wise with the rest of your instruments. It can bring about a subtle change to the overall sound or it can create a huge dynamic effect in your song that can help drive the whole flow.

When I wanted to figure this out I had a hard time finding good solid answers online. I also ran into a lot of comments where people were questioning the need for doing this at all. 

There definitely is one but I think the genre or the sound you're going for has a lot to say if it means something to you as a music producer. Another important consideration is the length of your kick drum sound. If it's quite short then a change in pitch is not going to be nearly as noticeable as a deep long drawn out kick that rumbles the room.

Regardless, below is the easiest way I've found so far to change the pitch of my kick drums to help them flow into the song a bit more.

First, open up DMD (Drum Machine Designer):

I've been using lots of .wav samples with DMD lately, so first I drag the kick drum sound I want to change the pitch of into the DMD slot:

Once you've dragged your sound in, this screen will pop up more often than not:

From there you'll want to click on the "Q-Sampler Detail" button that's located about halfway up on the right hand side of the DMD:

Next thing you're going to want to do is bring up the tuner to help get the pitch exactly how you want:

Now hit your keyboard or play the note by clicking on the left hand side of its icon in DMD. The tuner will show what key or note your kick drum is pitched to:

You can see from here that my kick drum is in G# (or thereabouts, more on that in a second). 

Next you'll want to adjust the "Course" knob under the PITCH section of the Q-Sampler Detail. 

It goes both up and down, 1 number at a time. Each number represents 1 half step up or down. Here is the order of the keys below for easy reference:

C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B

So say I want my kick drum to be in the key of F. That means that I would adjust the course knob down to '-3'. You can see from the screenshot below that this has now for F to appear on the tuner when I play my kick drum sound:

I also circled where you can find the course knob in case anyone is getting a bit confused with all of this. Now lets say I wanted to change the key of my kick drum to A, then I would adjust to +2. B would be +4, E would be -3 and so on. You just go up and down the scale:

C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B

You may have noticed that it's not perfectly tuned to F from my last picture. This is where some of the other knobs come in handy. With some additional adjustments to the 'Fine' knob, you're able to get the tuner to read a solid F instead of off to the side:

I hope that helps you in adjusting the keys of your kick drums! 

While I've concentrated here on changing the pitch of your kick drum specifically, you can experiment around with lots of different instruments including other parts of the drum set like the snare or hi-hat. While these traditionally don't get skewed as much, it's always fun to be creative and see what new sounds or techniques you come up with. Share with the rest of us if you've come across anything like this lately!

How do you go about changing the pitch in your kick drums? Let me know if there's an easier way or something you prefer. 

Thanks for reading.

Cheers!

BPM :)