Kick 808

The classic TR-808 bass drum. Unlike Kick Sine (a sine oscillator with a click), this is the 808's real trick: a high-Q resonant filter is "pinged" by a tiny pulse and rings down all on its own as a deep, decaying sine. That ring is the drum — so the filter's tuning sets the pitch and its resonance sets how long the boom sustains.

How it works

A trigger fires a 2-sample pulse into a state-variable band-pass filter tuned near 49 Hz (the measured pitch of a real 808). The filter self-oscillates briefly and decays — a pure, weighty sine with no separate oscillator. A short noise Click rides on top for beater attack, and Drive adds the tube-like saturation that gives the 808 its low-end thickness (and, pushed hard, its techno/gabber grit).

Controls

  • Level — base hit strength. This is the loudness knob; nothing needs to be

patched to get a full, strong kick.

  • Tune — the resonator frequency, 20–120 Hz. Around 49–56 Hz is authentic

808 territory; lower for sub-heavy, higher for a tighter "tok".

  • Decay — how long the body rings, 0.05–2.0 s (it's the filter's Q). Short

is a tight punch; long is the endless 808 boom.

  • Punch — a fast upward pitch sweep at the very start. A little adds "tonk"

and attack; a lot gets aggressive and synthetic.

  • Drive — soft-clip saturation. Low is nearly clean; high thickens the lows

and, cranked, distorts into hard-techno territory. Level-matched, so it changes tone, not loudness.

  • Click — level of the parallel noise beater-click, for attack that cuts

through a mix.

Attenuverters

Each bends its CV input into a param: how much, and which polarity (negative = inverted). At 0 the matching input does nothing, so the knobs above rule.

  • Vel — Velocity/accent CV → Level.
  • Decay — CV → Decay (e.g. an envelope for evolving ring length).
  • Drive — CV → Drive (e.g. an LFO for pulsing saturation).

Inputs & outputs

  • Trig — a gate/trigger; each rising edge strikes the drum.
  • Vel — velocity/accent CV. Scaled by the Vel attenuverter and added to

Level (so unpatched, or with Vel at 0, the Level knob alone sets loudness).

  • Ptch — 1V/oct tuning, added on top of the Tune knob.
  • Decay CV / Drive CV — modulation inputs for Decay and Drive, each scaled by

its attenuverter (±10 V = full range).

  • Out — the kick, at ±5 V.

Tips

  • For a sub-drop, raise Decay and add a touch of Punch.
  • For hard techno, push Drive and shorten Decay slightly so the

distortion bites the transient.

  • Pair a slow Ptch CV ramp with a long Decay for a pitched 808 bassline.