OrbitKick
TL;DW: OrbitKick is a bass generator and kick drum reinforcer.
If you’ve seen modern recording, you’ve probably seen a little drumlike object in front of bass drums. This device is a ‘SubKick’. It’s basically an NS10 woofer hung in front of the kick, so it can be knocked around by subsonic bass waves, and transfer that to electricity for recording. It might or might not be in an actual drum shell, needs to be recorded with an actual preamp (these can have very high output though!) and acts as just another mic, but one that captures the very deepest bass in conjunction with your full drumkit and all your other mics.
But what if you could do that… without the pre? And also without the little drum shell, and without the NS10 speaker, and for that matter without the drumkit. Just ‘deep bass subs’ like a kick drum. On anything.
Enter OrbitKick. This is basically a little physical simulation, like a planet orbiting a sun. When your input sound hits, it kicks this thing into orbit and it just spins, gradually slowing down as its orbit gets bigger and bigger. It’s a little like a second-order sine wave, in that it’s one of those Airwindows things that can get out of hand, which is what the controls are for.
Drop is how fast the note will drop, from ‘not at all’ to real quick. Shape is the same, but makes it drop quicker to start off, so it’s your taper: it gives you punchier attacks, rather than ‘modular guy beeeoooo’ kicks that have no impact. Start controls how high up your attack goes, in conjunction with Thresh, which is the threshold at which the note is kicked off… and Finish is where the note cuts off (set super low, you can get clicky releases).
That’s all. If you want shorter kicks, make it drop faster, start lower, or finish higher. These controls do it all. That includes weird nasty effects where the note is triggered in a scruffy, inconsistent way. OrbitKick does NOT sound like a sample. It’s like a living bass thing, able to put the lowest of bottom octaves on whatever percussive thing you like, or add a thump or ‘pewww!’ laser sound to any other thing so long as it has a distinct attack. And without a distinct attack it will still work but it’ll make an unpleasant noise. And if you can only listen on a laptop or cellphone you may never hear what it does at all…
This one goes out to DnB friends of mine in London :) rarely do I get a plugin that will wreak so much mayhem on really, really big sound systems. Be careful out there, or don’t :)
download 64 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Signed M1/Intel Mac AUs.dmg
download Signed M1/Intel Mac VSTs.dmg
download LinuxVSTs.zip
download LinuxARMVSTs.zip for the Pi
download Retro 32 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac AUs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac VSTs.zip
Mediafire Backup of all downloads
All this is free and open source under the MIT license, brought to you by my Patreon.
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“Fat bottom girls, they make the rock’n world go ’round!”
Freddy Mercury
Nice work. For a moment there I almost thought that you created your first virtual instrument (hint hint). Now wouldn’t that be something. ÷)