As all dance music producers and artists know, the kick drum is the most essential piece of percussion in a track. The kick sets the pace and rhythm and is always the most noticeable sonic property in any particular dance music song. With this in mind, the partnership of Nicky Romero and Sonic academy set out to revolutionize the producer community with a go-to kick drum (and other percussion) synthesizer.

Personally, I’ve use this piece of software on about 95% of the tracks I’ve made since acquiring it. KICK itself is visually appealing and allows you to see the whole process behind shaping and creating your own customized kick drum, as opposed to just turning knobs. The main window has 3 panels: pitch, amp, and click. As they intuitively suggest, each of the panels control the features for which they are labeled and allow you to shape the waveform of the kick drum by moving around pinpoints in the main window. This feature is singlehandedly my favorite part of the software. As a visual person, I like to be able to witness the process of creation in my sounds and it helps me better understand what I’m doing in the overall experimentation process. The visual component for KICK makes it a bare essential for any producer’s list of tools because it teaches you how to better customize your own sounds and allows producers to move away from reusing percussion samples.

The secondary features that I think need to be addressed and explained are the pitch panel itself and the click customization. Firstly, the pitch control panel is the Holy Grail of this synthesizer. Sonic Academy provides you with a clearly labeled illustration of what the kick’s shape actually looks like and the frequency of each individual point along the ADSR curve. Being able to perfectly tune each kick to the necessary parameters is one of the best implemented features in the entire world of dance music production, especially with regards to work flow. Additionally, the frequency information provided allows producers to quickly and easily EQ the kick and other instruments in the mix for a cleaner overall fit between sounds and more satisfying finished product. Along with the pitch panel, you have the click customization menu in the upper right hand corner. Producers are able to load in their own click samples or choose from a preexisting list of clicks created by Nicky Romero and Sonic Academy. The click menu is comes with an organized drop down menu, and when paired with the click visual panel, it gives complete control over the high end piece of the kick itself.

This revolutionary piece of software has become commonplace in my production projects and I honestly believe some of my tracks would not have reached the quality they did without it. I’ve never had any issues with the user interface or had any bad things to say about the product in its entirety and I would recommend getting this product immediately if you don’t have it already (you can get the Artist Edition of KICK for just $40).

This plugin has improved my kicks so much. I definitely recommend

I really enjoy this, it allows me to get the unique powerful kick for all of my tracks. There is so much more to that I can do to my kicks with this plugin that I would have never thought to do otherwise! Definitely worth the money :)

Very good plugin for kicks !

the best kick plugin it makes kick designing way easyer

id tell everything i love about this synth. But id rather keep it a secret. So don't use it... ever.. its horrible #imadick

Amazing presets, amazing sound! Just the thing u need to get that good kick u are looking for! The tweaks are also very awesome!

I love this synth. I use it as a starting point for almost all my tracks. Many genres. I have already filled up many custom banks!

Does exactly what it says: its a simple yet flexible way to create great sounding kick drums, and makes the process a lot of fun. Dance producers in general are always looking for "The Perfect Kick," and this plugin makes that journey a bit more attainable. You can even import your own samples. The only issues are that you can't drag samples from your DAW (that I'm aware of), so you actually have to manually find it, plus graphical overlays are not available to see where, for instance, the volume of the kick is relative to the pitch.

This plugin makes kick drums. What a surprise.