Free and open source trance kick maker. VST3 instrument and Standalone app for Windows, macOS and Linux. Studio 87.
Status: test build (v0.1). The engine matches the approved mockup number for number and the plugin passes its own state and preset tests, but it has not been tuned by ear yet and has not been tested in real DAWs. Please open an issue if something breaks.
Get the zip from the releases page. It holds an installer for each system (with uninstaller), a PDF manual, INSTALL.txt and SHA256SUMS. Everything works offline. No telemetry, no network calls.
Needs CMake 3.22 or newer and a C++17 compiler. JUCE is fetched at configure time, or pass -DKICKKITTEN_JUCE_DIR=/path/to/JUCE.
cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build --parallel
Tests: -DKICKKITTEN_BUILD_TOOLS=ON adds an offscreen snapshot tool and a processor test. kickkitten_parity compares the C++ engine with the mockup render.
src/engine: the sound engine (plain C++, a port of the mockup JS)src/PluginProcessor.*,src/PluginEditor.*: JUCE plugin and the native editordocs/mockups: the approved HTML mockup (the editor is generated from it)packaging,.github/workflows: installers and release build
Support: ko-fi.com/studio87. Licence: AGPL-3.0-or-later.
Layers A, B and C pick from a folder tree of clicks, kick attacks, snaps, hats, zaps and tonal tops. Most are made from maths at start-up. The "Your samples" folder holds short (100 to 120 ms) attack cuts from the author's own samples.
The Sauce panel runs a chain inside the render: band split (sub below 110 Hz, body 110 to 800 Hz, top above 800 Hz), parallel saturation per band (Thump, Punch, Crack), a soft swell in the low tail (Bloom), heavy parallel compression (Glue) and a loudness stage with smooth peak shaving that keeps the peak where it was (Loud). Amount 0 turns it off. It is built from common kick practice (parallel layering, punch band around 130 to 200 Hz, saturation then re-filtering, transient and body split), not from any vendor's internals. Defaults are starting points to tune by ear.
- Tone EQ in the Sauce column: Mud (cut near 280 Hz, up to 6 dB), Chest (boost near 90 Hz, up to 4 dB), Shine (boost near 5 kHz, up to 6 dB).
- Glue retuned: 10 ms attack, 35 ms release, ratio 6 to 1.
- Start range now up to 4 kHz.
- New presets: Hard-Hitter F, Psy Knock G, Deep Progressive G#. Values are starting points, not verified against any commercial kick.
- Glue is now its own panel: Mix, Threshold, Ratio, Attack (1 to 100 ms), Release, plus a meter with level, threshold line and gain reduction in dB. It works without Sauce Amount.
- Limiter: On/Off and Push (0 to 12 dB). Raises the kick, then stops the peaks from growing.
- Sauce is much stronger (stronger saturation, Bloom, Crack and Loud ranges).
- Waveform panel: Export .wav (24-bit mono) and drag the waveform straight into a DAW or folder (Chromium browsers; the real plugin will use native drag).
- Pitch envelope: every dot moves on its own, in any direction, including the first and last; the first dot can also move right.
- Window is now 1640 x 946.
- Render tab (next to Glue & limiter): Key, Vel, Generate, Export .wav, and a draggable waveform of the whole kick. Shows "out of date" when you change a knob after generating.
- Layer Start knob is now 0 to 40 ms with 0.1 ms steps (was 0 to 200 ms), so you can trim the start of clicks precisely.
- Glue and limiter panel fits the window: Limiter On/Off moved next to the meter chips, Push sits with the timing knobs.
- Tone EQ is much stronger (Mud up to -12 dB, Chest up to +8 dB, Shine shelf up to +15 dB above 2.5 kHz).
- Moving any Sauce knob switches Sauce Amount on when it was 0.
- New default preset "Trance Classic 138": about 1/8 note long, Sauce on, glue 30 ms attack, 4:1, limiter on. Starting point only, not verified against any commercial kick.
- Learned from measuring 45 trance kicks (numbers only, no audio copied into this repo): real trance kicks hold near full level for about 180 ms and then drop (Shape control, 4 to 5), their pitch falls slowly, about 580 Hz at 2 ms, 250 at 8 ms, 150 at 30 ms, 100 at 56 ms, 70 at 100 ms, then 55 Hz, and the click lasts about 5 ms to 10 percent.
- New Shape knob (decay curve), Decay up to 500 ms, Click length up to 40 ms.
- "Trance Classic 138" is rebuilt from those measurements (pitch curve within a few Hz, level shape, length and crest factor close to the measured median).
- Six new "Trance clicks" generated from the measured click envelope and spectrum.
- Default Len for clicks and attacks is now much longer (45 to 100 ms), so they are audible straight away.
- 45 "Trance attacks" and 45 "Trance clicks" are built into the plugin, in the layer menu (first folders). They are the first 70 ms and the first 30 ms (high-passed) of 45 trance kicks from a royalty-free sample pack the author bought and has licensed for commercial use. Everything ships inside the one installer, no loose files.
- Built-in chops renamed and moved into the normal groups: "Kick attacks" (Kick attack 1 to 45), "Clicks" (Kick click 1 to 45), "Kicks" (Kick 1, Kick 2, and others). No pack or brand names anywhere.
- 10 new trance presets that use those attacks and clicks (Trance Snap, Pop, Tick, Knock, Crack, Sizzle, Long, Deep, Rolling, Hard).
- Chops re-cut: 40 ms each; attacks high-passed at 50 Hz, clicks at 100 Hz (was 70 ms and 1.5 kHz).
- New Swell knob (Fall group): the low body grows in over the first ms like real trance kicks. Fixes boxy low mids.
- Fixed low-end distortion: the Sauce band split now uses zero-phase filters (the 55 Hz tail leaked into the mid band and was saturated hard), Thump saturation is gentler, and the preset Drive, Transistor and Clip are lower. Harmonics in the tail now sit near real kicks (about -26 dB).
- Glue compressor presets use a stronger setting (Mix 40, thresh -10 dB), so the compression is audible.
- v1.20: Trance Classic 138 reworked: real kick 45 attack and click, no Drive or Clip, much cleaner (harmonics -36 dB).
- v1.21: older presets (Psy, Hard Dance, Punchy, Dark, Subby, Deep, Phat, Uplifting, Hard-Hitter) lengthened with a plateau shape.
- v1.22: GUI fix, knob rows no longer run outside their panels (Amp, Output, Purr Trio, Glue timing).
- Reference match: load or drop any kick (.wav) on the Spectrum; its curve shows in amber; Match fits Tail, Decay, Shape, Hold, Swell, Tone EQ, Thump, Punch, Crack and click level to it (distance to the reference drops 2 to 4 times on the 45 test kicks).
- Phase align: layers that start against the body are flipped, so click, attack and body add up.
- True-peak ceiling (default -0.3 dB), true-peak, RMS and LUFS read-outs.
- Bass root chip: tells you if the kick tail sits on the root or the fifth of your bassline, or clashes.