ChowKick

ChowKick is an open-source kick drum synthesizer based on creative modeling of old drum machine circuits. The developer drew on Kurt Werner’s analysis of the TR-808 to build a synth engine capable of producing everything from soft sub-bass thumps to punchy, aggressive transients. I reviewed ChowKick when it first came out, and I still reach for it whenever I want a kick sound that isn’t in my sample library. The pulse shape module and resonant filter (with Linear, Basic, and Bouncy modes) give you a surprising range.

It also supports MIDI note-to-frequency tuning, so you can match the kick to your song’s key. Of course, the learning curve is steeper than loading a sample, and the interface is unusual compared to traditional drum plugins. But that’s the trade-off for a synthesizer that creates sounds you can’t get with samples. ChowKick is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux, and it’s a tiny download (around 7 MB).