Synsonic BD-909

If you want to create a dance hit, the kick drum is your primary and most powerful tool. And there is probably no kick more important to the history of electronic dance music than the one generated by the Roland TR-909 drum machine.

Even though it was deemed a commercial failure after it was first released in 1983, the Roland TR-909 was crucial to the development of electronic dance music, being used in the early days of techno, house, acid, and electro-industrial. Today, the punchy 909 kick is still used as the basis for many tracks (although it’s heavily modified) and can be found in most digital audio workstations as a basic tool, as well as a few plugins, such as the one I’m reviewing now.

As its name suggests, Synsonic BD-909 is an audio plugin that generates a 909 bass drum. There’s not much else to it. It’s free, and you can use it to add the legendary kick to your productions. Now, the thing is that, as I’ve already mentioned, most DAWs already have a 909 kick, which you can then distort until your neighbors hate you. Why would you use Synsonic BD-909?

Well, for starters, it comes with a minimalistic interface that is very easy to use. You have only one button to trigger the kick, and nine knobs used to adjust nine parameters: Pitch, Accent, Decay, Tune Decay, Attack, Hold, Tune Depth, Noise Decay, and Distort. While these won’t create a very wide sonic array, they still offer you plenty of possibilities for modifying a basic 909 kick.

Right next to the Pitch and Accent knobs, there are two switches labeled as KYB (which in all likelihood stands for keyboard mapping). If you hit the Pitch KYB, the plugin will receive MIDI notes from your MID keyboard, thus allowing you to play it as a bass-synth. If you activate the Accent KYB, the plugin will receive information about the velocity of the MIDI messages you send through your controller.

Synsonic BD-909 also comes with a few presets that exemplify its possibilities, but you can also save your own. While this is isn’t the most versatile plugin you can use, it’s certainly a nice tool to have since it’s free, lightweight, and allows you to easily diversify your drum sounds.