Audio Damage Tattoo - Manual (Page 18)

18
Tune
The Tune knob controls the pitch of the kick drum’s tone. You can tune it down to speaker-threatening near-
subsonic lows up to pitches high enough to be a little absurd for this instrument’s role.
Saturation
It’s a popular trick to give an electronic drum sound (either sampled or synthesized) a bit more bite by
deliberately distorting, or saturating, a pre-amp or mixer’s input. Tattoo’s
Saturation knob creates a similar
form of distortion. As you rotate the knob clockwise, the kick drum becomes louder and more distorted. If this
knob is rotated all the way to its anti-clockwise extreme, no distortion is added to the tone.
Noise Freq
Tattoo’s kick drum includes a noise generator to add a sharp click at the beginning of its sound. The Noise
Freq knob controls the frequency content of the noise. Turn the knob clockwise and the noise becomes
brighter. At the highest settings you’ll hear the burst of noise quite distinctly; at more moderate settings the
noise blends with the tone of the drum.
Click Level
The Click Level knob controls the loudness of the noise generator described above. You can turn the noise
generator off altogether by rotating this knob fully anti-clockwise. The perceived loudness of the noise is also
affected by the
Noise Freq knob, so if you find yourself cranking up the Click Level and not hearing any
change, try giving the Noise Freq knob a nudge.
Pitch Mod
The Pitch Mod (short for “modulation”) knob controls how much the Pitch Envelope changes the frequency of
the tone. Real drums bend slightly sharp when struck hard enough. Tattoo doesn’t particularly aspire to
recreate the sound of real drums, but some amount of pitch bend can make the kick drum’s sound more
prominent. In particular a high setting of the
Pitch Mod knob combined with a short Pitch Envelope gives the
kick a nice attack transient.