If you’ve been scrolling around here long enough, you’ve certainly found somebody telling you that you’re supposed to tune your kick to the key of your song. This technique’s not without merit, but it’s really genre-specific, and I’m flagging it here because I think it’s overly prescriptive in a way that limits someone who’s learning to understand the role and functions of instruments in an arrangement. A kick is not a melodic instrument, but a bass is, and in all but a few types of music, the synergy between the bass and the kick exists to stitch together a heartbeat with a tone.
It’s two instruments working together to create a unified sound. In fact, all your music is supposed to work together. That’s what harmony is.
That’s what music is. Tuning those two instruments together is as much a generalization as saying your bass should always play the root note of your chord. If that were true, we probably wouldn’t need bass players.
So get your kick and bass working together. Sure. And if your music is really static, tune them together, or something like a fifth apart.
But you don’t see drummers going out and retuning their kick drums between songs. You don’t see drummers running out and retuning their drums between chords. That would be called a bass.
If your kick sounds like one, by all means, have it play in key.
