Im having a problem or maybe creating it… that is cant get my kicks thumping!
The question is am i wasting to much time with it?
Any feedback would be appreciated it!
do you want thumping or pumping ??? two totally different things
Layer afew on top of each other and eq accordingly. Compression maybe, not too much though.
Im never satisfied with one shot kicks from sample cd’s to be honest. I generally find kicks better that I have isolated from a track or a loop.
what level is your kick db?
if you usually have your kick’s sitting around 0db or -3db try turning it down and your monitors up a bit. i find that having my kick sit around -12db the kick sounds much better and the whole mix sounds bigger. i never layer kicks and never compress them either. most kicks from sample cd’s are pre compressed and compressing the further robs the body of the kick. layering kicks if you don’t know what you are doing will make them sound really wimpy.
thank you fellas
2 good answers, kinda leaves me in a 50 50 position thou.
i’v agreed and tried in the past both layering kicks and keeping it at a lower level, never really tried dropping it to around -12db, will deff give it a go.
Normally have it at -3, -4 depending on what the bass is saying.
I was really thumped away when i heard saturday 2009 remix by alex gaudino & jason rooney for example. I could be so wrong but it sounds like a thumpie kick and also layered, i guess they very well know what their doing :). I know any kick in a club will thump youre guts out, but this was on an ipod and i was just a bit impressed.
i would love to know the difference jon_fisher? if you dont mind :)
thank you
i only suggested -12 db as not only has a producer friend of mine told me but i’ve also read it in a few books. when you say -3 or -4 db that really the maximum volume your main output should be hitting, maybe even lower to give plenty of room for mastering.
eq can be used to make a kick thump, but again its more about what you remove and not what you boost.
if you want more crack to your kick then you can get that with a compressor, you’ll need to set the attack time so that it lets the attack stage of the kick through.
using the PEAK/ RMS settings on a compressor will make a different to the sound of a kick
and if what you are after is a pumping mix, that is gain pumping. as far as i know this involves using a compressor on the main out put solo the kick and set the compressor threshold 1 or 2 db below the kick level so you get a small amount of gain reduction. let the rest of the mix back in and adjust the attack and release by ear
try layering a sustained sine wav underneath your kickdrum - eq properly and sidechain the sine with your kickdrum. make a group and process it even further … that will make your kicks sounds really fat and bottom heavy.
cheers
robi
it really helps to try your kicks out on a good club system…
that really low sub is hard to judge on home speakers…
personally i just find a kick i like off a tune and sample it.
thats what everyones been doing since the dawn of sampling.
phil any tricks for getting rid of bled noised or hi hats when sampling kicks?
Like Phil says, sample your kicks, is a lot easier! I see in the Producer DVDs that pretty much all of them do it lol.
Apart from that, if you’re going to layer your kicks then be carefull that they’re not just battling for the same space frequency spectrum. You really need to know what you’re doing when it comes to layering kicks, otherwise it’ll phase, sound muddy or just really down right aweful.
if its a small closed hi hat sound it should be easily removed in an audio editor by either cutting it out or low pass filtering every thing after the initial kick click…
I think this would be a good tech tip… ill add it to the list
Thanks a lot guys, greatly appreciated.
Will deff give some of these ideas a go, even thou sampling one seems like the greatest :).
phil that would nice to see how you clean a sampled kick, been on my mind for a while now.
thx
yeah i agree phil would be a great tip tutorial also could you add sampling loops from records to that list
Using the pencil tool in ableton makes isolating kicks from tracks/loops criminally easy!
cool . . . nice one g.
I also think that choosing the right weapons for making a kick helps a lot, one plug-in that i would recommend heavily is a sprinkling of BBE D82 SONIC MAXIMIZER.
sampling loops from records …
man what a cool hint - would also love to see how to do that !!!
i have problems with that also, that i am not able to come up with some suitable sampled perc loops etc !
i have really problems with sampling … would be a great tech tip !!
plz phil … i think thats really crucial because sampling is like the mothertechnique of electronic music …
yeah deffnatly jon been looking to get that MAXIMIZER for a while now. also see it being used a lot on some tutorials think.
cheers fella you made up my mind
[quote]phil johnston (6/8/2009)[hr]
I think this would be a good tech tip… ill add it to the list[/quote]
Good call!