HARD HITTING KICK(help/discussion)

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davidblackwing
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HARD HITTING KICK(help/discussion)

Post by davidblackwing »

Hello, Fellow technoheads.

Before we start, I must say this is my first topic here so don't judge me if I do some mistakes.

Today, I want to get your knowledge and share my about hard hitting kicks in those main-room bangers from Berlin these days.

As I lurked around the site I found a lot of information in topics like these:

http://www.subsekt.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5977

http://www.subsekt.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5260

http://www.subsekt.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3117&p=31749

But I tried to apply everthing I know and still my kick doesn't sound near as one I am after.

I aiming for hard-hitting, pumpy kick like in these masterpiece made by fellow Lithuanian duo: Under Black Helmet. They currently live in UK and are one of Code is Law lebel's roster-mates.
This track is abused by me in every club night I play. :D
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhGGY0j0P20
[/youtube]
Any suggestions and tips getting that. Maybe we together can brake it down and make this kick exactly the same.

I update this topic ASAP I get something useful and near what we are achieving here.


Thanks

Alume
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Re: HARD HITTING KICK(help/discussion)

Post by Alume »

Its pretty easy man, just add some saturation to a 909 kick. and a bit of reverb?

I dont know I'm not that good in this kind of shit.

Just make a shitload of tracks, thats all you need to do really.

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Koichi
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Re: HARD HITTING KICK(help/discussion)

Post by Koichi »

Hey - those 3 threads - parallel compression, layering kicks and sampling kicks from tracks - I don't think you'll need any of them for this.

Like alume said on this track just a 909 kick with saturation. Send it to a buss with reverb. Filter off everything except sub. Maybe sidechain gently. try stuff with eq/saturation till sounds right.

Yeh make a shitload of tracks is the approach I'm taking - only way to learn!

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Críoch
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Re: HARD HITTING KICK(help/discussion)

Post by Críoch »

The saturation really helps. Experiment with different amounts of wet and / or even presets to discover the settings / plugin that sounds best to your ears.

I've been doing a bit of para comp with the glue & a bit of saturation. Eq & ADSR manipulation to make it sound tighter & more controlled. I guess it helps not to get so caught up in the individual sounds & actually listen in context to the rest of the music. Remember to do that.

Sometimes an additional little bit of sat or crunch makes the kick pop back out in the context of the track. It generally requires further tweaks I find.
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Re: HARD HITTING KICK(help/discussion)

Post by Sey »

Koichi wrote:
Like alume said on this track just a 909 kick with saturation. Send it to a buss with reverb. Filter off everything except sub. Maybe sidechain gently. try stuff with eq/saturation till sounds right.
^
Sidechaining a gate works well too.

Also I'd leave loads of space or create some with verbs/delay for the kick to bang hard. like in this track

youtu.be/CHL15UaB5f8

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Wiu
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Re: HARD HITTING KICK(help/discussion)

Post by Wiu »

As soon as I read the term 'banger' I stopped reading. Worst fucking way to describe tracks. Nearly as bad as EDM.
Thank you for the laughs, debate, new music found, production tips etc etc over the years. I wish Subsekt and everyone all the best for the future. Wiu.

surface
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Re: HARD HITTING KICK(help/discussion)

Post by surface »

Image

:D

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Críoch
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Re: HARD HITTING KICK(help/discussion)

Post by Críoch »

Haha
KennethExack wrote:My kids and I are completely shocked by the specialized secrets that everyone has on this forum
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surface
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Re: HARD HITTING KICK(help/discussion)

Post by surface »

The question was answered and the answer was questioned...
Fixed original track video for ya OP.
Take the string after the = in the youtube url and put them between tags, in this case VhGGY0j0P20.

youtu.be/VhGGY0j0P20

Always nice to hear a track that doesn't start with a 4/4 kick.
The kick in that track is tight, so your gonna have a pretty short decay and, like the guys said above, saturation, etc...
The first/third kick has a nice little ghost kick trailing it too.
It helps to pull this ghost kick off the grid, pull it closer to the main kick to get that tight 'bounce' feel.
Basic/Obvious but still, makes a huge difference to create a sense of momentum ..

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Críoch
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Re: HARD HITTING KICK(help/discussion)

Post by Críoch »

New bumping car avatar. Cool :)

-------

Yeah. I like the sounds in that track until the drums come in. Kinda ruins the vibe for me lol. That piano riff sounds a bit like a BOC snippet. The vocal is nice too.
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winston
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Re: HARD HITTING KICK(help/discussion)

Post by winston »

Davidblackwing, where are you getting your starting kicks from? Are you using samples, what samplepack are they from, have you sampled your own or are you using a drum synth?

i think the processing aspect of getting that sound has been covered in the thread already, but it still might be hard to accomplish a comparable sound if you're starting from the wrong place. i would say the kick layering thread is useful here (i've not read it, but kcik layering is the way to go for all your kicks). there's a bit of the track around 2.02 where you get a bar of just kick and off-beat hat that you could use to analyse the frequency of the kick in order to try and match your own kick to it.

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willemb
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Re: HARD HITTING KICK(help/discussion)

Post by willemb »

Dont forget context, its everything else around the kick that makes the kick sounds heavy. Filter out all the lows of other elements for a start. Make space in the frequency domain (and possibly time domain too) for the kick, so nothing else takes away power from the kick.

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quest
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Re: HARD HITTING KICK(help/discussion)

Post by quest »

Don't forget to add the mash to your banger so you don't get phase cancellation in mono.

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ashley BORG
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Re: HARD HITTING KICK(help/discussion)

Post by ashley BORG »

+1 for layering kicks. Its also useful in some situations to have a mid to high freq sound to help the kick cut through the mix. Put on another channel or filter out the lows on a bus.

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Lag
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Re: HARD HITTING KICK(help/discussion)

Post by Lag »

All has already been said, the only thing I can add is if you wanna go for the hard saturated sound like the one in the UBH track - just don't apply all of the saturation on the kick itself. Apply some on the main kick to give it some tightness, but create an aux channel with heavy saturation and send the kick there. The reason for this is that whenever you distort stuff - you not only lose the transients and definition, but also the bass. This way you keep the bass, and you get a separate channel for the distorted signal (which you can also eq and compress carefully so it sits well in the track).
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Lag
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Re: HARD HITTING KICK(help/discussion)

Post by Lag »

I knew I knew the sample from somewhere (the title should have been a dead giveaway).
youtu.be/G7RgN9ijwE4

Or even better:
youtu.be/zP5J6a14CR0
You have to systematically create confusion, it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life.


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