layering kicks / tuning percussion

[Lost to the Void]

Tune? By ear for me. it doesn't have to be the same note, it can be within desired harmony range as you know.
You're schooled in piano, you do the right thing!

well good to hear from you and void (being the old dinosaurs that you are ! ) that you don't spend ages on the theory either and just use your ears most of the time !

it's certainly what I do now,

I don`t think it`s a case of not spending ages with theory, it`s just with experience and time the theory becomes reflexive, instinctive, you no longer need to think about it.

I`m very much like that with EQ, I rarely need to consult a spectra to check my mixes, I generally hit a pretty good frequency spread naturally, just a little check once I think I am nearly finished.

It`s a lovely place to be I think, the "thinking" gets pushed aside, and you can just get on with making music.

Should be the same with you no?

[Hades]

Tune? By ear for me. it doesn't have to be the same note, it can be within desired harmony range as you know.
You're schooled in piano, you do the right thing!

well good to hear from you and void (being the old dinosaurs that you are ! ) that you don't spend ages on the theory either and just use your ears most of the time !

it's certainly what I do now,

I don`t think it`s a case of not spending ages with theory, it`s just with experience and time the theory becomes reflexive, instinctive, you no longer need to think about it.

I`m very much like that with EQ, I rarely need to consult a spectra to check my mixes, I generally hit a pretty good frequency spread naturally, just a little check once I think I am nearly finished.

It`s a lovely place to be I think, the "thinking" gets pushed aside, and you can just get on with making music.

Should be the same with you no?

well, if it comes to writing melodies, then yes, that stuff comes really natural,
but I don't have that perfect pitch stuff when it comes to percussion and kicks.
I simply can't hear a pitch in that at all. It's just too abstract for my ears.

I'm probably over-theorizing this, but it's just that I've been watching some good tutorials the last few days, and the guy who made them is always hammering on about tuning your kicks.
I actually spent a complete day or 2 making about 100 kicks or so, all layering 3 parts, and indeed they sound pretty nice.
I finished 3 tracks in the last 1,5 months or so (or at least finished them "enough" for the moment, I'm never 100% happy ) , which is more than I usually do in a year, so I figured I could spend some time on theory again while trippling my piano playing hours.

anyways, I'm happy to hear not too many people bother with it too much.
When I do, it really gives me the feeling of making music as a pure product.
As if you constantly have to think "in order to have this effect, you must use that technique, and then in order to have that sound pushed forward, you must do this, and then..."
in the end I feel it kind of kills all spontaniousness and creativity.

and I'd walk the dog as mslwte suggested, but I only have the most gentle cat who for some reason started pissing in the hallway, which pisses of my missus, so she's threatenin to kick him out which in effect pisses me off cause I think he deserves some credit after 9 years of loyal (and excellent) service.

[Planar]

in the end I feel it kind of kills all spontaniousness and creativity.

I know where you're coming from, but this is this is the kind of thing I do when I'm not feeling that creative. Sit down with a drink and bash out 2 or 3 tuned and layered kicks. Save them with a key in the file name and then they're ready to drop into another session and will sound good with very little work. I've been using the same 2 or 3 kicks lately because they're all my own kicks and I feel more attached to them for it.

[Hades]

in the end I feel it kind of kills all spontaniousness and creativity.

I know where you're coming from, but this is this is the kind of thing I do when I'm not feeling that creative. Sit down with a drink and bash out 2 or 3 tuned and layered kicks. Save them with a key in the file name and then they're ready to drop into another session and will sound good with very little work. I've been using the same 2 or 3 kicks lately because they're all my own kicks and I feel more attached to them for it.

that's exactly how I do it now : I spent 2 days in a moment when I wasn't in any creative mood, but I4m still not so sure I'll use all those kicks a lot.
and that still doesn't solve my tuning percussion thing.

but anyway, like I said, : I'm probably over-rationalizing all of this stuff.

[Lost to the Void]

I tune the kicks in every single tune I make.
Sometimes the kick just isn't working or sitting right.
I just move it around until it sounds right.
Sometimes I want it to bite, sometimes I want it to bury in. But generally the tuning is as important as the rest of the characteristics.

[seanocean]

i usually layer a hard kick with a sub bass kick and throw a bassline in the low mids. so that's like putting a hard 909 over a pitched down 808 kick with maybe a bassline in an octave (for powerrrr), but you can also vary the order for more variety.. or sample the compressed result, rechop the kick or put in an envelope or gate.

personally, i think if you pan and blend the levels of your drums, you should try to tune your drums too, especially if you're using simmons toms like the disco ace you are
i think it's reasonable to say that cymbals and all sorts of aux percussion have their own frequency and changing the tune of their timbres to fit a certain pitch will help balance out the rest of the track, possibly save you time on EQing them later or maybe even make the track have more movement. so try a fifth, try a seventh, maybe try that minor third. who knows?

i think also most drums by default, are in C as far as i can tell. messing with them should keep them in line with any synths you choose or vice verse. think tuning your drums is also a good idea because mixing to a certain key or a pair of keys makes your track more interesting. like there's an assload of people who's tracks are in the key of c. while that's a fine and powerful key, there's lots of keys to choose from and combinations of keys make everything more dynamic. like you could tune a drum up and down the scale in the key you're in for fun, or use that idea to bring up tension or a question at the end of the bar. you may even want to do that with a combination of different drums. there's a ton of things you can do with that concept. though i think if it gets over done, this kind of idea becomes distracting and it's best to keep things simple.

as far as finding keys, i used to find that banging out a key on a generic piano plug in and tuning my drums to it was helpful but eventually i could hear the sounds 'click' in place without the piano. but that really just takes practice and comes with time.

i don't want to say my techno is amazing at present, but the ideas mentioned have been making my music more fun to produce as well as helping me to understand the mechanics of what's going on between my notes. definitely give it a shot.

[bergertron]

I have tried layering kicks, synthesizing kicks, and working with a kick from a drum pack but I would always need to do a lot of work on it before use it.
Probably the third option more so but I plan on working more on synthesis for percussion.

Music theory – I have a twin brother not a techno or electronic fan but a keen musician and appreciates good music. He is very talented working on music in a studio environment for his own band ,
own music and has always helped me improve from his point of view as do I with him.

He always pushes me with the music theory which I do but I don’t think everything in a techno track needs it as accurately in my opinion.
Anyway good for us to have in depth discussions about music production, engineering, etc from different perspectives

[Hades]

Anyway good for us to have in depth discussions about music production, engineering, etc from different perspectives

and from all those many tongues we speak !

[winston]

the reasoning behind tuning a kick is so that it is harmonically consonant with the bass and the other musical elements. i.e. it sounds good and not dissonant.

even in techno when you might have a lot of sounds that aren't full of harmonic content, the track will still have a few elements that have discernable fundamental pitches and so should be in harmonic consonance (if that's what you want).

for example, if the first note of the bassline is on the first beat, it will (in house music anyway) usually be either the root of the key or the fifth of the key. having a kick tuned to the root either produces a stronger, fuller root note or a 5th chord respectively (like a 5th power chord for guitar players i.e. just the root and 5th). if the kick is the 7th of the key (the leading note), and you have a bass note (root note) on the off-beat 3,7,11,15 then there will be a good push towards the off-beat as the kick/bass relationship moves having dissonance to being harmonically consonant.

if you have all your percussion tuned, then you can create chords with your percussion. example, your kick is the root note, your snare is the 5th, your closed-hat is the minor third, then when these play together you get a minor chord played. can the average listener discern this? who knows, but subconsciously your brain knows it sounds harmonically consonant and so is more enjoyable. this is why when you are making tracks or tuning sounds by ear, you can get a point where it sounds correct, or sounds good. you might not know what the pitch of it is, or what the relationship between sounds is, but your brain recognises it as harmonious and so it sounds correct.

there is also the science behind sub-bass and how big club speaker systems are made and configured and what frequencies produce the best sub-bass. is it not something like 55 hz to 70 hz gives the best sub response? so you'd want the sub of your kick to sit in that range.


as for why would you layer kicks, maybe one answer is: because you can.

there is no perfect kick made from one source. a good kick (under this theory) is made from 3 parts, the sub, the transient and some upper harmonics. on an fft analyser there would be 2 main peaks- one the fundamental (tuned) which gives the boom of the kick, then a peak for the the snappy transient that you can hear when you play the kick on laptop speakers. then you would have some harmonics to give it some character in the mids/upper-mids.

by layering it, you can select (or create) the best option for each of the 3 parts. usually i just use an 808 kick with a long attack as the sub (easily tuneable on the tr-8), then either choose a 909 kick or a sample for the transient and then find a sample for the upper part to add something else to the kick.

you're right saying that layering wasn't done when techno was all just one 909 kick, but how do those kicks stand up against a kick made in 2015 by one of the top techno producers? it will just have one peak and so will sound different.

is it necessary? must you do it to make a good track? i don't think so, but given you can do it, given that it is a common technique employed by many these days, maybe it is wise to do it. you'll be making a sound that translates well to big sound system, a sound that stands up well against other tracks of the day. if you are the only track without it, then perhaps your will stand out as lacking.

i will concede that spending 2 hours on kick crafting can become boring and sap any creativeness that i had, but once i have the kick i have it, it can be tweaked and used again with some different processing. i've read people say that they only have 8-10 kicks that they always use time and time again. nothing wrong in that i say.

[Barfunkel]

if you have all your percussion tuned, then you can create chords with your percussion. example, your kick is the root note, your snare is the 5th, your closed-hat is the minor third

Aren't snares and especially hats in techno often made mostly of noise? Ie. they don't have a pitch as such.

I never personally bother with tuning percussion. I don't have perfect pitch so I'd have to use some kind of a pitch recognition device. Too much hassle.

Is there a video on youtube about how tuning percussion to the key of the song actually sounds? I'd like to hear an example where a song sounds horrible when the kick is in the wrong key, but becomes a masterpiece when you tune the kick.

Anyways, I don't think people were using tuned kicks back in the day (ie. when techno was better imo). There were no DAWs and tuning the kicks would have required either perfect pitch or a specific device. I've never seen such devices in old or retro studios.

[winston]

you are kind of correct about snares being mostly noise, but they still do have harmonic content. if you look at a snare in a FFT you can see what pitch it is by looking for the highest peak, which would be the fundamental pitch of the sound.

if you take a sample and lay it over a couple of octaves in a DAWs sampler, then you are able to play the same sample with 24 different tunings and you can see how dreadful some sound, and how some of them sound better. if you were tuning it further you could fine tune it so it was better still.

acoustic drums can be tuned too, i don't know to what extent they can be tuned but it is still possible to alter the sound of them.
i get what you are saying about people didn't used to tune their kicks, but on both the 808 & 909 you can tune the kick and you would do so, so that it fits with the track. perhaps people just done it by ear, i can't tell which note is which either, but you instinctively know if it sits or it clashes.

[Lost to the Void]

Of course you don't have to tune your drums, you don't have to use EQ, but I can 100% guarantee that your tune will sound better for it.

All that great techno you love that works sooooo well, you can bet all these fine details are a part of it.

Tuning a kick drum by ear shouldn't take you 2 hours, it should take like, 30 seconds.

Ear training is part of being a musician and a producer, essential I would say, wether you have it as a natural skill, throuh experience or you go through an ear training process (there are some great bits of software you can get that will provide you with an ear training program to go through) it is essential if you are serious about your music.

If you have it as a natural talent then life is already easy.

[Barfunkel]

Can someone make an example? Like, make 2 versions of a simple tune with a kick that's first in the right key and then in the wrong key. I'd like to hear the massive difference it makes.

I highly doubt all those old classics were made by people with perfect pitch (as it's rare and very difficult for an adult to train), or were using a guitar tuner or something. I used to read tons of interviews, articles and stuff in the 90's, I don't remember anyone saying anything about tuning the drums to the key of the song. From what I know, it's a fairly new phenomenom, at least in techno.

[Lost to the Void]

I highly doubt all those old classics were made by people with perfect pitch (as it's rare and very difficult for an adult to train

I don`t doubt it at all, one turn of a knob and it`s done. You don`t even need perfect pitch, you just hear it. No different to EQ`ing.
It`s not a massive difference, it`s simply that one sounds better than the other.
Strangely enough when you make music in a musical way........

A lot of early detroit was very musical. Those boys had disco in their veins.

[Lost to the Void]

Here`s a simple example, makes more sense once you have a whole mix though.

This is just simple 909 and bassline.

1st loop everything is flat, untuned.

2nd Loop everything is in the same key as bassline.

All settings are the same otherwise.

"2nd one responds to the buss compression much more nicely

https://archive.org/download/DrumTuneTe ... neTest.wav

[winston]

Tuning a kick drum by ear shouldn't take you 2 hours, it should take like, 30 seconds.

i was meaning more the the whole kick creation process taking about 2 hours. Recording the tr-8, messing about with the samples, mixing the layers, using effects and so on. it's a fun process, but i feel it's not the best way to start off a track. even this doesn't need to take 2 hours though, you're right.

[seanocean]

i've taken a different tact about layering kicks recently and i feel like Hades was more right initially about using the one kick and just refining it. maybe there's kick anxiety a little bit, since if the kick isn't terribly present in techno it's regarded as a fail. but drum machines and sound designers for them have put in a ton of work on the subject already. working with those dynamics has me making tracks in less time. also the meat of the bass is taken out whenever you layer anyway to make room for other sub harmonics. though i can say there's different kicks for different folks. so go for whatever you like. if you want to make a wimpy kick, go for it. maybe not make the kick the central focus of the track for once. do something different. i still tune the hell out of my drums.. cause something sounds amiss without it, but layering kicks is too OCD for me, at least some times.

anyway.. on the subject of layering stuff anybody read what this guy's had to say on it? seems pretty legit.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/nov12/a ... rclass.htm

[arkos]

Hello all, been lurking here for a while great forum btw. I´m really digging frequency shifting percussion, hats, rides and snare's/clap's. It can even sound nice on some kick's. Sometimes when pitching more then +-1 +-3 semitones in a sampler I find the sound starts to get really artificial, mostly when pitching up though.

[Mslwte]

Here`s a simple example, makes more sense once you have a whole mix though.

This is just simple 909 and bassline.

1st loop everything is flat, untuned.

2nd Loop everything is in the same key as bassline.

All settings are the same otherwise.

"2nd one responds to the buss compression much more nicely

https://archive.org/download/DrumTuneTe ... neTest.wav

seriously i prefer the 1st one there

[helloitsmeagain]

Yeah, I know the 1st is out of tune, but i like it. I will say the 2nd sounds more energetic and driving to my ears, I suppose that's the compression working better?

I always tune by drums. I may just stop doing that now. Thanks Steve!