Kick Drums

Mattias · Post by **Mattias** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 9:38 am

Lost to the Void wrote:
Mattias wrote:
As for clubs running rigs in stereo, most proper rigs installed in clubs are calibrated in a mono / stereo 2-way system where the top & bass are separated by a cross-over (often set at 60-120~ Hz depending on music content but club music is pumping so closer to 120Hz then 60 in this case) in a processor (yeah there's DSP with cross-over for active speakers today but for big systems active speakers are more unusual still for a good reason) and I'd say in 95% of all cases the sub system will be in mono configuration. If not they're doing something wrong, there are tons of advantages to run a rig's sub system in mono even with today's class D-amplifiers being available.
Oh man, the problem is most "proper" rigs in clubs are rarely run properly, or conventionally or sensibly.

I`m a total rig snob, I ran rigs for years at my start in the techno scene, and went on to work as an engineer for a fairly large rig hire/install company in london, and the stories I can tell.

Agreed. I work myself with PA-Systems (hire / installation / F.O.H engineering) but for live stage and gladly stuff I much better there, at-least in Sweden. But the club system setups on clubs here are nearly as poor as you describe. Lesser clubs usually suffers from this but from my experience at-least in Central EU this trend seems to be turning.

ZERO · Post by **ZERO** » Tue Mar 27, 2012 12:15 pm

Lokua wrote: Seriously. Jumping around on Soundcloud, people's waveforms looking like damn bricks.

Or turds I often think haha

ross-alexander · Post by **ross-alexander** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 2:02 pm

what a great topic, and great forum starting to build, good to see. For my two penneth in I have been using all sorts of things for kicks, mostly I am a fan of synthesised kicks treated in some way through paralell processing, perhaps layered with a sampled sound, but I find all the time its important to be able to shape the transient of the kick and tuning to help it fit the track, not that I am any expert.

I also enjoy more and more using disortion and saturation on kicks either as an insert (using a plug with a mix control) or on an aux channel. Great topic and nice to hear everybodys thoughts, I definately think eq / saturation seem to be much stronger tools than compression on kicks, but I'm not a great fan of that heavily compressed kick sound, I find the highs quite piercing and unpleasant to listen to, something which is further emphasised through the mastering of the track.

soundcloud.com/ross-alexander

Post by **Críoch** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 2:07 pm

Hey Ross - Nice to see ya posting Mate!

ross-alexander · Post by **ross-alexander** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 3:16 pm

yes I am back now, couldn't remember my login so reset it up today, nice forum building, i'll post it about and generate some more interest if I can

Post by **Críoch** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 3:29 pm

Nice one Ross

Good to see that you are still alive lol

Post by **Críoch** » Fri Apr 20, 2012 8:23 pm

Guys, I have an idea for something that we can all do - which will get a bit of discussion & learning going.

But before I crack on with it.. it would probably be a good idea to have a little chat about it first to set the ground rules.

______

The idea is that we start a couple of new topics over a couple of weeks.. and together work on an aspect of a track.

1st off I'm thinking that we could do one on Kicks? We'll maybe supply a couple of 808/909 samples and a couple of samples for the top?? and then whoever is interested, downloads them & comes back with what they have done.

We have space available on this site for pic's and audio to be uploaded. You can do it from your HD via an attachment when you make a post. When people participate in this, it would be most helpful if you could document the processes that you used with screenshots (or a video if you like) and talk about settings.. why / how you did what etc..

I'm honestly a pretty basic guy when it comes to kicks - but I'm willing to step out of the comfort zone & see what people can add to the mix. If everyone does it (or quite a few) - then there are gonna be far more perspectives & a greater visibility of whats good & what sucks

_______

I think other areas that we could do is something like - making a bassline to go with the kick that we've made (we could possibly choose a "winner" out of all the contributions that everyone will use).. and again, we could agree what type of bassline we'd be trying to make - either samples - or a basic synth patch with a couple of osc's.

Dunno - just thinking aloud here Guys. I want you to come back with ideas here.

Then - after that.. maybe something to do with percussion? Again.. we'll choose the samples etc.. and document our efforts?

and after that.. maybe something like a stab sound of some kind.. again, we'll do it using a couple of Osc's on a synth.. or maybe with all the talk about recorders, we'll get a nice field recording to use.

A lot to sort out - and thats why we should just start on the Kick to begin with.. lol

I'm far from being a hotshot.. but I think it would be a very very interesting idea. Lets see what everyone thinks anyway (I've gone on enough) haha

HERES THE ORIGINAL KICK SAMPLE FROM DRUMAZON THAT WE'LL BE USING:

Drumazon Kick 909 Take II.wav.zip: (50.98 KiB) Downloaded 337 times

Opuswerk · Post by **Opuswerk** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 4:37 pm

Maybe, we simply could all do a kickdrum in something like 10 steps? So it'd make some text, 1 sample and 1 picture for each step?
That's make it pretty easy for any-one else to reproduce no?

Mattias · Post by **Mattias** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 8:04 pm

I like your suggestions Ste & Opus.

Quantic Spectroscopy · Tue Apr 24, 2012 10:57 am

hey guys!

Well lately in my productions I've been using synthesized kicks with machines like Rob Papen Punch or fm8. But I share the same point of view as Mattias, I haven't been using any kind of compression on it! Just some EQ, Saturation and SPL Transient designer! Got sick of layering stuff and tbh you get quite better results synthing your own stuff as you can mold as you want! It's just my opinion as you can do it in so many ways...

helloitsmeagain · Post by **helloitsmeagain** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 3:04 pm

ok, i know you guys are all bashful, so i'll go first.

let me start by saying that sample blows. wimpy as hell.

my process was really convoluted. honestly i never go through this much trouble for a kick, but seeing as it's our first date... Anyway, i'm quite satisfied with the result and would love to hear feedback!

comments are on the file.

Vorlis · Post by **Vorlis** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 8:26 pm

Ok, so i thought id try and tighten the sample up and make it punch a bit more….

so i warped the sample first then sliced to a new midi track...

I messed with the envelope settings added a multi band, sausage fattener & overdrive, you can see the settings...

The big pink sausage...

Had bout 10 min to do this before work

Just a quick bash….

Post by **Críoch** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 10:23 pm

HIMA - Excellent Kick! Really great.

I'm definitely going to go though all of that when I get some time.

I never use the corpus, though that looks very interesting. You could actually save that as a preset & keep it handy. Looking at those Pic's - I can imagine the process & how it got to the final sound. Its a really nice kick on my headphones - the type of one that I'd use if I heard it. Cant wait to hear it on the monitors.

Q- Is the corpus on the same channel as the Simpler with the kick? Even @ 100% wet, its letting in the signal from the top of the kick?

helloitsmeagain · Post by **helloitsmeagain** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 2:45 am

yeah everything from image 1 - 6 is in a row on the same channel.

7 is applied once i rendered that first kick.

8 was applied once i rendered the 2nd.

honestly, i've never tried this before. someone on this board, can't recall who, once had a great idea: experiment!

usually i mess around with a synth, apply some saturation and corpus followed by Puig and a transient designer; round off with a bit of eq and call it a day. this was actually a learning experience for me.

When i listened back to the kick i found it a bit box-y so if i had to do it again... but i did drop some out of the box loops around it and it stood up ok, so yeah it's useable and free for all to do just that. one thing i did notice only later though... the fundamental at G# got over taken so actually you'll need to transpose it down a touch to get back there.

note: all my production is done in earphones. i have some sennheiser buds and techincs rp-dj's. I do own monitors but have a 6 month kid so i've not put them on in a while... I'd be very interested to know how this performs in good monitors.

Post by **JamieinNC** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 9:57 pm

OK, why not just give you the video I made a while back about the kick using operator? Will that do?

youtu.be/AyAxN0kuM70

Mattias · Post by **Mattias** » Fri Apr 27, 2012 9:04 pm

Ok here is my take on the kick.

For simplicity & reproduction I used only free plugins (for both Mac / PC) beside the EQ but you could easily find something similar in your DAW I'm guessing.

Short explanation; The kick goes through a compressor (yeah I usually dont do this but I made it cuz you fellas love compressors hehe) to punch it down a bit, then I warm the kick up a bit with a tube character drive.
After that I wanna add some resonance for body & bite and also down the top & high-mid with the LP filter.
Next a bit tube drive again from another unit to add more character. Time for EQ and a deep cut after 100 Hz (and up to 180Hz~) with about -12 dB. I also took down the side information in the kick from 200Hz with a low-shelf filter. Last I added a "12 bit drum-machine simulation" with the Time-machine unit which is brilliant for dirt.

Sorry for the big pics!

The chain follows:

: 1_molot_comp.jpg (59.86 KiB) Viewed 8117 times

: 2_voxengo_tubeamp.jpg (45.19 KiB) Viewed 8117 times

: 3_camelcrusher.jpg (56.76 KiB) Viewed 8117 times

: 4_tal_tube.jpg (26.7 KiB) Viewed 8117 times

: 5_equick.jpg (43.98 KiB) Viewed 8117 times

: 6_tb_timemachine.jpg (38.4 KiB) Viewed 8117 times

helloitsmeagain · Post by **helloitsmeagain** » Sat Apr 28, 2012 10:32 am

new sample, new process. this time round i thought i'd just use what was native to ableton.

corpus for body.

saturation was a preset which i edited.

rendered it all down and then shortened the tail.

Use at your own discretion. When downloading, you accept sole responsibility for any injury caused by it's use.

Mattias · Post by **Mattias** » Sat Apr 28, 2012 1:11 pm

A thing I like to play with & use to create interesting kicks (and other sounds) is a chain of filters.
One can build incredibly complex filter chains with lots of different filters working in series & parallel with each-other. I highly recommend using it and experimenting a lot with it.

Here's a small example of what 3 filters in a series can do.
I used 2 units of the Minimal Systems Filter Bank & ended the chain with a Naive LPF 0.6.

: filter1.jpg (44.56 KiB) Viewed 4182 times

: filter2.jpg (44.46 KiB) Viewed 4182 times

: filter3.jpg (40.7 KiB) Viewed 4182 times

helloitsmeagain · Post by **helloitsmeagain** » Sat Apr 28, 2012 3:46 pm

Mattias wrote:One can build incredibly complex filter chains with lots of different filters working in series & parallel with each-other.

Very intriguing idea with a pretty cool result!

Post by **Críoch** » Sat Apr 28, 2012 7:03 pm

OK.. Heres my attempt.

What I tried to do was to use the Filter delay to bring out the sub of the kick. These settings seem to be the best interms of 20ms. Any more & you make an offbeat bass. I tried as best I could to balance the wet/dry on the sub aspect of it. I think its alright.

The rest of it was just tweaking really. I used a saturator to bring up the volume a bit really.. so just to use a small bit of compression.

Recently I've been sticking a few % of erosion wide noise on kicks.. kinds gives it a little bit of stereo. Microtonic uses noise to give kicks an effect almost like reverb. You can kinda get something similar to that with erosion if you want.

When I bounced it.. I thought it sounded a little weak.. so I stuck a tape preset from the VW on it & dialled in the % wet/dry. I dont usually do any of this shit with kicks.. lol - Usually I just stick a compressor & EQ on it and I'm done. This was a real mission & I've spent ages doing it FFS

Dunno if its great - but I like the way it sounded with the little loop I made. I like the sound of those kicks that have a bit of jack / bounce in them.. Whether it translates or not...

1 - Simpler

: 1.jpg (52.52 KiB) Viewed 4206 times

2. Filter Delay

: 2.jpg (41.6 KiB) Viewed 4206 times

3.Saturator

: 3.jpg (27.54 KiB) Viewed 4206 times

4. EQ's

: 4.jpg (78.23 KiB) Viewed 4206 times

5.Erosions

: 6.jpg (31.42 KiB) Viewed 4206 times

6. Comp & EQ

: 7.jpg (65.3 KiB) Viewed 4206 times

Bounce the Kick.. The I used VW & EQ to jazz it up

6. VW & EQ

: 8.jpg (155.53 KiB) Viewed 4206 times

SS Kick 132 Gshp.wav.zip: (433.18 KiB) Downloaded 316 times

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