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rktic
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Re: subsekt sound design school _ KICKS

Post by rktic »

Hm, i'd like to share a few kicks made according to my addition to the ongoing competition - keeping it simple and easy.
rp-kicks.zip
(2.28 MiB) Downloaded 364 times
Includes 4 kicks, the first two variations are based on the basic setup. The other two are flavoured with a bit of reverb and delay.

The basic setup (for those wondering, that strange software is Buzztracker)

Image

1. Maschine
Does nothing else than simply triggering the source sample.

2. Voxengo Boogex
That motherfucker is a distortion/amp sim with a very gritty character. You can download it for free here. If you're stepping through the presets you'll easily get some nasty gabba-flavoured kicks, it needs a few adjustments to work well for those. Like you've gotta turn down the pre filter's bass as well as the cut and emphasis stage to prevent it from going berzerk at all. Tone and drive are quite obvious, the dynamics knob mostly controls the attack behaviour. Boogex comes with a variety of cabinet responses which also has quite an impact on the overall sound, some are suited for kicks, others aren't at all.

3. UAD Cambridge
Since the kick lacks a bit of bottom now i'm using the Cambridge EQ to bring back some life there. In this case the amount of boom around 200 hz needed a bit of damping.

4. Limiter (Buzzroom's analog lt_b08)
Since playing around with an ampsim can easily get out of control i'm using a limiter in the end. In this case something from Buzzroom, which unfortunately isn't available any longer (once for free). What makes this one particularly interesting is the character selection which adds subtle coloring (smooth, bright, loud, warm...). It's barely audible but has its impact on bass response, which you can actually feel.



Kick 3 - the early Speedy J way

Image

The only addition here is Magnus' Ambience reverb, a free or rather donationware based effect from the Smart Electronix camp. Eventhough it's considerably aged for a VST plugin it still has its merits over many others. Like you can control the amount of CPU consumption which affects the quality, it also comes with an internal gate to shape the reverb which makes it perfect for drums.

It comes with a few presets of mine (no, rp doesn't stand for Rop Papen in this case) also one titled "Speedy J kick", modelled with one of his early tracks in mind.



Kick 4 - same, but with a strange delay


Image

Although its got sort of the same overall sound i'm using a native Buzz delay called Tapdance here. Sorry, it's just available for Buzz as of now, but if you're using Buzz and haven't heard about it yet > get it! So far i only know about one other plugin by GRM Tools that does something similar. You can have a grain of reverbs and control the delay spread time as well as the volume envelope of the delay cloud which makes it possible to create things in this direction.

PS: sorry for the huge images.

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Re: subsekt sound design school _ KICKS

Post by Críoch »

ARiFF wrote:This is what i came up with...
I really like that!
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Re: subsekt sound design school _ KICKS

Post by Críoch »

Ronnie - Wicked Kicks. 3 & 4 are insane.
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Re: subsekt sound design school _ KICKS

Post by Mattias »

I like the Kick3 and 4 as well
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Re: subsekt sound design school _ KICKS

Post by disparate »

Great thread.

One thing I noticed is that a lot of you guys aren't afraid to use a lot of processing, like at least 5-10 FX units, on your kicks. For some reason even though I've been messing about with producing for a while it's never really occurred to me, I've always just taken a sample or synthesised a kick, maybe added a tiny bit of saturation, EQ'd it and called it a day :| that often seems to be my attitude, no idea if it's right or wrong, I think I need to play about with multiple FX more. Got some interesting results messing about with things in this thread - ARiFF's post in particular is nice, definitely the sort of kick I like.

I'd like to contribute more but as I say I tend to just use samples without much processing so I'm a learner rather than a teacher right now...

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Re: subsekt sound design school _ KICKS

Post by Críoch »

I have to say - this is one of THE best threads on the internet that I've ever seen about making kicks.
Thanks so much to everyone that has contributed & I would say to anyone else (especially you disparate mate).. is to share what you do, if you can. If you are hesitating out of confidence - fuck it - do it. Join in :)

Its great to see how everyone approaches the same thing. I've personally got so much inspiration out of this thread. I used to be scared of putting plugs other than a Comp & EQ as inserts on a kick channel. Now I'm not haha. Thats what stuck a chord with me too disparate. Thanks again to everyone who has contributed.
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Re: subsekt sound design school _ KICKS

Post by rktic »

I belong to those who will always tell you to use less effects than the other way. Otherwise it can easily get out of control and in the end you start all over again. I.e. doubling EQs > not necessary. Unless the EQ in use doesn't behave "correctly" as expected.

It's very often a thing of a plugins quality. If something doesn't work in a way you expect it to do, try alternatives.

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Re: subsekt sound design school _ KICKS

Post by benjaminwilliams »

disparate wrote:Great thread.

One thing I noticed is that a lot of you guys aren't afraid to use a lot of processing, like at least 5-10 FX units, on your kicks. For some reason even though I've been messing about with producing for a while it's never really occurred to me, I've always just taken a sample or synthesised a kick, maybe added a tiny bit of saturation, EQ'd it and called it a day :| that often seems to be my attitude, no idea if it's right or wrong, I think I need to play about with multiple FX more. Got some interesting results messing about with things in this thread - ARiFF's post in particular is nice, definitely the sort of kick I like.

I'd like to contribute more but as I say I tend to just use samples without much processing so I'm a learner rather than a teacher right now...
This i also the way i approach kicks. I do mess around a lot, but it still sounds better if i just make or use a basic kick. Back to the drawingboard i guess. The tips in this topic are awesome!

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Re: subsekt sound design school _ KICKS

Post by ARiFF »

benjaminwilliams wrote:
disparate wrote:Great thread.

One thing I noticed is that a lot of you guys aren't afraid to use a lot of processing, like at least 5-10 FX units, on your kicks. For some reason even though I've been messing about with producing for a while it's never really occurred to me, I've always just taken a sample or synthesised a kick, maybe added a tiny bit of saturation, EQ'd it and called it a day :| that often seems to be my attitude, no idea if it's right or wrong, I think I need to play about with multiple FX more. Got some interesting results messing about with things in this thread - ARiFF's post in particular is nice, definitely the sort of kick I like.

I'd like to contribute more but as I say I tend to just use samples without much processing so I'm a learner rather than a teacher right now...
This i also the way i approach kicks. I do mess around a lot, but it still sounds better if i just make or use a basic kick. Back to the drawingboard i guess. The tips in this topic are awesome!
One advice i immediatly took for granted and started to do a lot is experimenting. Also getting to know your tools and DAW plugins inside out is a big advantage.

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Kick Compression Guide

Post by Lost to the Void »

Right, I see a lot of comments about kick compression, a lot of rumours, and confusion, and questions about wether you should or shouldn`t, so I`m gonna try to clear things up al little here.

Firstly, there is no should or shouldn`t, you compress kicks to get a desired effect, if you don`t want that desired effect, then you don`t compress them.

2nd point, I see some people saying, Oh I don`t compress my kicks, I use saturation. Well, saturation is compression, you are still reducing the dynamic, the difference here is that you have less control over how saturation works, in terms of attack, release etc. Again, it all depends on the effect you desire.

So, why would you compress a kick.

Well, you might have a kick drum that has the sound you want, but lacks a little weight, and doesn`t quite push through the mix.
In this case, you might use compression to make the kick "bigger".

I`m going to briefly explain compression, forgive this if you already understand, I`m not trying to patronise.

Compression, in simple terms, changes the relationship between the quiet and loud parts within the sound it is applied too. It can reduce or increase the decibel range between the quietest and loudest part of a sound.

So, first you need to know how a kick is working.

Well generally, the sound of a kick starts with the fast transients. This is generally the sound of the beater hitting the "drum skin", and not the sound of the drum itself. It`s the clicky, thwacking sound right at the front of the kick.

After this you get the beeeeooooooo dropping sine of the "drum skin" vibrating, from rapid to slow, with reducing pitch.

Generally the transient will be quite a loud signal, there then might be a micro delay between this and the beginning of the big bassy boooooom of the drum itself. This boom itself will peak and then decay.

Now what you can do with compression, is to take the boooom part of the kick and flatten the curve, so that instead of it rapidly ramping up to a peak and then droping back down and then decaying, the peak will be flattened, and then raised in volume by the compression gain. So effectively you have increased the duration of the peak. Instead of the pak boooom being brief, you are extending it by microseconds, adding more beef to it.

So try it out.

Take your kick, reduce the attack to it`s minimum setting, have the release about mid way.
Leave the ratio for the time being, but it wants to be around mid way to start.

Reduce the threshold until you start getting some gain reduction, go for about 4db of gain reduction, use auto-makeup if the compressor has it, if not, bring the makeup gain up by the same amount as the reduction.

Now turn the comp on and off.

You`ll notice that the snap at the beginning and the main booom are more matched, the kick is getting meatier.

So now start reducing the attack, you`ll notice the kick starts to sound bigger. Stop when it sounds how you like.
What you are doing here with the attack, is letting the "nose", the fast transients of the initial thwack through, uncompressed (transients are full of harmonics, our ears like them, and preserving them keeps a mix alive), but then you are compressing the main meat of the kick.

Now the release, you want to tune this so that the compression is pretty much finished before the next kick hits.
So you need to use the gain reduction meter now.

Watch the meter and move the release up or down until the gain reduction is near 0db just before the next kick comes in.

Doing this, again, preserves the transients as the compression has stopped before the next kick hits and can allow the thwack through, a long release can lead to the kicks dulling down.

Now this is a basic rule of thumb, just tune around until you are happy. Ratio can help restrict how hard the compression hits.

Some compressors also saturate, if you want added harmonic content, but the process of compression is evening out the emphasis between harmonics, so you are in effect, enhancing hamonics anyway.

Now you might not always want to do this

With dub tech, those soft, 808 like kicks, sometimes it is nice to have a tiny click at the front, and then a really soft but big booom, so compression might add too much thump. You can of course just use less compression, or a touch of saturation, but remember, saturation is still compression, just without the attack and release etc.

You don`t always want massive thumping kicks, so you don`t always want hard compression on your kicks, but generally a little compression will always benefit, you don`t have to have everything running at 11

IF I need to do a video to demonstrate this, let me know
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Re: Kick Compression Guide

Post by Mattias »

That's a handy one that lots of people should have much use of I'd say.
I just would like to be bitchy and say that compression and saturation is the same thing is to simplify a little. In terms of reducing dynamics yeah sure but I tend to think about it like this:

Classic downward-compression evens out the signal affected (or raise the lower part of the signal with upward compression simply explained) while saturation "absorbs" the signal pushed through it. Both compression (in some cases) and saturation works as soft-clipping (signal is driven beyond a certain point and cuts the transients on the material in a smooth way on the material and acts as smooth limiting / compression) as well as even out / add or kill harmonic content. I think that people who say they use only saturation instead of compression also miss out on that putting on a tiny bit of compression from a compressor with its own character and behavior can affect the contents harmonics in a similar way for adding "character" and color as a saturator or distortion unit.
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Re: Kick Compression Guide

Post by Patriek »

Thanks guys. Makes a lot of sense!
A video might be cool Steve. But for me the theory is enough :-)

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Re: Kick Compression Guide

Post by Mattias »

Lost to the Void wrote:
You don`t always want massive thumping kicks, so you don`t always want hard compression on your kicks, but generally a little compression will always benefit, you don`t have to have everything running at 11
Ah yeah, good to bring this up so I quite it to stress it's importance!
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Re: Kick Compression Guide

Post by mjudge »

Void, thanks so much for this -- it's really helpful your breaking it down this way. Possibly a dumb question, but here goes:

When I'm comparing my compressed kick to its uncompressed version, I need to make sure the levels are peaking the same right? Can I trust the meters in Live for this? Different compressor settings seem to affect the level a lot, but the actual effect on the sound can be subtle. It's a little maddening sometimes trying to make sure I'm comparing apples to apples.

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Re: Kick Compression Guide

Post by Lost to the Void »

mjudge wrote:Void, thanks so much for this -- it's really helpful your breaking it down this way. Possibly a dumb question, but here goes:

When I'm comparing my compressed kick to its uncompressed version, I need to make sure the levels are peaking the same right? Can I trust the meters in Live for this? Different compressor settings seem to affect the level a lot, but the actual effect on the sound can be subtle. It's a little maddening sometimes trying to make sure I'm comparing apples to apples.
I`m not sure I get you, when you mean levels peaking the same as each other, you mean the big difference there can be between levels with comp on and off?

Well if you are using auto gain, or matching gain makeup to gain reduction then you are matching peaks, the difference you will notice in this case between the original and the compression, is, well, the compression, you are hearing the kick get bigger, because there is more "loud" material in the audio now than before, but the kick is not necessarily "louder".

It`s all about apparent loudness.
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Re: Kick Compression Guide

Post by Mattias »

You dont need to compare that the level is peaking the same. Since gain reduction will make your peaks go down (and therefor the total level go up on the material you compress) you cant trust the meter saying that the bypassed and processed signals have the same level.

Bypass the comp to compare how much gain reduction you made then adjust the compressors output gain accordingly till you get the same perceptive volume before & after bypass is a much safer bet.
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Re: Kick Compression Guide

Post by rein »

compressing kick and bass together on a buss is also really nice, for example to gel together or pump up the sound.

i always turn off make-up gain, for me it's easier to hear what i'm doing that way... but that's a matter of taste of course.

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Re: Kick Compression Guide

Post by mjudge »

Okay, I think I'm getting it. With the auto-makeup gain setting on the Ableton Live Compressor I don't seem to get the expected result, so maybe I'm better of doing it manually.

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Re: Kick Compression Guide

Post by Críoch »

Great post Steve.

My 99% of the time use of compression on a kick is a little bit of thresh.. tiny bit of reduction going on.. low ratio.. and mess with the A/R until it pops out.

Personally, I find any more than that & it sucks the lows.

Interesting comment about saturation absorbing part of the sound Mattias. That makes sense.
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Re: Kick Compression Guide

Post by chrisso »

Great informative first post.
I don't compress kicks (as yet).
I don't do anything I don't think I need to do. My kicks are one thing I think I'm getting right.
But I should read post one again, and try some experiments.
Nice discussion.


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