I like playing around with Plugins to mold a Kick / Bassdrum to sound right. Ok, i admit i have to try out one of those Kick synthesizers, but actually i use different approaches to process the Kick sample.

I like to use Xfer LfoTool, theres a preset called Kick Shaper, and you can roll of the Kick pretty early to get rid of the unnecessary often too bassy/muddy tail easily. Makes the kick more clear, light & punchy in a way, less body but more impact.

Another „ear-opener“ and i admit for most guys pretty obvious one is this.
Put a compressor as an insert fx channel onto the kick channel, let the compressor pump the kick up, them eq out the bass frequencies, maybe highs a bit too, so you got the punchy compressed mids on the effect channel, then mix with kick to yout taste, adds modern crispyness!

If u use reverb on a kick, eq the low freq. out on the effects channel to avoid a total mess.



Share yours if u like, allways exciting to see how other people do it, there‘s always something to learn.

 

Well i deleted my comment cause eveyone below is too knowledgeable

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jan 1, 2019

does somebody use the low end mix trick in electronic music genres..

 

Honestly I always have problem with the kick lol

 

gentle notch some freq out of bass and put it on kick...e.g.
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parallel compression is allright but the real punch...i dunno...some get it with it but most not i would say
i rather try to experiment with filterfreak in puncto ''ny compression'' on drums to get punch...ff on a sent/return...triggered by second kick audio track
one times it worked well..
but as you kno i doing other stuff at moment...sampling drumstation into akai...unproccessed at moment..
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do less compression and do better instrument placing in freqband is my aproach at moment and of course AD/DA shizl
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try trackspacer instead of ny compression
transient designer compressors can work well...

 

Last edited: Dec 31, 2018

I used to create my own kicks a lot a few years ago. Layer sounds and synths, process them individually and then process the bus/group, process the parallel and the sends/returns, etc. It's a great way to learn about the X, Y and Z and whatever (time vs. frequency, depth, width, height, transient, thump, body, tail, etc). The way you can use pitch envelope with simple sine to start as a foundation and then add transient, noise, harmonics, mid body and room tails. Filtering, EQ, multiband-distortion, transient designers, saturation, limiter, exciter (low/high), etc. It all depends on what kick you want/need. Sometimes the kick can be kinda weak but still complement a strong bass perfectly, to give the impression of the kick being "phat" as the two work as one. Same thing goes when layering sounds to make up a good kick - all parts have to have their purpose (and time and space in the frequency spectrum).

Nowadays I'm a bit lazy and use good kick samples or Sonic Academy Kick2 (and some additional layering, if needed).

Edit: I forgot to mention phase. Very important! It's fundamental to know/learn about phase, phase cancellation and also how to use phase offset and phase inversion (not only in fixing phase but how to use phase "wrongly" in order to shape a kick).

 

Last edited: Dec 31, 2018

Baxter
how did you add transient ?

 

Nice. Certainly worth a try

I just know one thing. I used to crank up the low end in my early days of making music. But now my Kicks have way less low (under 50hz)
and they are not as loud as before.
But i've managed to get them sounding okay on PC and high_end speakers. Now they are a part of my music instead of soaring above the rest.
Also when i play a demo at a friends house i don´t have to warn him in advance about the heavy low end. (i´m sure his neighbours appreciate it too )

Listening to vinyl beeing played at a large concert hall opened my eyes. Aswell as reading about mixing for vinyl and what those large mixingboards live engineers use, do for/ to your music.
And not in the least, listening to "perfectly" prepared/ mixed kicks in sample packs. And endlessly comparing my own mixes with others.

 

Again have to say i love this place!
So much rich info and different approaches.

Here‘s another way of tweakin the kick i found some time ago, maybe interesting for some:


From
http://subsekt.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=72



„I start with a kick drum (with a bit of decay cant be too short) playing 4 x 4 or 2 x 4 (or a rhythmic pattern, changing tone and pitch on the individual hits is nice also) then I send a Reverb or Delay (with a bit of modulation options) to the kick channel.
After that I make reverb channel mono and let the Kick slave the Send channel via a side-chained Gate effect. Playing with Pre-delay and Feedback timers as well as
diffusion and balance on the reverb is a good idea to get stuff moving and to start getting a groove out of it. The reverb follows the kicks tone and accent and it can be good to change the kick also to get some other results and go form there. Usually I tend to EQ away pretty much bass form the Kick & also cut away from of the muddy frequencies from the reverb. From here on I route both the kick channel and the reverb send channel to a sub / bus group channel and add a filter, (I personally like the Naive LPF Filter for this, it rounds transients and edges of very smooth and sounds fat & warm.) then low-pass the whole package to around 120-200 Hz, depends a little. If I get too much "kick" sound around 200 Hz or so I low pass a little more or adjust with envelopes or, if possible, adjust the attack of the kick drum and adjust the gain or level of the kick so it doesn't take too much space in the bassey package. So far so good. Now here comes the reason why I removed pretty much bass on the kick earlier, on the bus channel I add some insert effects. Like another EQ and Saturation tool to give the bass a new kind of tone or feeling, very often I like to use the Bootsy Nasty LP plugin for this since it got both EQ & Saturation. I boost somewhere between 40-130 Hz with the wide Q filter active and cut some bass if it sounds too much, and add the saturation by +6 dB or more depending what sounds right at the moment. Obviously it all depends on the kick and reverb used what kind of freqs sounds good to boost / cut and saturate but thats the gift of it. So now when I have myself a nice fat bass sound I wanna create some nice movement with it and might go back to the kick and reprogram its rhythm or behavior, as well as the reverb. I add the "real" kick drum that the track will contain and make the bass and kick fit well with each-other (sometimes it works good to add another gate to sidechain the bus channel which contains all the bass with the main kick) with EQ:ing or filters etc. Thats it....
Now you could probably just do this in a less messy way, like low-pass the send channel the reverb is on right away and stuff like that but I found that the way I do this you cut away the natural "boring" bottom end in the sounds and add some fat saturated harmonics sculptured with a nice low pass filter which fits very well with the type of kicks I like to use for my music. „

 

If I layered on the timeline I just used transient sounds samples (hats, click, snaps, noise, claps, etc) and adjusted length, EQ, filter, etc on the sample clip/part. I could also add a synth that played a very short transient (filtered and processed noise oscillator, usually).

If I used a sampler I added another layer (Vember Shortcircuit2 for example have 8 layers) that had a dedicated transient/click.

 

Last edited: Dec 31, 2018

Me use it long time.

 

Recording Revolution tutorials are a wonderful thing. I go there on occasion and send others there often.

 

i see...thanx a lot mate..lol.should have known this by myself....also i kno a long time what a percussive envelope is ...

 

dont miss the samples from mars drummachine packs...
linn60 8 bit drums eg

Samples.From.Mars.S612.From.Mars.MULTiFORMAT
next
Samples.From.Was.S3200.From.Was.MULTiFORMAT
team multiformat rocks

 

Ds-10 i use alot, together with schaack transient designer!
Thumbs up

 

addictive drums. if your kick sound like shit, replace it with addictive drums.

 

On the subject of kicks, i have had some fun with the sylenth patch 340 eleckick: you can make part A or osc 1 into a pitched sine psy type kick with a long, trappy sine bass tail, and bulk out the hit with some noise in part B or osc 2. This makes a ridiculously overpowered kick bass combo , so i used it for this tune {which was a bit of fun}

and this one, a more serious effort

The processing for the sound is 2.5:1 ableton compression and a bit of eq and utility to make mono.
here's the sylenth patch, have fun and WATCH YOUR SPEAKERS!
Thanks to Retrolize77 for the chance to share here and the 10 things i just learned from this thread...

 

We all learn from each other, thats what make this place special!
Thx to AZ team & a good year 2 everyone

 

https://kilohearts.com/products/disperser changes the phase, so it makes acoustic kicks sound more EDM