Hello Audiosex fellas,

I'm looking on how to process kicks to sound like this one in link, knocking hard and surviving mastering. Got some trap kicks sounding very close to this, but they aren't knocking so fine. Any ideas will be much appreciated

 

Interesting example of the kick sound that you'd like to add to your arsenal. Here's an idea that you might like to try: pass the kick sample through a halfway decent, or better, multi-band EQ unit and set up a peaking filter that sits anywhere between 900kHz to 1300kHz. Give the peaking filter lots of gain; i.e. +12 to +16. As you move the mid point of the peaking filter back and forth between 900 to 1300khz, you should hear the kick sound generating a pronounced "knock". Just twiddle the peaking filter's freq range back and forth until you get the the correct amount of edginess to the knock for your project. You'll also need a steep hi-pass filter in order to roll off any amount of the kickdrum's low end resonance that bothers you. Then, for the sake of good practice, add a lowpass filter to catch and totally remove any "zing" on the kicktrack. Penultimately, add a band pass filter somewhere down in the low end. Set it quite wide. You'll be using the bandpass filter to tune the sound of your kick. Play with the centre frequency of the bandpass filter until you get the kickdrum tone that you want. Finally, if you can, Have a look at the kick sample's ADSR. The attack needs to be instantaneous. The sustain should be very short, and there should be no "tail" at the release end - in other words, set the release to 0. If for some reason the kick sound gives you an annoying click, wind in a tiny amount of attack time. Alternatively, if you can't tweak the kick's ADSR, add a noise gate after the dynamic multi-band EQ. The aim here is to tightly chop off all residual resonance in the kick sample.

 

Mess around with FabFilter's Saturn, it works quite nicely to add harmonic information on lower freq's. All while using a carefully selected kick sample..

Also, sidechain the kick to the bass/808.. adjust the threshold/release to taste.

If you want good kicks to reference, I recommend any one of Cardiak's drumkits.

 

Last edited: Aug 17, 2015

Fun of you to mention, it's basically a "modern" trap kick in my words.

Been wondering the same for aaages so looking forward to read DarthFader's post.

 

i'll try this this sounds awesome

 

Rather than trying to make someone else's kick fit into your track why not make your own kicks. All you need is a drum synth and some knowledge of how to make kicks.

Take a look at this,

its a sample from the Dance Music Productions video http://www.dancemusicproduction.com/index.php/tutorials/fundamentals/fundamental-1-drums-programming .

Grab yourself a copy of this and the Waldorf Attack drum synth and make all the kicks you will ever need. Its much easier to adjust the settings for a kick you made, to fit it into a track, than it is to try and fix a sample to fit in your track.

 

Find an acoustic kick sample (hip hop sample packs has tons) that has similar dry and "no front head"/"batter head only" sound. Dual bandpass at around 140Hz and 2kHz. Shorten the kick to about 80ms length (with some fade out). Boost 50-80Hz if some low end is needed. Maybe additional limiter and/or transient expander/designer if you need to make-up and control the attack/tail. Adjust narrow/width of Q to taste (depending on how the kick sounds originally).

Bell/ditch (or notch) out some 300-400Hz if it's too "boxy".

edit: Try this (MDKS drumkit): http://www40.zippyshare.com/v/wh263Xp6/file.html
Check out the kick "Finish Line Kick"! Remove the click/glitch at the very end of the sample (I don't know why it was left in there). There are some more similar kicks in there aswell.
Lowcut the sample and let the bass be alone in the low-end. Side-chain compress the bass to the kick. It should get a similar result as you posted.

 

Last edited: Aug 17, 2015

Du har mitt största tack.

 

Tack/thanks!