Hi there,
So I am looking to create some kick drums with 'processing' on it - ready to use for my upcomimg tracks. And i know there are many sample packs with everything ready, but they are lacking of that 'energy' eqing etc. I completely understand that eq and the rest depends of the rest of the mix, but let me give you this example. This track from Armin :

Kick is quite loud - punchy, but low enough, have a great sustain and effect. Beginning - kick without lows -
there might be 2 kicks one which is the top' and quite still mid range of freq with low freq cut, and then one with sub kickin in. ANd basically this kick could work with other bass (not hitting the the low so much).

The thing is. I tried to use multiband and create exactly this kind of kick, yet my 'sub' is awkward and not so 'punchy' like in this track - or too much punchy that covers other elements in the mix. How to achieve this punchiness like in Armin's track? Loud, with nice low. Some limiters on kick? Multibands compresision?
Seems like kick has really good low end I would love to know what kind of processing sample needs to be after , to achieve this effect?

 

usually just a compressor and eq i guess

 

Sonic Academy - KICK 2

Layers, eq, comp, tune, adapts the length with the speed of the track and/or according to the bass.
Make room for your kick.

 

I’m curious, when you apply multiband compression how do you actually pick your bands and how many? What attack & release? What is your reasoning of getting something “punchy” by reducing it’s dynamic range?

Did you tried to analyse the kick you are trying to copy? How long is the tail? Frequency of the top and pressure point? Does the sub is sweeping frequency? Do you properly duck your entire mix (heavy during the kick transient) and softer (1-2 dB) on key-frequencies so you can properly hear it during the song?

I’m asking all these because that kick is nothing special. The context around it, is.

 

Not an expert on electronic kicks.

But I will say this: transient processor

(also, none of them sound quite the same and some are not so great)

 

Thanks for answers!

I make quite fast attack/release with around -5-8dB threshold so when kick 'kicks'in its with full power and few miliseconds after that, like maybe 20 or more it starts to reduce some low frequency so it makes room for a bass which is most likely in between kick in progressive trance and not only. Of course you can sidechain bass as well, the thing is im bored of sidechaining or LFO bassline cause they are losing it's power somehow . I try to 'push' all the sounds as much as possible to not make much air in the mix left.
Usually i use like 3 up to 4 bands on kick (minimum 2 kicks layering).

With analising it's not that easy, you have here ready product with all the processing done, and you dont hear just kick, so you can assume how it's playing solo, in the mix its nicely glued but still somehow separately pumping its a good contrast and really makes a good job with bigger sound systems.The low here it's quite incredible on the kick (i can somehow separate it in my mind from the bass in between).
Contex around i actually figured out, just the kick left.

Goin to take a look on this one. From youtube i can see it's doing quite the same I did other ways - so this might be easier way to do some things.

 

You simply can't rely on a compressor to do this type of shaping, especially in today's music. You need surgical precision and you can only get it with a volume shaper.

Well, for starters slap an LFOTool on the kick and see how short you can have the kick so you can still have some "oomph". Is easy to use this solution because anything you use (sample, synth, preset) they will all conform to the length you chose with the LFOTool and you don't need to spend time tweaking every kick you try. Then use an almost mirrored LFOTool for the sub bass (by now I suppose you split the bass in two: top bass which you can hear in laptop speakers and sub bass which you can only hear in subwoofers/proper speakers).
Observation: Armin's track have no sub bass, the kick is fairly long and it alone is driving the subsonics. Also the bass is above the kick so is not interfering at all with kick's fundamental - that's why you hear the separation, because it IS separation.

You really need to duck everything in front of the kick, here's why: if you send your kick to the master bus at -6 dB FS and you're happy with the sound, as soon as you add elements, the master will clip from the buildup signal. By ducking everything, you ensure that only a small amount of signal will add up when the kick hits.

Making peace between kick & sub is relatively easy: while the kick is playing you have the sub from the kick (tuned to the root of your songs key). The when the kick is killed by the LFOTool, the sub enters and for the listener is the same thing. If you do it properly you don't lose power when ducking, but quite the opposite.

Further on: have a suming bus for all drums and a summing bus for all synths including the top bass. You have to LFOTool the synths individually so they lose few dB while the kick hits. Then at the sum bus level, have a multiband EQ/comp sidechained to the kick and duck few db at 100-200 Hz (where the kick's pressure point is), then maybe at 1K and maybe 8-ishK - so your kick can punch through the mix without you needing to raise the volume and make the kick overpower everything. Same thing for the drums submix. All the values are just a starting point. You can go as much as 3 dB in range and pick the frequency that sounds good, not the fixed numbers.

Next move would be to make a "mirror eq" between the intrsuments bus and the drums: boost the drums at 10K with 1dB, reduce the instruments at 10K with 1dB (usually drums have way more interesting sound in very high register, the synths are just noise - as usual, judge). Then find a point in midrange where the synths shine, boost it - and reduce the same amount in the drums submix. Finally, do the same move (either on synths boost either on drums) at under 1K - maybe boost the clap frequency and reduce that freq in synths mix.

If you properly make room for elements in your mix, no one will overpower the others.

In the end I will like to show you how you can see the lack of sub bass: if you look at the image below, you can see the white energy at 30-50 Hz (the whiter the bigger) exactly periodically when the kick hits (you can observe as well the kick transient which is that line that goes up in white until around 300 Hz then the energy slowly drops - so your pressure point is 100-300 Hz). And you can see constant white energy at 70Hz - that is the bassline. The nly thing is, the kick is tuned to the root key of the song (or 3rd) and it "seems" like being a part of a sub bass, but that's just your ears messing with you.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Mar 21, 2018

probably the most used plugin for electronic Kicks is BazzISM, simple, precise and effective.

after setting up a basic, correctly tuned Kick, you later can "fine tune" the sliders while listening to the whole track to see what happens.

btw, this company (ISM) has some other "gems" available and is worth a shot as well.

 

Layers, don’t be afraid to cut sub 1st octave lows in a kick on this kind of track. The sub bass synth seems to win on this one.

 

Thanks for lovely reply with details described! Yeah I tried to group drums separately and send to one channel before sending to master, and other instruments synths, fx'to another ones, so before hitting master they would have another channel most likely with eq and some limit (sidechain usually how you say, LFOTool works well as i avoid limiters while mixing). I noticed that sound might change in the way I dont really like - its losing something and gaining other things. Things become flat, most likely i lose the 'space', so maybe mix become more contrastic, so i can hear that, but in other way the 'magic' disappear. And i have dillemma, to do proper way to sound good for technical point of view, or to please myself with result.
A great point is about the key of the kick, which is quite important to be set to the root key. Problem is, but what i was always thinking, its fine for intro and outro, but in the main part when you have some melodies and most likely change your bassline tonation, frequency changes as well - so kick stays lets say G# and bassline changes - most likely in harmonic way but not always you wanna play this way. Now depends of track, this might be pain in the ass when kick works great just on some parts of the track and later on changes. Then solution might be masking it with more interesting surroundings and sounds to 'mess' with listeners to not pay attention for that.

Anyway the most important to place things in own frequency range and to avoid them to play the same freq. So yes, lower kick here and bass a little above and they both fill nicely bottom of the record.

 

This will never be a problem. Never.

There’s nothing “magic” in sound (at least not in the producer’s chair, as a listener maybe). It sounds in conformity with the genre or it doesn’t. Identify and define the “things”: each process will affect your sound. That’s why I suggested to ask yourself why are you aplying the processing of your choice. To me it seems you rather try to perpetuate some untested ideas (that one above with the kick clashing with bass notes is ridiculous) instead of simply listening what processing does to the sound: too quiet?-raise the volume. Too soft?-enhance the transient. Small rms?-parallel compress/saturate. No presence?-increase the freq with eq (or add a layer according to your needs). Everything is analysis, action and assessment of the resulting sound. As long as you work with “something changes, don’t know what” is only going to bring frustration. Me out. Cheers!

 

Last edited by a moderator: Mar 21, 2018

Do you mind to share what kind of spectrogram are you using?

 

have you watched "Armin van Buuren Teaches Dance Music" ?

he talks about all this there

 

Of course I did, just the problem is, as in all of these commercial tutorials, you don't see from "scratch". In this case Armin or Benno have already kicks created and using them with minimum tweaks - they already sounds nice. And all I try to do is that fine tweaking to make that kick similar. But when layering often I loose its punchines or it stands out too much in entire mix, of course doing EQ and bit of saturation, but it still not it. That's why I tried even with multiband to achieve similar effect. And it's getting close, but not that punchiness, not that clarity..

 

maybe this could help you: