How to create a fat kick drum ( Great Guide )

Danzink

New member
This is taken from remixmag.com (http://remixmag.com/computer_production/remix_bake_kick/)
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Whether creating Miami Bass music is your life's fantasy or your greatest fear, you probably crave the know-how to manifest those car-rattling, trunk-full-of-funk kick drums. In the arenas of hip-hop, house, techno, downtempo and almost any other electronic genre, molding fat kick drums is absolutely essential. Like grandma's homemade apple pie, the recipe for kick drums is partially a matter of taste. However, there's no substitute for quality ingredients. And just like every pie has its staple ingredients, every slamming kick drum requires some common elements. Let's take a look at the shopping list for killer kick drums.
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THE CRUST

You'll need a basic shell to begin creating a thick, strong kick. The classics always work; if you're fortunate enough to own a real Roland TR-808, 909 or other famous drum machine with a killer kick, use it copiously. If you're not one of those chosen few, pay close attention to your original source. For example, if you use a sampler, understand that not all “808 Kick” samples are the same; some sound great, and some just plain suck. There are a lot of reasons for that, including how many generations from the original the sample is, the sampling rate and bit depth of the sampler, how the kick was first sampled and so on. Be as choosy as possible with your individual samples — don't use a mediocre sample just because it has 808 in the name and therefore is “supposed” to sound fat. Seek out a better 808 sample, or use something else that is simply bigger sounding. Remember, the time you spend finding sweet original sources won't be in vain, especially if you reuse the resulting samples for multiple songs.
BORROW SOME SUGAR

An old saying goes, “Good art borrows, great art steals.” A nice way to start out with great raw kick material is to sample directly from the source. If you don't own, but have access to a 909, then sample it directly. Or take one of your favorite producer's tracks on vinyl or CD, find a naked kick drum in there and sample it. Be cautious with that approach for a couple of reasons: Copyright issues around sampling even small bits have become a dangerously gray area, and I would never personally advise using any source straight out of the can, even from a royalty-free sample library. While it may be an excellent start, it's unoriginal. Customize whatever you bite. Treat your samples as a sculptor would treat clay; mold each one to create a trademark sound for yourself. One effective way to customize a fat kick is to take a tip from the synth manufacturers: If a sound is thin, pile another (or a few more) on top. When doing so, it's important to use different sounds; layering two identical kicks will result in a louder kick, but it won't change the basic tone. Remember the sculptor approach here: Even if you are using two good-sounding individual samples, they may not instantly sound great together. For example, I find that when layering kicks, while the thickness may be good, sustain is often overkill. The final result often benefits from a little doctoring on the tail of one (or both) of the samples and other hands-on sonic surgery.
ADD THE FILLING

Once a nice, basic kick is achieved, treating it with two of the mastering engineer's favorite tools is often the next step. Artfully applying a compressor (to just the kick) can go a long way toward creating a signature sound and a huge kick. Compression is one of those “secret spices,” and how to apply it is a whole topic in itself. One recommendation I will make, however, is to use a multiband compressor. With one of those, you can isolate compression on certain frequency ranges. That is perfect if, for example, you want to push the sub of your kick without emphasizing the higher frequencies (which often affect the tone of the attack), or vice-versa. EQ comes after compression in my signal chain. By now the kick should already sound pretty fat; I aim to shave unnecessary frequencies here rather than artificially boosting too much. This is also where you can actualize trademark sounds, while also fine-tuning them to work alongside other elements in specific tracks. I often scoop out mids and highs, especially frequencies above about 500 Hz. Even though I like thick, deep kicks, unless I'm going for a really dublike sound, I often truncate the lowest frequencies (usually the sub-50 Hz frequencies). Even when you can't hear the difference when trimming frequencies, doing so can really tighten up your kicks.
EVEN IT OUT

You may ask why, when you're trying to fatten up a kick, would you want to trim frequencies? That is one of the keys to achieving great mixes, both in the case of kick drums and in general: You want to avoid too many overlapping frequencies. The more sonic separation you have between elements, the more focused the entire mix will sound. That can be especially important for club music, which often gets played on huge, not necessarily audiophile-quality sound systems. If you haven't run into the following scenario already, I assure you at some point you will: Your bass line and kick drum are competing, and it sounds like you have a weak kick. You boost the kick, but it still sounds muddy. Take the bass out, and suddenly the kick doesn't sound so bad. In a scenario like that, solo the two sounds, listen carefully for where frequencies are overlapping and then try subtractive EQ on one element, then the other and sometimes a bit on both. By scooping out overlapping frequencies, you will often find that both elements seem to magically come forward in the mix before even touching their respective volume levels."



I would just like to add some of

my comments to all you people searching for 808 bass kicks and snares. DONT buy/ download an 808 drum kit off the internet search around for them.



PLACES TO FIND GOOD 808 drums



Try Buying some G-Unit , 50 cent, Game, Eminem and Dr.Dre albums.
You will find a lot of naked bass drums in there songs. (Buy CD's other wise the bass would all be distorted and you will end up with rubbish sounds) I found alot in Eminem the RE-UP. So search around.





The best combination goes: (thats what i think anyway)

808 bass drum
2 old vynl break drum
Compression
EQ
 
Pin this right here, if you don't you don't care about this site at all.
 
b onix said:
What do you usually use a gate for? I really need to go to tweak headz and learn what I am doing.

A gate can give the track more punch.
 
Great post, the multiband compressor part is especially great. Can somebody expound on the gate thing, I'd like to know more about that too....
 
Yeah this post was very helpful. I think I be putting to much thought and the beat making process because you hear songs on the radio and just want your track to sound like that. I need help learning how to eq my drums to make them hit harder without peaking and also creating your own sound.
 
johnnyluke said:
Great post, the multiband compressor part is especially great. Can somebody expound on the gate thing, I'd like to know more about that too....

The gate open lets sound thru and then the gate closes cutting
the sound.Depending on the threshold,Attack, and release settings
it will help sound punch thru .
 
all that work for just a basskick?! nothing better to do?!

don't waste your time with overprocessing. select the right sound from the beginning. threads like these only confuse people.

why do you use a gate? this is stupid IMO. the correct use of the volume envelopes in your sampler make all that gating and multiband crap obsolete (it's cheaper, faster, more flexible, more accurate and sounds better!).

no professional would ever use such time-wasting-issue-fixing. better invest all that time to read your samplers manual and select/record the right sound from the beginning.
 
moses said:
all that work for just a basskick?! nothing better to do?!

don't waste your time with overprocessing. select the right sound from the beginning. threads like these only confuse people.

why do you use a gate? this is stupid IMO. the correct use of the volume envelopes in your sampler make all that gating and multiband crap obsolete (it's cheaper, faster, more flexible, more accurate and sounds better!).

no professional would ever use such time-wasting-issue-fixing. better invest all that time to read your samplers manual and select/record the right sound from the beginning.

lol exactly, sounds like a lot of work.

Sometimes I use a gate if I'm working with breaks. I chopped up a break from a song called "Tougher Than The Rest" yesterday and the kick had a long tail. Sometimes I prefer to use a gate.
 
moses said:
all that work for just a basskick?! nothing better to do?!

don't waste your time with overprocessing. select the right sound from the beginning. threads like these only confuse people.

why do you use a gate? this is stupid IMO. the correct use of the volume envelopes in your sampler make all that gating and multiband crap obsolete (it's cheaper, faster, more flexible, more accurate and sounds better!).

no professional would ever use such time-wasting-issue-fixing. better invest all that time to read your samplers manual and select/record the right sound from the beginning.
So the idea of the post is a big waste of time.Maybe others are
trying to learn something.Some people have no idea what a gate
does or what to use it for.It does have to be use for drums you know.

You could add to the post or just keep dumping on people ideas.
Be my guess.............
 
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i already see people asking for gate presets because their beats don't sound good...

all you'll learn from that post is that it's not worth to waste so much time on one kick.
 
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moses said:
all that work for just a basskick?! nothing better to do?!

don't waste your time with overprocessing. select the right sound from the beginning. threads like these only confuse people.

why do you use a gate? this is stupid IMO. the correct use of the volume envelopes in your sampler make all that gating and multiband crap obsolete (it's cheaper, faster, more flexible, more accurate and sounds better!).

no professional would ever use such time-wasting-issue-fixing. better invest all that time to read your samplers manual and select/record the right sound from the beginning.
Exactly. You can't tell anyone on this site that because they're always thinking louder.

Get a good monitoring chain and the 1st thing you'll learn is turning down the volume on everything else except the kick(when using the right kicks, which is why I only use already processed professional stock drums) will give you the exact same lows as any professional recording.
 
Since when did using a simple gate become overprocessing.
Sounds like overstatement to me.
 
Nice piece. It is really a matter of taste. There are so many ways to do this. When I 1st started out, I wanted my kick to punch more. Had no idea until I started reading and asking questions. Here's a simple way do it: Find a thick kick (they are a dime a dozen nowadays). Pitch it down a notch or two. Cut the tail a bit (at least half) and turn the level up. Try taking a little bit of the attack off too and see how you like it. This is a very quick way to get some punch. Of course you can take this many steps further, but if you pick a nice thick kick to begin with you can get what you want without using any EQ or compression on the kick.

www.myspace.com/mastamndbeats
 
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Setting up a gate using side-chain processing. In this scenario you can double the kick drum with a low frequency sine wave.

Use the kick to trigger the gate which is inserted on a low
freguency sine wave(55hz sine tone).
 
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