Getting kick drums this big

M

manchesterraver

Member
getting kick drums to sound this big and to stand out as much as this song seems improssable to me , the kick stands out twice as much as any of my tracks and the kick drum really hits hard when listening in my car , compared to my tracks where you can hear the kick drum but you cant feel it as well as you can on this track

https://soundcloud.com/duskymusic/love-taking-over

Now heres the thing , i have deecent samples and i have maschine studio , so ive got access to really good sounds , but as far as drums go i can never get them sounding as good as this , now i have fab filters mb (frequency specific side chain side chain compressor ) but when i use that in a drastic way to let the kick come through as good as this track it kills the bass off completley , because the sidechains pushing away the bass to much ,

Ive used compressors and i only get a tiny neglagable amound of punchyness from it , i use paralell compression but this too only gives me a bit more punch , and i find layering kicks tends to cancel out fq and i end up with a worse off sound , the weaker some sound aounds better :/

Any advice would be great guys

And thanks in advance

\0/

MR
 
All sounds around the kick drum is EQued to make sure the kick drum/bass is the focal of the composition no special effects going on really just good mixing technique. If you want your drums to knock make sure no frequencies are clashing in its range mid/lows you can play with the Hi-ends of kick drums to your liking, also make sure your leveling is right. The secret is EQ, learn how to EQ and sonically sculpt your sounds.
 
rickpolo said:
All sounds around the kick drum is EQued to make sure the kick drum/bass is the focal of the composition no special effects going on really just good mixing technique. If you want your drums to knock make sure no frequencies are clashing in its range mid/lows you can play with the Hi-ends of kick drums to your liking, also make sure your leveling is right. The secret is EQ, learn how to EQ and sonically sculpt your sounds.
Click to expand...

Or get a big Kick drum sample.

Or layer for a big kick drum sound.

I would do both of those before any eq.
 
light compression probably, maybe a sine at 20-40hz with alittle decay and another at 150hz?Idon'tknow but that prolly might be it.
 
thanks for your replies , ive got maschine with a few of the new expansions , and out of all those samples none of the kicks compare to the loudens of the kick in that track , or any of my reference tracks , at the moment my tracks kicks and bass don't hit you in the chest when listening to them on a big system , steffeeh I checked both those threads and had a good read lst night and went away from it last night hoping to have more clarity today , to not much avail atall , I just feel that once my tracks are near complete that changing the drums becomes a complete nightmare to get everything to fit again , so I am trying a method of getting the drums and bass to work perfect from the start , but as I said my drums just don't have that ''hitting you in the chest feel''

thanks in advance MR \0/
 
KonKossKang said:
light compression probably, maybe a sine at 20-40hz with alittle decay and another at 150hz?Idon'tknow but that prolly might be it.
Click to expand...

I just tried this with sylenth1 a sine wave and put down the octave , but is there a way of generating a sine specifically within those frequency ranges? or a better method than the following - when I EQ using fabfilter q , from 20 - 40 hz it sounds ether in audible or seems to be adding no impact whatsoever ?

much appreciated MR \0/
 
Why would you compress the drums if you want them louder? Compress is like balling your fist then releasing. compression squashes a sound then releases. Me personally and this is obvisously personal preference but i never compress my drums, maybe a multiband on an 808 but thats for a totally different reason. When you are comparing loudness levels just understand that track you are referencing has been mastered. just listening it sounds like its peaking around -8db(RMS) and thats me referencing in my daily cans. If you are more focused on loudness then i would read up on RMS and peak levels because that track has a clean loudness because of mixing technique. Compression may have aided the overall mix.
 
Sorry for the multi- post just saw the above. Manchester it sounds like you dont understand how eq works and you are just playing with the numbers. Heres a very good way to learn how eq works on a sound sonically. open up your daw load up an 808 sine. Now throw a spectrum eq on the mixer chanell. Play one long note pref in A4 because it has alot of low,mid and you can add to the highs. now what you really want is a spectrum with a heatmap. Basically it lights up in the corresponding range that is sonically effected by the sound. If you have FL, fruity EQ has this. Now what the sound is playing lower each band seperately then boost them to the highest range. This will give you a feel of how each band effects the sound.
 
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The pitch controls the frequency I think. The higher it is, the tighter the wave gets and the faster it gets.
An lfo is similar to a cpu in that regard. Anyways to set it to whatever frequency you want, adjust pitch to taste and some reverb.
Compression is pretty surprising man, that stuff can make drums just gobble the entire sample up
 
so that is really not a big kick sound but a combination of qualities over several frequency ranges

even when the bottom end comes in it is still nothing special just the same sample with different eq

how is it achieving that sound?

three things

thump - slight boost around 70Hz
click - some emphasis around 800Hz
air - a slight boost around 4kHz

everything else is just commentary: do not add a sine wave in the 20Hz-40Hz to it as there is none there to begin with

if you are insistent on doing so then add a sine wave that is properly pitched to your bass line in the appropriate octave; remember to add a little saturation./distortion so that the 2nd order harmonics are excited and therefore audible on smaller speakers

Octave number-10
NoteMIDI NNFreqMIDI NNFreq
B2330.873561.74
Bb/A#2229.143458.27
A2127.503355.00
Ab/G#2025.963251.91
G1924.503149.00
Gb/F#1823.123046.25
F1721.832943.65
E1620.602841.20
Eb/D#1519.452738.89
D1418.352636.71
Db/C#1317.322534.65
C1216.352432.70

note on reading the table and octave numbers

note name is in the first column, octave number is in the first row above the specific MIDI note number/freq pair. To add a sub-octave sine wave at pitch G in the region of 20Hz you would play G-1 or MIDI note number 19.

Octave numbers are applied according to the standard used in most daws
Middle C = MIDI Note number 60 = C3 in most daws = C5 in fl and BiaB
 
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This^^^^^^sums everything up. You drums and baseline should always be in key with your song. Drums not always but your bassline should always be in key, so if you root note is A your bassline needs to be in A. I would never add reverb to the drums in this type of track because it is bass driven and reverb would muddy up the signal unless you are going to send the verb as an aux and EQ out the muddy ness but then the reverb would be just as pointless as it's effects would not be audible. Only tight verb on the clap/snare and maybe percusion here and there but not on the sine or kick drum. Just my preferences, creativity is not set in stone.
 
I think the reverb would come through nicely on the click and air part of the kick as well; I'd eq out everything under 400Hz or so simply to remove the chance of the boom becoming too big
 
^^^^^^I have def played with the verb on drums in my newer productions, more of an ambient vibe than a bass driven though. You know your shit buddy.
 
Ive never heard the term heatmap, but ive got fabfilter pro , it has a spectrum analiser built in , now i get what you mean with compression , but eqing isnt seeming to do much , its just increasing the volume , were as i want a more punchy instant kick , something that going to be in and out of the mix quick with a hell of an impact , ive spent pretty much all weekend messing around in maschine , in battery and in kontakt ,and im not getting a sound with chest thumping impact , i was trying compression to see if i could squash the sound but still have the impact , so im getting the sub , ive tried layering drums that just sounds pretty awfull , ive got to be doing something wrong , as far as leaving it untill the mastering stage , ive tried that on the few tracks ive finished and its even harder to get imact even with paralell compression and transient editing , .

Thanks MR
 
My musical style is totally different from the reference track but I attached a test, This is peak at around -9dbrms. Rick
 

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  • Test.mp3
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Don't confuse RMS levels with Peak levels buddy, This track is peaking around -9db (RMS) you cant really define a standard because its record to record genre to genre but my mastered works sit typically around -10db through -8db (RMS) depends on what im personally trying to accomplish with headroom etc.
 
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