How to make the kick sound more powerful in hip hop beats ?

Daamir O.

New member
Pls can anyone help, I can barely hear my kick when the baseline starts... What should I do so that the kick is more powerful ?

Thanks

Peace
 
Make the kick louder than the bass lol. in all seriousness though, make your kick at least 4db higher and you should be able to tell the difference. if not use a different kick with more mid and high frequency to help it stand out a little
 
can anyone help, I can barely hear my kick when the baseline starts... What should I do so that the kick is more powerful ?

Thanks

Peace


You could EQ the mid freq of your kick to make It a bit knocky. That's what I prefer.
And I turn my kick loud as ****. Way above my bass and other sounds so its more straight forward. Butttt don't turn it too loud.
 
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The most important thing is simply adjusting your audio levels. Balance things so that your kick is a little louder than everything. The next best thing to do it EQ, if ya have to. And then the next best thing is to compress your kick so thats it sounds like it's hitting harder by adjusting your ratio and decay, and attack level. That's about it. Don't make things overly complicated.
 
Pick a frequency between 75hz - 110hz and spike it in EQ.

Oh and you could also apply a little 20% wet chorus and distortion.
 
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You could probably layer your kick with something that's a little more punchy. I wouldn't necessarily just pump up the volume of your original kick if it's not cutting through, althogh I guess you could try that.

The frequencies Cymatic_Soundz mentioned are a great place to start.
 
First pan your bass out the way of your kick. And then EQ to taste. If your bass is like an 808 bass. then let that have the lower frequency. Lo pass the 808 bass at about 300hz. High Pass your kick at about 100hz. That should help it. If your bass is a synth bass or a bass guitar. pan the bass to the left and cut out some of the lower frequencies. You'd have to play it by ear to see what freq's need to be cut. add a little boost to that bass at around 1.5khz to give it some presence. That alone there frees up some space for your kick to shine. If you want it to shine some more. add a little bit of distortion to it. and boost in around the 100-250 hz region. Compress to taste
 
Probably mentioned before but:

Use a compressor on the bass track and use the kick as a side chain input on that compressor to "duck" the bass when the kick hits. Google side chain compression if you don´t know how to.
Get the right kick sample(s) and compress/EQ them and keep them high in the mix.
Lowcut/hipass anything in your mix around 125-200hz except the bass and kick.
 
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I'm a noob at mixing but what I make use of parallell processing when handeling kicks and all my other drums. I send one copy in dry and one copy in crushed with a compressor. As far as equing goes I handle each instrument seperately in the mix.
 
Using ny compression on just the kick alone would be best remember the kick has to be the loudest in the whole track....
 
To prevent clashes in frequency you could add an 'Exciter' to your Kick Drum.
This will enhance the sound and will give it more transparency.
I hope this helps.
 
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