Making your Kicks REALLLLY Knock....

yo Deranged hit me up with some projects to fam, my pockets its breathin hard..madddd empty

plus we actually know a lot of the same people, so yea hit me up fam
 
**** me too homie i got layed off but i need to build my portfolio some more
 
Krumbz said:
Heh heh.

You're unbelievable bro. Like I said earlier... I don't care who you know or how much money you make. Noone has questioned your track record. I am questioning your ability to communicate with others without being self righteous or arrogant.

You should of never indirectly referenced my advice as being "bull****". I DO appreciate you NOT sugar coating your opinion but at the same time I don't think it was necessary for you to blatantly disregard mine as being false.

I only intended to help the guy and I think I accomplished that until you came along and shot my advice down... ONLY to promote your own.

Being humble is a frequently absent trait in this business.
Click to expand...


You've got degrees, but say "should of" ?


:confused:



Just kidding. Honestly I value both of these guys' opinions. However @ deranged, it came across as though you were calling the dudes who don't know the levels of these procedures "dumb ****s."

I mean, mixing is an art in itself, and some dudes were just never taught to paint. Truth is, a million and a half of these "producers" will never come to terms with the fact that they're just not born to paint.

But anyway, in the tech age we're in now, it's only natural they'd look to avenues like this to gather some knowledge. I mean, I'm definitely one of those "omg now everyone and their mother wants to be a producer" type dudes, but hey, what can you do. It's a ****load of cats out here who have no idea what they're doing. They grab an MPC, a "soul" record, and automatically they feel kanyeezish.

But for the fellas who really ARE into this and don't have the bread for engineering school, they need some help. Ironically, many of our favorite producers were just taught by someone else, who was taught by someone else, etc, and you accumulate knowledge as you go along. The BIGGEST problem is, these dudes aren't experimenting. They're looking to sites like this as a one-stop shop for a definitive way to do things---and the thing about art is, the way YOU create, is as important to your success as WHAT you create. Cats are more focused on getting a sound they can readily identify with (i.e. that Lil Jon synth, or that Just Blaze knock), rather than explore and find a sound of their own, and they get lost in the "mix" because they lose themselves in a quest to be the next "that guy" instead of the first "themselves." I wouldn't call them dumb, just not at the same level of love and confidence of their own music as of the dudes they are--in effect--trying to emulate.

We're at an age where dudes can get rich real quick--especially off this music ****--and these young dudes don't wanna put the work that maybe you and Krumbz put in...to understand what they're doing, to experiment and eventually find THEIR niche. They wanna know "ok this is how you make ur drums knock" or "ok this is where you can find dope samples to download" cause they wake up everyday picturing themselves making it big, getting the same adorration that cats like Blaze, 'Ye and Timbo get.

So at the end of the day they can't win because Dr. Dre can easily explain his compression techniques (like on songs like "Get You Some" or "Boss' Life") just as quickly as Just Blaze can tell you he uses Izotope plugins in his final mixes....but these are dudes who spent major time honing their skills....and they know aint no way anyone gonna read their interviews like "ohhh so THATs how you do it" and wake up tomorrow making music like them.



This all to say, Deranged and Krumbz are BOTH right, and Deranged made the best point when he said "there is no right or wrong" - of course that conflicted a bit with his earlier point lol - but c'mon fellas, let's keep the peace and use this site for just what it was meant for. We got enough stupid ass rappers beefing.....now the people to make the music they act like baffoons on are gonna beef too?





and btw, i'll kill anyone's beats on this site with an Alesis SR-16 and a broken pair of scissors hitting a wine glass. lmfao


actually, all my music is down until i learn this mpc5k.

:cheers:
 
Last edited:
as20gp said:
yo Deranged hit me up with some projects to fam, my pockets its breathin hard..madddd empty

plus we actually know a lot of the same people, so yea hit me up fam
Click to expand...
Aw, sh*t, you know I got you. lol. I'll PM when I get a chance, I'm just checking in right now to see the status of this battle. GJB, if you still got the list I sent and don't mind, can you forward it to as20gp? You probably have alot of the ones on there already, it's kinda short, but it's the guys actually looking right now, as in the last 2 weeks.

I wish there was a way to do private messages to a list of people at once, I'd send these out second I know cats are looking. Anyone who knows ho, hook us up.

BxJaze said:
You've got degrees, but say "should of" ?


:confused:



Just kidding. Honestly I value both of these guys' opinions. However @ deranged, it came across as though you were calling the dudes who don't know the levels of these procedures "dumb ****s."

I mean, mixing is an art in itself, and some dudes were just never taught to paint. Truth is, a million and a half of these "producers" will never come to terms with the fact that they're just not born to paint.

But anyway, in the tech age we're in now, it's only natural they'd look to avenues like this to gather some knowledge. I mean, I'm definitely one of those "omg now everyone and their mother wants to be a producer" type dudes, but hey, what can you do. It's a ****load of cats out here who have no idea what they're doing. They grab an MPC, a "soul" record, and automatically they feel kanyeezish.

But for the fellas who really ARE into this and don't have the bread for engineering school, they need some help. Ironically, many of our favorite producers were just taught by someone else, who was taught by someone else, etc, and you accumulate knowledge as you go along. The BIGGEST problem is, these dudes aren't experimenting. They're looking to sites like this as a one-stop shop for a definitive way to do things---and the thing about art is, the way YOU create, is as important to your success as WHAT you create. Cats are more focused on getting a sound they can readily identify with (i.e. that Lil Jon synth, or that Just Blaze knock), rather than explore and find a sound of their own, and they get lost in the "mix" because they lose themselves in a quest to be the next "that guy" instead of the first "themselves." I wouldn't call them dumb, just not at the same level of love and confidence of their own music as of the dudes they are--in effect--trying to emulate.

We're at an age where dudes can get rich real quick--especially off this music ****--and these young dudes don't wanna put the work that maybe you and Krumbz put in...to understand what they're doing, to experiment and eventually find THEIR niche. They wanna know "ok this is how you make ur drums knock" or "ok this is where you can find dope samples to download" cause they wake up everyday picturing themselves making it big, getting the same adorration that cats like Blaze, 'Ye and Timbo get.

So at the end of the day they can't win because Dr. Dre can easily explain his compression techniques (like on songs like "Get You Some" or "Boss' Life") just as quickly as Just Blaze can tell you he uses Izotope plugins in his final mixes....but these are dudes who spent major time honing their skills....and they know aint no way anyone gonna read their interviews like "ohhh so THATs how you do it" and wake up tomorrow making music like them.



This all to say, Deranged and Krumbz are BOTH right, and Deranged made the best point when he said "there is no right or wrong" - of course that conflicted a bit with his earlier point lol - but c'mon fellas, let's keep the peace and use this site for just what it was meant for. We got enough stupid ass rappers beefing.....now the people to make the music they act like baffoons on are gonna beef too?





and btw, i'll kill anyone's beats on this site with an Alesis SR-16 and a broken pair of scissors hitting a wine glass. lmfao


actually, all my music is down until i learn this mpc5k.

:cheers:
Click to expand...
And I'll say again. In no way was my 1st post meant to "correct" anyone or "make you conform to my beleifs". I honestly saw "make drums knock" and posted damn near word for word what I post in every "make drums knock" thread. It just happened to be posted behind someone who layers and compresses.

Debates/arguements ensued, and wah-lah, we got this big buncha WTF forged into a thread.

To Krumbz, hopefully when you reread this thread you'll realize I wasn't "attacking you" with my 1st post, a Jersey cat like yourself gotta understand what occurs when you call a nikka out his name, I never directly opposed your ways of making kicks knocked. Calling me a dyckface is a whole different thing.

You need to post that old ver. of Bananas with the heavy orchestral sample in it. I liked that on better. I'm more underground than you think fam. I reached out to you a few (prolly about 5 now, lol)years back when I was scraping trying to collab. No money no nothing, based on simply the fact you was a nice MC. If this ain't the same white boy from Jerz, my bad, but if so, respect. :cheers:

To other dude, set up the battle!
 
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Krumbz said:
Hey Mr West. I'll try my best to answer your question but it's a very common question and you should really try a "search". Not only on THIS forum but try Gearslutz.com as well.

As the previous poster mentioned... you should really layer your kicks and snares.

What I try to do is find two broadly similar kicks but they might have slightly different tones to them. I'll take one kick and eq it to bring out the fundamental frequency as well as some harmonics in it. Then I'll do the same with the other kick.

I almost always roll off 35hz and below. Try a high pass filter and just cut everything at 35hz and lower. Anything lower then 35hz is really just unnecessary "rumble" and all it will do is cloud up your low end come mix time.

You can usually layer 2 - 3 kicks or snares together without it being "too much".

To find the "tone" of these drums... open your eq. Find a low to mid low band that you want to use. Set the "Q" value to a VERY VERY narrow band. Next turn your speakers down.
Bring the "Gain" up on that band all the way. ALL THE WAY UP!

Now sweep the mid to low freqs and listen for that tone of the kick that you might like. When you find it... lower the gain down to either +3 or +6 db. Now widen the Q to a medium setting. Not too wide but not too narrow either.

Make some quick final adjustments with YOUR EARS and adjust the gain until you feel it fits comfortably. Do NOT bring the gain past +6db. (You can do what you want but that's pretty much just a rule of thumb when using eq).

Now when you compress these kicks together you CAN make them "gel" and sound more cohesive.

I'm going to assume that you're REALLY new so I'll run down how to use a compressor.

First things first. Threshold.

Threshold is a point that YOU set... telling the compressor WHEN to BEGIN compressing.

So basically when the signal of the kick drum reaches a certain point or threshold the compressor will kick in and start compressing that signal.

So lower the signal until you SEE the meter telling you that you are compressing about 5 to 6db. It should be red. (Now 5 to 6db is so generic it's laughable... but use your ears to tell you how much compression to apply!).

The kick drum should get quieter and quieter the lower you set the threshold.

Now we have Ratio. Ratio is how MUCH compression you want the compressor to apply AFTER the signal passes the threshold.

For kicks 5:1 is pretty common but again it depends on THAT kick that you're using.

So set it to around 5:1 to start with. This means that for EVERY 5 db that crosses ABOVE the Threshold... only 1 db will actually get thru. In other words your compressing 5 dbs of signal or sound into 1 db.

Now Attack is HOW FAST OR SLOW the compressor reacts AFTER the signal passed the threshold. A slow attack means that the INITIAL "hit" of the kick drum won't be affected because the compressor reacts too slowly to "catch it". (It's really called a transient).

Release is how long the compressor compresses the signal. In other words how long the compressor HOLDS the signal down... under the threshold.

A FAST Release means that the compressor immediately lets the signal go. A SLOW Release means that compressor holds the signal down and "rides it" for a longer period of time. Slow Releases are most common on basslines... to "smooth" the sound out. NOT all the way slow but fairly slow.

Attack and Release are two settings that I can't give you any presets on. You must play with these and listen CLOSELY to hear the results. Start with both at medium and slowly make the Attack quicker. Once you have the Attack set... just mess with the Release and listen for what it does. You want to hold the kick down for a bit but not forever. At the same time you don't want a FAST Release because you want to have some time of grip on it. So it will usually be somewhere inbetween.

Finally adjust the OUTPUT GAIN on the compressor to MATCH how loud your original uncompressed kick was. I usually bypass the comp... listen to the original... then try to match it with the OUTPUT Gain.

Essentially you compressed the signal... so it's now quieter. But you use the Output Gain to bring the compressed signal back up to where it originally was volume wise. The only difference now is you have a kick that has PUNCH and volume... where as the original most likely lacked those elements.

And that's how EQ and Compression work on kicks. Some of the things I mentioned apply to more then just kicks though. Definitely drums in general will benefit from a little compression and eq.

* You can use the EQ AFTER the compressor but when you become a little more knowledgable about all of this you can try that out.

Hope this helps man!

K

Edited* I changed the word "can't" to CAN. Just a typo.
Click to expand...

OMG, I KNOW I'M A YEAR LATE, BUT THIS HAS TO GO IN THE GREATEST POST HALL OF FAME. :cheers:
 
Mr West said:
Im fairly new to Reason ive been using it for a few months now and im just wondering if anybody has tips on how to really make my drums knock like Khalil is doing besides the usual EQ and compressing.

Maybe you have some tips others like myself might not be aware of.

And if thats all you can say then maybe what are some tips i might not know on EQ'ing and Compression?

I usually just turn the gain up on the compressor +3 and use a ratio of 3:1.


lol dont grill me too hard and no im not interested in the BEETMAKER VST.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

This is what I do when I want to change rumbly drums into punchy, powerful ones (not a fan of 808 rumble, I outgrew that stage a couple years ago back in High School):

(As a preliminary step, I make sure that the drum's volume is loud enough to actually trigger a compressor.)

I set the compressor to heavily SQUASH the drums down with NO MAKE-UP GAIN, and then set the attack of the compressor so that THE COMPRESSOR DOESN'T KICK IN until 30ms - 50ms.

C1 is GREAT for this. Love it. There are plenty of other compressors that can do this as well -- just stay away from analog-modeled compressors, because some of them are so modeled to be so old-school that they're too low-tech to do this technique.
 
that was really helpful sir, thank you.
Krumbz said:
Hey Mr West. I'll try my best to answer your question but it's a very common question and you should really try a "search". Not only on THIS forum but try Gearslutz.com as well.

As the previous poster mentioned... you should really layer your kicks and snares.

What I try to do is find two broadly similar kicks but they might have slightly different tones to them. I'll take one kick and eq it to bring out the fundamental frequency as well as some harmonics in it. Then I'll do the same with the other kick.

I almost always roll off 35hz and below. Try a high pass filter and just cut everything at 35hz and lower. Anything lower then 35hz is really just unnecessary "rumble" and all it will do is cloud up your low end come mix time.

You can usually layer 2 - 3 kicks or snares together without it being "too much".

To find the "tone" of these drums... open your eq. Find a low to mid low band that you want to use. Set the "Q" value to a VERY VERY narrow band. Next turn your speakers down.
Bring the "Gain" up on that band all the way. ALL THE WAY UP!

Now sweep the mid to low freqs and listen for that tone of the kick that you might like. When you find it... lower the gain down to either +3 or +6 db. Now widen the Q to a medium setting. Not too wide but not too narrow either.

Make some quick final adjustments with YOUR EARS and adjust the gain until you feel it fits comfortably. Do NOT bring the gain past +6db. (You can do what you want but that's pretty much just a rule of thumb when using eq).

Now when you compress these kicks together you CAN make them "gel" and sound more cohesive.

I'm going to assume that you're REALLY new so I'll run down how to use a compressor.

First things first. Threshold.

Threshold is a point that YOU set... telling the compressor WHEN to BEGIN compressing.

So basically when the signal of the kick drum reaches a certain point or threshold the compressor will kick in and start compressing that signal.

So lower the signal until you SEE the meter telling you that you are compressing about 5 to 6db. It should be red. (Now 5 to 6db is so generic it's laughable... but use your ears to tell you how much compression to apply!).

The kick drum should get quieter and quieter the lower you set the threshold.

Now we have Ratio. Ratio is how MUCH compression you want the compressor to apply AFTER the signal passes the threshold.

For kicks 5:1 is pretty common but again it depends on THAT kick that you're using.

So set it to around 5:1 to start with. This means that for EVERY 5 db that crosses ABOVE the Threshold... only 1 db will actually get thru. In other words your compressing 5 dbs of signal or sound into 1 db.

Now Attack is HOW FAST OR SLOW the compressor reacts AFTER the signal passed the threshold. A slow attack means that the INITIAL "hit" of the kick drum won't be affected because the compressor reacts too slowly to "catch it". (It's really called a transient).

Release is how long the compressor compresses the signal. In other words how long the compressor HOLDS the signal down... under the threshold.

A FAST Release means that the compressor immediately lets the signal go. A SLOW Release means that compressor holds the signal down and "rides it" for a longer period of time. Slow Releases are most common on basslines... to "smooth" the sound out. NOT all the way slow but fairly slow.

Attack and Release are two settings that I can't give you any presets on. You must play with these and listen CLOSELY to hear the results. Start with both at medium and slowly make the Attack quicker. Once you have the Attack set... just mess with the Release and listen for what it does. You want to hold the kick down for a bit but not forever. At the same time you don't want a FAST Release because you want to have some time of grip on it. So it will usually be somewhere inbetween.

Finally adjust the OUTPUT GAIN on the compressor to MATCH how loud your original uncompressed kick was. I usually bypass the comp... listen to the original... then try to match it with the OUTPUT Gain.

Essentially you compressed the signal... so it's now quieter. But you use the Output Gain to bring the compressed signal back up to where it originally was volume wise. The only difference now is you have a kick that has PUNCH and volume... where as the original most likely lacked those elements.

And that's how EQ and Compression work on kicks. Some of the things I mentioned apply to more then just kicks though. Definitely drums in general will benefit from a little compression and eq.

* You can use the EQ AFTER the compressor but when you become a little more knowledgable about all of this you can try that out.

Hope this helps man!

K

Edited* I changed the word "can't" to CAN. Just a typo.
Click to expand...
 
compress to 2:23:1
with low att mid rel
about 1/4 in, on the m-class eq, make a gain drop of about 4bd and about 3q,
infact scratch that.

just focus, individually on the eq, u want o make 3 differant sounds,
boom
click
snap

u may need to use 2 eqs but dont be afraid,
good kick is all about eq and compression,
eq before compression of course
 
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