Does it matter what note your kick drum is?

A

azzurro

Guest
I'm just curious... if I sample a kick from a song, and it's a C, and I'm working in C flat Major, will this cause any "theory problems"? Can you tell that the note isn't in the scale?

The reason I want to know is because most of the time when you sample something, you don't know what the original note was...
 
Hello.
I think it does matter in some cases what pitch your kick is at. I know from experience, I have had choons which didn't sound right for ages, before i realised that the kick was out of tune! A lot of the time a kick will have no discernable pitch, cos it consists of a pitchbend, so the pitch constantly changes from start to finish (especially in tekno). My advice is just to listen to the sampled kick with your composition and see how it sounds, if its a bit too high/low just transpose it until it fits.
:monkey:
strigg
 
The pitch of your kick is definitely important.

OK.... this is going to sound esoteric but bear with me.

The kick's triggering frequency is not necessarily relative to the key of your track. It has more to do with the fact that the harmonic content of the kick must be in line with the general resonance of your track, especially with the non-fundamental frequencies that your bassline produces.

The reason behind this has to do with the fact that the kick-drum itsself hasn't got a fundamental frequency. Its actual frequency decays over time. Regardless of the method by witch it was synthesized (if it was synthesized that is) the waveform of a kick usually looks like a burst of higher frequencues followed by a steady decay in pitch.
But with most good kicks there are usually some suttle frequencies interacting with that basic decaying pitch, and it is these frequencies that are important.
This is why some kicks will just work for a track and other's simply wont. It all depends on the environment the sample was recorded in, or the method by which it was generated.

What can help sometimes to make a kick fit with a track is to filter out some of the higher frequency noise, created mostly by reverberation (using a noise filter). This dries out the kick to an extent, but still keeps most of the harmonic content intact.
What you then do is apply appropriate EQ and reverb to the kick in the track itsself to make it fit snuggly with your other sounds.

Alternatively you can build your track up around your kick. Especially when you synthesize most of your sounds on the fly. You can adjust the sounds you generate to compliment it. Just remember that every sound you add actually needs to fit with the others in the same complimentary way if you want a really tight mix.
This is where the minimalistic approach comes in really handy. You have a couple of sounds that fit togther really smoothly and maximise on the variations you can get from them. Rather than continuously layering new sounds on top of each other that may or may not have a negative effective on the track's overall environement.

OK.. now for the quick rule of thumb I follow when selecting the pitch of my kick....

I simply pick the frequency that produces the most powerful sound and work with that.
Too low a pitch and you get very little but detached rumbling... Too high and you get an irritating little high pich ploink. So just pick somewhere in the middle where you feel your kick is generating maximum oomph.
 
Wow, thanks a lot, just a quick question: Say you go the other way: you make the "top" of your song and then add the kick later... you recommend a noise filter. What exactly is that?

Also, why does the kick's pitch decay over time? If I press a key on my keyboard, doesn't the appropriate pitch come out?
 
I don't necessarily recommend a noise filter... if you work the other way around. If you're going to pick your kick drum later it's essential that you pick one that fits with what you already have. It's especially important that it interacts well with your bassline.

The noisefilter I was talking about is for when you're editing a less than perfect sample of a kick in something like Cooledit... when for instance it has a lot of reverb that doesn't sit well with the environment of the track you've layed down so far. The noise filter in CoolEdit is really useful here because you can filter out noise at certain frequency ranges. What you're in effect doing is filtering out the high frequency sounds created by a reverb unit. (Of course you can't get it all out, but you can dry out your sample substantialy)

The nature of a kick drums membrane is such that after its struck it's pitch will decay over time. It's just something that makes a kick drum sound like a kick drum.... This doesn't mean that a kick or snare or any other drum isn't tuned. But in many cases with dance music we've progressed beyond seeing a kick as part of a drum kit... so we allow for all kinds of weird tunings or filtering to make it fit with all the other sounds you create with your synths.

There are many ways that you can approach the synthesis of a kick.
Usually you approach it in layers to get a realistic and/or powerful sound with one part addressing the snap and another the low frequency decay.... sometimes you can blur the line between a bass sound and a kick too... but there's always an element where the resulting output has a fundamental frequency that decays (or slows down) towards the end.
 
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