Best kicks I ever heard -- looking for advice

[marra]

Hello!

Anybody know how to recreate these two types of kicks?

I've tried my best in Operator, tried my best layering various types of drums, various ways of parallel processing, as well as all sorts of analog outboard gear but I can't get anywhere close.

http://home.no/reddvinylene/kicks_1.mp3
http://home.no/reddvinylene/kicks_2.mp3

All I got so far is:

http://home.no/reddvinylene/kick.adv

Thanks in advance!

[condra]

Hi Marra

What you had didn’t have enough pitchbend or tone.

Those deep kicks are usually made from sine waves pitching down quickly.

Here is an Operator preset which is going in the right direction.
I added a bit of eq and saturation for that Flying Lotus flavour...

www.zexualhealing.com/files/4marra.zip

I hope that does the job for you.

[marra]

Hi Marra

What you had didn’t have enough pitchbend or tone.

Those deep kicks are usually made from sine waves pitching down quickly.

Here is an Operator preset which is going in the right direction.
I added a bit of eq and saturation for that Flying Lotus flavour...

http://www.zexualhealing.com/files/4marra.zip

I hope that does the job for you.

These are the coolest kicks I've ever heard in Operator. Or ever.

Mad respect for your skills and mad love for sharing. Hopefully I'll get to return the favor some day ;-)

[Hermanus]

Just one thing:

You could have a better result by setting osc A unfixed.
Set it to coarse 1 and place the note on C1 [you can scale down at wish]
Last thing, place a smooth overdrive audio FX with around 35% dry/wet, it will boost your kick without killing it.
More and more I put a compressor sidechained with the snare.
I used another operator for snares only before, then I ended by using a two snare sounds drumrack AND the operator which is used to play hihats and enhance the snare.

As I told you (marra) by pm, I'll send my work this evening.
This is maybe not the kicks you want but I think it can lead you in the right direction.

I'll make a project with the kicks and snares [why not sharing the full stuff].
I'll group the different evolutions in designing this operator.

With it I can simply have a kick OR/AND the bass line, made with one master osc unfixed and the other fixed with sustain macro mapped.

End my yadayada, I'm gonna upload this Today.

Hope it helps man

[Hermanus]

Here it is:

Operator-Kicks-Snares

Tell me if something goes wrong with the pack

cheers

[marra]

Thanks a lot dude! Interesting liveset, taught me a great many things I didn't know, but we still got a long way to go. Condra got amazingly close;

I've tried messing around with the frequency, tone and attack of his Operator A, layering it with reverbed versions and other filtered versions but overall it comes off as a bit "house music subby", more specifically:

Compared to kicks_1.mp3 - lacks its punch and masculine strength (have tried manipulating Condra's other Operators, as well as layering them with "punched up versions" to no avail)

Compared to kicks_2.mp3 - I can sorta picture some guy hitting the bassdrum pedal on this one (but have yet to find an acoustic sample worth layering)

Related thread: http://www.gearslutz.com/board/rap-hip- ... drums.html

[marra]

Anybody have any clues?

[pilz971]

GRRRRRRRRRRRRREAT thread!

It NEVER ceases to amaze Me just how helpful members of this Forum are.

Looking forward to LEARNING from Your shared sets Guys. THANK YOU, Sincerely.

[AquaNova]

Anybody have any clues?

Like said before, if you want punch in your kick, you should try using the pitch to let it go from high to low really quickly, preferably on a sine wave

Also making a kick too short could make it lose its power.

Just like you, I've been studying kicks a lot lately, and I keep trying to make that one 'perfect' kick, but it's indeed a lot harder than one would think.

What I usually do is sampling a kick outside of Ableton in Cool Edit pro 2.1 (still a very nice wave editor!), by pitching a sine wave and adding some effects, then I use it in Ableton's sampler and adjust it just the way I like it. You might prefer this too, since you'll have some sort of nice base sample to work with. You can even try to use the pitch envelope in the sampler for even more control.

As for the operator, you can create kicks with it, but they're pretty much basic yeah, it's hard to achieve that one thing you're exactly looking for

This is an example of a kick sample I made outside of Ableton:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/51891186/Test800.wav

It doesn't sound really impressive yet, because it's just the bare sample.


This is an example of that kick in action in my upcoming track:
http://soundcloud.com/deshaadman/concep ... al/s-o4gBz

I layered it in some various way, and I split up the high/middle/low frequencies for more control. It sounds considerably better than the bare sample itself.

There's also a nice VSTi for kicks, from Angular Momentum, called Kick Lab. It didn't really please me that much, but maybe you'll like it, it's free

This is their site: http://www.amvst.com/

I hope this was of any use for you!

[condra]

Theres nothing wrong with synthesized kicks, it just depends what sound you’re going for.
I love the grit of sample based kicks, and sometimes I make my own, but my sound is all about texture.

Seriously though guys, obsessing over sounds can hinder your music making progress. If you have a good ear and know what you want, just grab one from a sample pack, or sample your favourite artist or whatever.

Like I said to marra in PM, a lot of kicks you hear from Flylo and DIlla, are just boosted around 100hz, givin a bit of limiting, then poke through the mix with sidechaining. They sound unique and cool in the context of the mix, but there’s really no magic ingredient.

Use shorter kicks for faster music.

[AquaNova]

Theres nothing wrong with synthesized kicks, it just depends what sound you’re going for.
I love the grit of sample based kicks, and sometimes I make my own, but my sound is all about texture.

Seriously though guys, obsessing over sounds can hinder your music making progress. If you have a good ear and know what you want, just grab one from a sample pack, or sample your favourite artist or whatever.

Like I said to marra in PM, a lot of kicks you hear from Flylo and DIlla, are just boosted around 100hz, givin a bit of limiting, then poke through the mix with sidechaining. They sound unique and cool in the context of the mix, but there’s really no magic ingredient.

Use shorter kicks for faster music.

Yeah, the obsession thing hits me really hard sometimes, I guess I'll ease down with that

And I agree about the kick, it's all about context, the kick itself is just part of a whole, and if it sounds okay on its own, it'll probably sound great in a mix.

[OhmyitsMR]

These are some things you already know plus little additions that you might not have:

---One great way to get started in making great kicks is to find some great sounding samples first. The trick here is to find samples that closely resemble the sound that you are looking for. Even if the entire kick sample itself is not what you want maybe the lows, the click, the highs, the sub, or any little piece you can cut out of the sample could be of use. Great way to do this is find samples then filter our specific areas in the frequencies and give them a listen. Dont forget that you can always shorten samples and move the fades as well which can change the sound drastically, especially with kicks that have a large bottom end and sub tail. Once you have these samples picked out and the areas of the kick you wish to use you can simply play them together adjusting the timing and eqing them a bit and record the result.

--EQING is HUGE. For each sample you'll want to boost its greatest characteristics that you are using. Remember you've probably filtered out some of the frequencies that you are using a different sample for so don't worry about those anymore. As previously stated there's a strong hit at around 90-100hz that you may want to boost a bit from your samples. This is usually the *click* part of the hit and sometimes part of the *punch* as well. One way to generate this click yourself is take a sample of an 808...or a synth boom...tune it to ~100hz using the pitch/transpose. then single out those signals and shorten the sample so its just the click. Once you've got the click you can work on the bottom/top end by searching for samples with a great bottom end (if you want a nice deep bump like for ELECTRO music theyre usually sitting around 45-60hz with the rest of hte punch taking up 60-100z) then singling out those frequencies and adding it to your kick. For the high end you would just do the same but worry about the "slappy" parts of samples probably in the upper spectrum of frequencies. You then can add clicks/clacks/percussion samples/hats anything to taste for a more noticable and colorful high end. Again eqing by boosting/cutting the good/bad parts of each sample is important. Remember not to boost too much and when possible its better to cut the other samples at the same frequencies if they overlap then to boost the current sample (i.e. sample 1 needs a boost at 75hz, so just cut down 75hz on sample 2 and 3 instead of boosting 1).

--Processing is the second huge part! Clipping... Distortion...compression...separating the kick into different parts and adding the effects.. Most great kicks have transients that are clipped...especially the click/higher samples. You can use various plugins to do this or even the Ableton Saturator with one of hte clipping presets and play for taste. You can add some distortion to any of hte pieces of your kick too but not too much as it will change the sound drastically especially when mixed with other elements in your track. When it comes to compression everyone is different. You have to find what sounds/works best for you. Some compress each sample as well just a little bit...I tend to parallel compress the samples slightly before melding them together (i use the drum racks for this)

--Melding together. After putting the samples together I usually compress it again change the settings to taste (usually a light compression just so they sit tight together) followed by some EQ. EQing after playing the samples together is great to give the needed boost/cut to individual frequencies especially when getting rid of the nasty sounds that come up when mixing samples. For this I usually take an eq 8 turn the gain all the way up and turn the Q all the way up and just pan the entire spectrum until i hear something that sounds too out of wack then i cut it out completely making sure it doesnt disrupt the "goodness" of hte overall sound.

--For that last punch, parallel compression in your overall track is a great idea. Remember not to overdo it too much otherwise it will overpower your mix.

Keep your kicks short and sweet. EQing is your friend. Give necessary frequency space to everything in your tracks that sit in the same area. Don't over compress! Forget about loudness for now just turn up your monitors!

Hope any of this helps. Kind of just went on a rant as I'm sitting here at work haha. Search online/youtube for more details on individual aspects I've mentioned here. Theres great help out there!

MR

[AquaNova]

No rant there MR, it's nice advice

Though most of those things are clear for most people, it's good to post those headlines so people would know what to focuss on!