Mastering the mastering of the kick.

[laird]

One more quick thing you can do:

slide the kick MIDI data a few msec ahead in time. or behind.

[poserp]

If I want the kick to be king, then I build around the kick. In other words, if the kick "disappears" when you bring up the volume of all your other tracks, then there's something wrong in your recipe.

What I like to do is start off with the kick playing solo. I get it where I think it might work (remember, one of the arts of mixing is getting sounds to sound good together -- a good solo kick sound might not work for a busy track (it takes up too much space), or might stomp all over the bass. That can be applied to all instruments) and then bring up the hats. Are there issues? Do the sounds "gel" in the right way? It's very important to use your ears for this. Trusting your monitors is a big part of that, as someone said upthread play lots of stuff you like through your speakers to get a feel for how they respond and mix accordingly. Anyways, I then bring up the snare (it is good to do this in mono, btw, if your drum sounds aren't already centered in the mix) and whatever else might be part of the rhythm. Part of the art of it is relative volume levels/balance. You may notice that taking the snare down 6db helps the kick stand out a bit better. Or, you may feel like your kick isn't "working" with the other sounds. I think you get the picture -- keep messing with levels and change sounds if necessary. Since you're not miking drums there's no need to fret too much over eq settings, you can almost always replace a sound with something else that works better for the track. Layering is good, preferably in something that gives you control over the envelope of each kick sound (so you could, for instance, use the attack of one and the sustain of another and the release of another). On a side note, Acid is great for that 'cause you can stack all of your drum sounds on top of each other and visually see where to draw envelopes. Hand-drawn envelopes, imo, can do magic that no compressor could ever pull off.

O.k., so if everything is cool with the rhythm then it's time to bring on the other stuff. And be prepared to reevaluate your sound choices yet again; now that the drums work good on their own, they have to learn to live with the other parts of the track. Or, you may find that certain stuff you thought was cool now isn't so cool and you decide to drop it. I don't know how many times I've built new songs out of parts of three or four other songs that I didn't like on their own. I'll record some synth part, cut it 'cause I don't like what it does in the context of the track, then come back six months later and discover that it's perfect for something else.

Good luck and keep at it, this music stuff is oddly addicting.

[thefool]

isn't it just a matter of configuring the master bus compression and limiting correctly, especially with attack and release times

Its just a matter of using it subtly enough too..

perhaps you think i was trying to say "compressors always destroy drums"?

to paraphrase my gross generalization, I said "to solve the case of The Dead Kick Drum, your first suspect should be the Mastering Compressor".

Alright. A wrongly set up mastering compressor

[blakbeltjonez]

very difficult to give advice without hearing other things in context with your kick drum. what else is going on in the low end to muddy up the kick?

drum machine kick drums are not bad, but without some sort of processing at some point tend to be underwhelming. layering two kicks is a good strategy, as is using a sampled kick that has worked in another song. sidechaining other low end elements from the kick drum helps to clear out space in the low end for the kick to live, also bussing the kick and bass to a channel/subgroup with a compressor helps to keep the kick and bassline tight - mixing the kick a little louder makes the kick the dominant element that the compressor works on, kind of a distant cousin to the sidechain idea.

if you control the dynamics of the kick and bass before it hits the master buss, then there isn't as much of a need for master buss compression - some is definitely acceptable, but it's often a case of "too much of a good thing"

[tw1nstates]

Hey,

Something that I suffered from for ages.

Presonally I would shy away fromlayering kicks until you really have a grip on what you are doing. As another poster said you can get phasing problems and all sorts of other stuff going on.

Try this. Use a decent eq to filter off verything else in your mix below 60 - 80 hz apart from your bassline. The bassline should be a few db;'s quieter than the kick.

Start your mix with the kick at minus 6 dbs, bassline a little lower, everything else slightly lower as well. Make sure that your mix doesn't ever go into the red mixing at this level, if it does isolate whatever is pushing it into th red and use automation to duck it slightly if it's just an isolated instance otherwise turn it down slightly.

If in doubt turn everything else in the mix down by a db or so, that way you keep the levels the same in relation to each other and allrelative to the kick.

Finally. Start collecting kicks from records that have been mastered and you have a digital version of. Only use these kicks (until you get shit hot at mixing). The reason why is that they have already been made to sound very good. . .

Cheers

TS

[adhmzaiusz]

as i stated before in this thread, im actually surprised nobody yet favoured my suggestion of the live lesson about sidechain compressing the interfering frequencies (like bass guitar/synth for example) out of the way. it all boils down to interfering frequencies in a mix if your kick gets lost, and for loud perceptions sake this really is bottom line fix. just a tiny bit of compression that you dont even notice does all the difference! come on try it, its probably the absolute best solution for a mix that the kick doesnt stand out!

and for pity sakes just sample microtonic and be done with it if you cant get a good damn kick sound!!!

[mike g]

sorry if this is redundant, but here's my technique for getting that kick sound you can feel:

put a compressor only on the bassdrum itself and make sure the attack is set greater than 10ms, i actually like going up to 100ms sometimes, and set the ratio kinda high.

[lauschepper]

Use a decent eq to filter off verything else in your mix below 60 - 80 hz ....

what about live's "eq eight" isnt that decent? or do you know any free alternative!?

[ciw]

i've been struggling with this recently

if you have reason, try this refill for some great sounding kicks

http://youproduce.net/index.php?option= ... &Itemid=34

[fatrabbit]

I've just bought a second-hand Elektron Machinedrum SPS-1 and the kicks you can get on that are immense. Don't have to do too much to them either - just a touch of Ableton's Compressor and it sounds great.

On a track i'm working on at the moment I do have a bit of sidechain compression from the kick to the bass. It can help to clear those low frequencies up.

[dphouse84]

try downloading nine inch nails free ableton ready files from their web site for remixing nin. lots of fun and some great sounds. I know you're pain, but ya gotta start somewhere. It gets better with time.