Ableton Forum

This is related to house/techno:
I always tune my kick drums to the tonic motion of the tune, even if it isn't actually a tempered songs, I make sure the fundamental bass tone is the same as my kick, so my kick acts as a pedal tone.
But: then I always layer 2-3 more kicks whic are samples, and I match timbres, instead of tuning them to the oringinal kick or bass.

Now here's the problem, I oftern find it difficult to get my additional sample based kicks to sit right with my bass line. I don't like to use harsh notch moves on my low end, people are back and forth about all that, but is there a general consensus on how to get three kicks to sit well with each other? Spectral pluggies aren't exact enough to really look at kick drums for this problem.

They sound great, but I can only push so much air out of a speaker, and I want my tracks to be louder too...

post a typical example of your kick/bassline combination, then we can give real life suggestions

I do sometimes layer/mix up different kick samples, but when I do its because I want specific sonic qualities of each.

When you know exactly what you want from each, then I find the how to get there becomes obvious, for eg, want an 808 style boomy decay - then ditch ditch the attack bit of a suitable sample. Want a nice vintagy slap in there somewhere, then layer that in too, or an electro slap etc...

In general I would only tune the boom/decay and leave the rest as is unless it just isnt sitting well together as canm often happen mixing synthesis, sampled accoustic and drum machine sounds.

You dont have to go for the most thunderous kick possible in every track - a kick carries the rest of the track along, it doesnt have to be the main element.


Just planting samples on top of each other can make them absolutely hell to process and mix with and you end up stacking those initial transients and later than means your going to end up clipping them.

I guess one other thing - a bass driver and a kick drum are fairly similar thing - they both have to vibrate in the real physical world - just like bass guitars etc - ive found you can often add alot of perceived energy to kicks and bass just by blending in sound samples of accoutics drums, electric bass etc (even if its just the atttack portion) because they allready have the kind of mechanics that a bass driver cone will react well to. Synths can oftten produce attacks that simply are too much for a bass driver to do much more than release the energy as heat instead of movement.

One other thought - if you think you are lacking a decent chest thumping feel - then you need some serious sub bass to make that work - doesnt need to be high level, just needs to right dynamics.

i dont ever layer kickdrums, it takes away more than what it gives i tend to find.

i try to find pretty good kickdrums in the first place and i may add a percussive sound like the snap of a snare or a clap on top, but definately not another kick sound...

if a kickdrum needs more meat/become massive i use a tip i picked up from a chris lake video and that is to add Waves RBass dialed in at 65hz and -12.5db

for bit of meat / bounce under more 808 style kicks, i will sometimes add a midi channel with a synth playing a pure sine wave at the same key of the track going for the entire duration of the track (one big drone), then put a gate (ableton device) on it with a sidechain key coming from the main kickdrum so the sine wave is audible only whenever the kickdrum is there.

I often put a rack on the kick with 2 chains; 1st chain is dry (or perhaps slightly overdriven through a tube sim) and the second with a high pass filter set at approx 200hz with distortion / + maybe stereo effects. I can then alter the balance of the 2 chains so the the kick sits ok in the mix.

on an 808 kick this is...... ^

For dance and breaks stuff I almost always layer kicks, but I don't think you need 3-4 of them. Much easier to use 2 IMO, one deep subby one that gives all the oomph, and another with more beater click for definition. Too many kicks layers and you all sort of weird phasing you need to work around, or you make something so big that the bassline gets screwed, as you're discovering.

Thanks these are all good ideas.


I will have to invewstigate this one:
if a kickdrum needs more meat/become massive i use a tip i picked up from a chris lake video and that is to add Waves RBass dialed in at 65hz and -12.5db

Get better samples.

Unless you're using a second kick for a separate effect (like that sub push or a click), layering kicks is unnecessary and headache producing.

i'll spread out a bunch of kicks over a series of keyboard keys and just start pounding away randomly, lots of happy accidents for good combinations of kicks.

I also do the sine wave under it all, but didn't sidechain it before (good tip.)

find what you like and sample/steal it.

I think what Khazul said there is the most fundamental thing I apply to mixing any sounds together in general - I specifically look for what it is in each sound that I like then just mostly get rid of the rest - most of the time I can isolate it down to a couple of frequency bands and the rest is superfluous andjust muddies up the mix and serves no purpose
same goes with attack and decay

Side chain will be the key.

It also isn't about louder...It's about perceived loudness. You have to have emptiness to have the perceived fullness.

some great posts in here