Mastering the mastering of the kick.

eggnchips · Post by **eggnchips** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 5:13 am

I'm new to making electronic music and have been for the last 6 months a Live user, learning the ins and outs of production.
I've read up quite a lot both in audio books, on forums and mastered a few good tricks and techniques in this way.
I'm having great difficulty though with kick drums and trying to get them sounding loud,clean,crispy,punchy in my tracks. I can get some good sounds going on and nice tunes, snares, hihats, riffs etc, though when it comes to mastering the kick, it's just a big disappointment. I can sit for hour upon hour upon hour playing with various perimeters to get the sound right. All to no avail. And even when I do get the sound at what I consider on my monitors to be a decent one, I render the song take it away and play it on another pretty good system only to hear it flopping like a wet fart. It's quite frustrating to sit for hours on my precious new song only to get bored with it because it's been repeating for 8 hours on end. I suppose that's the art of learning.
I've been learning about frequencies and instruments belonging to their own bandwith etc. I sidechain the bassline also to avoid it clashing but still the kick sounds kack.
Any tips, advice would be extremly welcome.

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 5:18 am

start with great samples, dont tweak them too much and u should be right!

garbage in > garbage out..

where u getting/making ur kicks from?

eggnchips · Post by **eggnchips** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 5:24 am

At the moment I'm enjoying using the operator made kicks. I also have Drum machines installed which I use as well. Maybe I need to re-evaluate how I mix as a whole.

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 5:36 am

eggnchips wrote:At the moment I'm enjoying using the operator made kicks. I also have Drum machines installed which I use as well. Maybe I need to re-evaluate how I mix as a whole.

i am not a huge fan of what u can get from either of those..

For good kicks I'd recommend looking at the more dedicated drum machine options. I've heard really tight stuff from the D16 machines.

Also check out Vengeance sounds.. they seem pretty popular for more clubby things.

eggnchips · Post by **eggnchips** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 5:42 am

Can I ask why you're not a fan of Drum machines when it's supposed to represent almost exact imitations of originals? Are they not the purist kicks for a dance sound?

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 11:13 am

eggnchips wrote:Can I ask why you're not a fan of Drum machines when it's supposed to represent almost exact imitations of originals? Are they not the purist kicks for a dance sound?

1) i dont mind processed sounds..

2) i played with them a 'little' bit and they didn't gel into my personal productions the same ways as some of the samples i've accumulated over the years.

3) i really hate drum racks as i keep my percussion on separate channels and the way the drum racks fold out isn't really helpful to my way of working (almost 100% in arrange view..)

ChiDJ · Post by **ChiDJ** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 3:39 pm

eggnchips,

You are putting way too much energy into this.

Listen to the style of music you are trying to create.

Take a kick from a track you really like.

Use it.

Done.

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 3:59 pm

ChiDJ wrote:eggnchips,

You are putting way too much energy into this.

Listen to the style of music you are trying to create.

Take a kick from a track you really like.

Use it.

Done.

i 100% agree about the putting way too much energy part..

used to do the same, and it just came down to finding kicks i like.. putting them in and not fucking with them too much

a1studmuffin · Post by **a1studmuffin** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 3:18 am

Sure, you can rip a kick out of someone else's track, but learning how to make rock solid drums from sample libraries/recorded drums using processing is a very useful skill, and it separates the men from the boys. If you can't get this fundamental part of the track right on your own, what makes you think you'll be any more skilled at making other parts of the track?

As others have said, you shouldn't do *too* much processing - you can get good sounds from using EQ/compression/transient shaping on a single kick, or you can try layering two or three sounds together. Both methods are valid, and everyone has their own methods - there's no right or wrong way. Picking decent samples is an important part of the process - don't be afraid to spend a whole hour auditioning kick drum sounds, no point trying to push shit uphill. Try to work with sounds that you feel are 50-75% "there", and then work on that.

If you're finding your kick isn't holding up at all on other systems, it sounds like your listening environment needs improving. What monitors are you using, and have you treated the room acoustically at all?

eggnchips · Post by **eggnchips** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 12:00 pm

I think I'm just lacking the experience needed to mix a track well enough;
to get the kick standing out against the rest.
Would anybody be willing to send me/make available his Live set so I can analyse it and compare levels, effects, compression etc? Being new to this game, I've never actually seen somebody elses set and how it's co-ordinated.
That'd be fantastic.

adhmzaiusz · Post by **adhmzaiusz** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 3:39 pm

eggnchips wrote:I think I'm just lacking the experience needed to mix a track well enough;
to get the kick standing out against the rest.
Would anybody be willing to send me/make available his Live set so I can analyse it and compare levels, effects, compression etc? Being new to this game, I've never actually seen somebody elses set and how it's co-ordinated.
That'd be fantastic.

if you have the newest update of live 7 check out the sidechain tutorial, its mainly how to make a kick drum sound great in a mix. and the live set is already set up for you to experiment with settings.

Library> Lessons> 2-Live Advanced Category> 4-Compression and Sidechaining lessons> Compression and Sidechaining.als

hope this helps.

morerecords · Post by **morerecords** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 3:42 pm

layer a few kicks, you get great reasults.
Maybe take three, use a combination of kicks 1+3 for the first 64 measures(arbitrary) and then use a combination of kicks 2+3 etc etc...

Mr Man · Post by **Mr Man** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 3:47 pm

sttupid but maybe your not mixing the kick loud enough

eggnchips · Post by **eggnchips** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 4:06 pm

Yeah but Like I said, I can get it booming nice on my monitors (Fostex PM0.5 MKII) and outboard soundcard (M audio Ozone interface keyboard) then it disappears on a Hifi sound system/through onboard soundcard or anything else. Anyone willing to share a set?

laird · Post by **laird** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 4:14 pm

Mr Man wrote:sttupid but maybe your not mixing the kick loud enough

Good advice!
related to this:
Are you putting compression/limiting on your master bus?
#1 way to make a good kick sound like a wet fart, imo.

Dont be afraid to layer kicks, too. I almost always have 1 punchy kick and one beefier subbier body kick. The only fear here, really, is if you layer two kick sounds with different attack settings, you can get some weird flamming... which isn't so nice on kick sounds. So you gotta use your ear, not rely on quantization.