making a good kick comes down running the sample through various tools you have to hand and finding ways to home-in and draw out the best part of the kick sample.

by using things like wave shaper,eq and cutting out the lows and highs will make for a good clean tight kick.
the best method seems to be having the kick placed correctly in the mix and not swamped with other parts of the track namely the bass.

quote:

Originally posted by Beatflux I still could not get that "oomph." So what I did was look at a song that I thought had a great kick and try to emulate it. I looked at Gareth Emery's "Metropolis" and the biggest thing I noticed that the kick is nothing like the ultra limited kicks you get in those sample packs. I took a Deadmau5 kick that I liked, and started to shape the curve similar to the Emery kick and I realized why I never got that "thump" I wanted. In the lower mid range, I reduced one of the waves so that the difference between the one I was changing and the next one was about 3 db, and that gave the kick a nice oomph that wasn't there before.

Didn't quite catch what you were getting at here?

I've found one way of getting a tighter kick is to close the filter on your sampler and control the cutoff via an envelope, then just set the envelope levels to 0 apart from the decay, and use the decay control to shape the envelope on the filter.

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quote:

Originally posted by jason_bradberry Didn't quite catch what you were getting at here? I've found one way of getting a tighter kick is to close the filter on your sampler and control the cutoff via an envelope, then just set the envelope levels to 0 apart from the decay, and use the decay control to shape the envelope on the filter.

I made the volume of the kick jump a few db as the kick is moving into the low range to give the kick more of a thud.

Your technique sounds interesting, if you have a before and after example please post it.

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quote:

Originally posted by dj_alfi change your avatar for fucks sake.

quote:

Originally posted by owien ...the best method seems to be having the kick placed correctly in the mix and not swamped with other parts of the track namely the bass.

This, this and more of this. A well placed kick can do wonders, If I realised that when I first started making tracks, I would of saved myself a vast amount of time. Try it.

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quote:

Originally posted by Acton This, this and more of this. A well placed kick can do wonders, If I realised that when I first started making tracks, I would of saved myself a vast amount of time. Try it.

yep and its taken me like forever to find a method that works,the kick needs its own little space

Last edited by owien on Aug-04-2009 at 19:44

It seems like it takes forever for people to pick this up.

Steps for making a great kick:

1.) Use a good sample
2.) Make room for it in the mix

I usualy drop the bass at 30-40z. And the kick is heavy in the 0-35hz range. Ive never really had any complaints about kicks since. And I do this my EQing the abss, I don't have to touch the kick. Either way the 0-50hz range needs to be segregated, as those freqs are what make the low end. It really depends on what you are making. Some basses have a "low end" of 100hz. So things change. Don't put reverb on anything under 200hz imho, as this can also muddy things up. Your kick and bass could be fine, but the reverb on your upper bass may be dipping into the low range. Don't use reverb to make phat bass either :P

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There's just two points on the "good kick" checklist;

1 - does kick sound good on its own, if it does, proceed to 2
2 - if it sounds bad in the mix, it's not the kick's fault, it's everything else

First check your basses, how is the low end placed around the kick, does it need ducking, eq them accordingly, etc, the usual works, usually the cause for a crappy kick is actually way too muddy bass.

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Has anyone tried something like this:

Kick at key C1
SubBass at key E1

That way they should sound really nice together but the kick is lower than the bass so the kick still stands out

edit: i know people do this with frequencies already. I was just trying to figure out which key combo's work the best musically

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Last edited by coroknight on Aug-04-2009 at 22:02

Depends on the scale. The scale I am using doesn't have E1.

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