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Varying kick drum levels
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| cryophonik |
Hey guys, just curious to know if any of you ever vary your kick drum levels when creating four/floor patterns to emulate the way a real drummer would play. When I first started listening to and creating EDM, I remember having a "WTF?" moment when I realized that the standard for the genre was to have all the kicks play at the same level (not including builds, etc., of course). Anyway, I guess I got accustomed to it, but recently I've been playing around with varying my kick levels and I'm getting some surprising results, particularly with the way other instruments that are sidechained to the kick respond to the varying velocities.
To explain more clearly, it's common in most 4/4 tracks for strong (S), medium (M), and weak (W) notes to follow this pattern:
S W M W
where the downbeat of each measure (i.e., beat 1) is emphasized the most, and the 3rd beat is emphasized secondarily. Most EDM 4/floor tracks have the kick playing at the same velocity:
S S S S
So, I've been experimenting with the former approach using kick velocities that go something like:
100 75 85 75
Nothing groundbreaking there, of course, but, I'm finding that it adds some nice feel and, in many cases, a better groove coming from the way that my sidechained bass, pads, plucks, reverbs, etc. respond to it. I particularly notice the way the bass pulsates in response to the kick - getting ducked most heavily on beat 1, a little less on beat 3, and driving a bit on the weak beats. It's an interesting result IMO and works well for some tracks.
Anybody else doing this? |
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| Vector A |
| Generally breaks and dnb producers will make much more use of stronger and weaker kicks (and also shorter and longer ones) than your average house or trance. Interesting thought on using the kick velocity to interact with sidechained elements. |
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| Beatflux |
| quote: | Originally posted by cryophonik
Hey guys, just curious to know if any of you ever vary your kick drum levels when creating four/floor patterns to emulate the way a real drummer would play. When I first started listening to and creating EDM, I remember having a "WTF?" moment when I realized that the standard for the genre was to have all the kicks play at the same level (not including builds, etc., of course). Anyway, I guess I got accustomed to it, but recently I've been playing around with varying my kick levels and I'm getting some surprising results, particularly with the way other instruments that are sidechained to the kick respond to the varying velocities.
To explain more clearly, it's common in most 4/4 tracks for strong (S), medium (M), and weak (W) notes to follow this pattern:
S W M W
where the downbeat of each measure (i.e., beat 1) is emphasized the most, and the 3rd beat is emphasized secondarily. Most EDM 4/floor tracks have the kick playing at the same velocity:
S S S S
So, I've been experimenting with the former approach using kick velocities that go something like:
100 75 85 75
Nothing groundbreaking there, of course, but, I'm finding that it adds some nice feel and, in many cases, a better groove coming from the way that my sidechained bass, pads, plucks, reverbs, etc. respond to it. I particularly notice the way the bass pulsates in response to the kick - getting ducked most heavily on beat 1, a little less on beat 3, and driving a bit on the weak beats. It's an interesting result IMO and works well for some tracks.
Anybody else doing this? |
If you flip around the velocities it looks like this:
75-85-75-100.
So the accents are flipped around to land on the off-beat which gives a song a bit of groove, plus the last note is a bit louder which gives the pattern even more motion into the next bar. |
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| EliPsE |
| I vary the velocities of all my kicks for every genre. What I do like to do is sometimes add subtle kicks in between the 4/4 notes. K (k)K K K |
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| tehlord |
I find the humanise function in Battery 3 to be very useful. It effects timing, velocity and pitch iirc and is adjustable to varying degrees. I would imagine Maschine has a similar function?
It's also very nice to use it in EZ Drummer as well as that has a much greater variety of sample velocities and can sound very realistic indeed if you're careful with the programming. |
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| meriter |
| this and arranging stuff very slightly off the grid |
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| Richard Butler |
| quote: | Originally posted by cryophonik
I've been experimenting with the former approach using kick velocities that go something like:
100 75 85 75
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Yes I employ this quite often as I find it can subbtly add to groovanality.
I also quite regularly make the drop kick (and often the bass too) a little louder than the rest. |
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