Hey all,
Having a little bit of trouble achieving the Huge Bass Kick that you hear in most dubstep tracks. The kicks I have been producing are all very good, but none are quite where i want them to be. I have a few different methods, depending on the day. My Samples are coming mostly from my maschine, but maybe thats the problem? For example, an amazing kick is from Nero - This Way. (Fucking TUNE all together).
Ableton Live
Layering a few kicks
Eq each one individually
Sometimes Overdrive
Compress at the end
Any suggestions?!
I’ve got my snares and hats down.. kicks are my only trouble drum wise :/.
Thanks,
J
Try using a transient shaper or envelope to get the right ‘shape’ for the kick.
kick samples are never all the length so stacking them can make them sound a little out of place together.
after EQing them induvidually, send them all to a sub-bus before going into your drum bus, in there, compress them, EQ them to make them nice and fat, then stick a transient shaper/envelope on them to get the right shape. I tend to find they sound fatter if I take a little off the tail and add a little boost to the initial smack. Then do what ever limiting/overdriving you like to do.
Thats how I tend to produce my kicks anyway, normally works for me!
i am a newbie,so i dont know the exact terms but this method worked for me. Take a kick sample, time stretch the end part and add some wobble in it. It sould look like some sin wave for about 3/4 of the actual lenth, add reverb and layer with the original kick at a higher gain. try mid pass in filter for the wooble kick with a bit reso.
Thanks to all for answering. Working on figuring out sidechaining. I’m pretty new to ableton, only been at it for 2 months. So i understand the idea, but am having difficulty at the step where u create a sub bass. What can i use to create it? I don’t have suite.
J
The Top end: The MAIN sound of the kick. Do some slight eqing such as boosting afew freqs and cutting off the lower end so it will not conflict with the sub kick and compression.
The Sub end:Take a kick drum, filter everything with a low pass filter with Auto filter in ableton and make sure its SUBBY and BOOMY. Do slight compression.
Layer em up and you’ll have a nice loud phat kick!
ahhh. The simplicity of the 2 kicks is working pretty nicely. Nice sub bass kick, with a puncher is definitely the way to go. Eq’ing each as necessary. Just one last problem, When i combine the 2, there is a little sound at the end of the kick.. i wouldn’t call it a thud, but a little noise. Maybe one is ending earlier? This is a hard one to explain, and u might have no clue what i mean :/. I’ve made 5 kicks. 3 have it, 3 are what i want. THANKYOU! Still please help.
J
Try using the decay knob on each kick to see which is making that noise or you can try using a gate, adjust the gate threshold SLIGHTLY and see if it still making that noise. a gate is very useful as it cuts down everything not reaching the threshold volume. very good for loops which might sound too techish and ‘shuffl-ish’
hmm. Still getting the little click at the end of each sample. Tried the decay, and the gate. It is when the sample ends. Any other suggestions?
Thanks so much,
J
To get that FATNESS you are refering to, you can compress, but it depends how you compress that it will or will not mess up your kick. What I try to do is compress the tail of the sound and not the transient, otherwise you will loose all that punchiness of the kick. Try and playing with the attack, make it fast, but not too fast that it will also compress the initial part of the kick, then proceed and tweak the release medium-long, depending on the tail and your own taste.
Or you can always use a Sine wave at 50hz or so and gate it (like a “trance-gater” fx).
Off topic but is eq-8 the standard in ableton for eq’ing drums, does anyone else use a different eq in ableton or is there any benefits…ie workflow to using another eq?
I’m new and just trying to work on my drums as well.
hey,
I’m stuck on SideChaining. Is it possible without Ableton Suite? I have built a really good sounding high end kick, but am having trouble with the low end. Is it best to use a sub tone? (note) and try to match it with the kick note ( by using spectrum in ableton ) , or would it just be better to eq,fx,and compress a bassy kick sample and layer it?
Thanks,
J
If has little or zero low end you cant do much. Whta you could do is try and compress the tail of the kick adjusting the attack and release settings with a medium ratio.
So as far as eq’ing these layered kicks, I mean I can tell by ear when something is punchy and when it is a lower tone but what frequencies do you work around?
Like punchy high end at 80-100 and sub bass at 30-50?
My numbers may be way off just played with it for a bit.