Tuning Bass Kick
So i have heard of changing the frequency of the bass kick to tune it to the frequency of the key being used in a track, can anyone elaborate on this? How often do you use it, or provide a nice tutorial? Also are you guys keeping all the major elements in the same key ie. bass kick, bassline, leads?
Thanks,
Matt
What are you using for your production?
logic
Although I’m no producer, A really good example of this technique can be found on almost any deadmau5 song. The in key bass fundamentals are what lend to an apealing atmosphere within his songs, especially on his more progressive tracks (brazil, Not exactly, I remember, Faxing berlin etc).
Ok, so here’s the deal. There are 3 parts to a kick.
Tone
Punch
Tick
The tick is the upper end of the kick that gives body to the drum, the Punch let’s you know it’s started instead of just being an empty feeling, and the tone gives bass response and lower end body to the sound. (i’m making this as easy to understand as possible so forgive me if I’m not being overly technical)
nearly all kicks in electronic music have a ‘tune’ to their tone. Meaning nearly all have a ‘key’ that they are in. This is why building your own kick drum sound is extremely valuable instead of just picking a sample off a CD. This would allow you to know ‘ok I did my bass tone in Eb so I can just pitch it up or down depending on the key of the song I’m doing’
Other than that, you can avoid kicks with much of a ‘key’ to the sound, but that means you’re going to sacrifice body, which is more ok in certain styles of music than others.
But an out of key kick can be disastrous to the mix! So proceed with caution!
a couple of options…
highpass a sampled kick, use it for the character, and layer a tuned sine wave hit underneath
or you could just use a spectrogram and figure out what frequencies the kick sample are hitting
http://sonictransfer.com/kick-drum-design-tutorial.shtml
I haven’t read this article but there’s at least another person out there who thinks about it along the same lines as I do. They call it a ‘click’ though. shrugs
thanks that tutorial has helped me better understand this. If you have any less lay stuff then feel free to post it up, I have an understanding of DSP so there isn’t much that should give me a problem.
youtube always has a wealth of information on it.
haven’t actually watched this but it may help.
Good info here 
anyone know of any tutorials on building a kick for logic? or have any advice themselves? Is it possible for me to use the exs24 to do what they have done in this tutorial that monika posted?