16/04/15 16:157 Great Tricks on How to Make your Kick Drum Sound Better

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How to make your kick drum sound better: 7 great tricks

So we finally got to the big question, the one we get asked all the time: how do I make my kick drumsound amazing? Although a great kick drum may mean different things for different musical styles,its always hard to get a bass drum to sound as big and powerful as the commercial releases out there.Here are 7 great tips on how to make your kick drum sound better.

1. PUSH THE MID FREQUENCIESContrarily to what most people think, the bass drum isnot all about the low end. As with any other sound, theperceived loudness of the bass drum depends on themid frequencies, as explained by the Fletcher-Munsoncurves. Our ear canals resonate around 1k to 3kdepending on the size of our head and other variables,which results in a bump in the mid frequencies. Thehuman ear is designed to better understand those frequencies and our whole communication systemrevolves around it. In other words, our ears perceive better in the mid range. Another point to consideris that the low end carries a lot of energy, and theres only so much low end we can push beforesaturating the channel. However if we push the mid frequencies we can obtain more perceivedloudness without increasing the level too much. This is particularly useful if you bare in mind that mostpeople listen to music with cheap earphones and laptop speakers: they simply dont reproduce the lowend very well. Make sure that your mid frequencies are nice and loud to ensure the bass drum cuts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher%E2%80%93Munson_curves

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through your mix.

2. USE SATURATIONSaturation is a great technique to add harmonics to a kick drum. You can make a sampled soundstronger by saturating it a little. With saturation and in some cases distortion you can make akick sound grittier and give it more personality, to make it more distinguishable in a busy mix. Youmight consider running a parallel channel of saturated kick drum and then add it to your originalsound, so you dont completely destroy the original sound but you add penetration and loudness to it watch how we perform parallel compression on kick drum using Distressor and the Culture VultureSuper 15.

3. TRIGGERINGYou can try all you want to equalise the kick drum andsaturate the sound, but often times its the originalrecording or sample that is just not powerful enough.Try adding a different kick drum alongside theoriginal one. We like to use Steven Slate Trigger due toits great selection of great drum samples and due tothe fact you can add to the original sound whilekeeping both sounds completely in phase. You wantthose speaker cones to move back and forth nicely:having the original sound plus an additional sound in

perfect phase will help that air move!

4. PARALLEL COMPRESSION As you may know, compression means reducing the dynamic range of acertain sound in order to subsequently push it louder. However when using compression on a kickdrum you sometimes kill the dynamic movement of the sound itself. Having the original sound on onechannel and a compressed version of it on the side and then sneaking it along with the original sound will allow you to obtain great compression without compromising the original kick drum.

5. PARALLEL EQ If your bass drum lacks low end you can simply push the bottom end with an EQbut EQ-ing might also compromise the sound in ways you dont want to. Once again, having anequalised version of the kick drum pushing the low end alongside the original track can help you addjust enough to help the untouched original kick drum. Parallel compression and equalisation is a greatcombination. You can first compress a sound then increase the low end with a good EQ we like to usePultec Style equalisers to bring great results for your sound.

6. MAKE SPACE IN THE LOW END

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Only the kick drum and bass should cover the low end.Make sure to remove the low end from all other tracksso your other instruments are not in the way of thekick drum. We talked about this also in our article onHow to make your mixes sound professional.

7. 808 KICKThe 808 is a great sound, dont touch it! If you feel itsnot strong enough, then youre probably using the wrong sample. Change your sample for a morepowerful one

Having said all this, remember that in a mix everything is about balance. You can obtain much betterresults by choosing the correct balance in your music than by messing about with your kick drum toomuch. Remember to keep a nice dynamic movement in your mix and make sure that your bass drumhas enough space to give your piece of music a great beat.

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