"Little tip: Kicks for EDM (Trance, Techno, etc.)"
Haven't managed to read all of this but looked at least slightly interesting:
"Little tip: Kicks for EDM (Trance, Techno, etc.)
Well, I've just kinda discovered this all by doing so but I figured this might be a useful resource for somebody thats starting out (like I was not too long ago). Note: I'm not gonna claim that you'll get a great kick like <insert favorite EDM artist here> but I've been getting good results.
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When you're just playing with a few patterns, don't worry too much about the kick, just take some sample that you can hear and get your basic patterns down first. This is important.
Once you've got a few patterns down, or even your whole arrangement, THEN it is time to worry about the kick sound. The reason is that how you treat your kick in the lower range depends alot on the bass - the sound, how deep, how many, and the actual pattern its playing.
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The simplest case is when you have a bass that plays when the kick doesn't (an offbeat bass, most likely). You can have both occupy the same frequency range and just ensure that other instruments don't interfere.
The next simplest case (the one I did for the clip I posted in the cafe) is to have a kick, an offbeat sub bass that you don't conciously hear unless you listen to it, and a higher bass. It works pretty much like above, with the higher bass not in the kick+sub range and free to play whatever without worrying about mud.
For the above two cases, and anything thats similar, you'll want to give the kick some power in the sub range (because you can) - this depends on the sample you're using, but I like to use an upper limit of 100 to 150. The range you use depends on what the sub plays. Try playing your sub pattern with a pure sine wave and watch your frequency spectrum (theres free tools to do this, Fre(a)koscope, Inspector, VoxengoSPAN, etc.). You want to use a sine wave for testing because the fundamental is the important part - the rest can be EQed to submission. Where the highest note plays is approximately where you want to put your upper limit, maybe a little higher. So if the highest note plays at about 140, put it at 150, etc..
You want your sub to just blare away in that range and go ahead and low-shelf your kick up at that range too. This will make your mix sound way too bass-heavy, but bare with me. Route the kick and the sub to a kick+sub bus, everything else (including a second bass, if you have one) to a highpass bus. Highpass the highpass bus at the limit we determined above. Now, insert a multiband compressor (I use the one included with FL Studio, but there are several good free ones as well as some outstanding commercial ones, such as Sonitus:fx Multiband) on the kick+sub bus. Bypass all the bands. Now, take the lowest band, and set its cutoff to the limit we said above. Give this range some light compression on medium speeds.
The gain knob on the compressor for the low range is now the one knob that determines the amount of "boom" in your entire mix. Remember where it is, because you'll be using it alot as you're mixing.
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The harder case is if you have bass patterns that do play at the same time as your kick. Its not as hardfast as the above rule, but theres still some neat tricks.
At the beginning (once you have your patterns down), you'll need to decide your kick+bass setup. With that I mean which one will take care of the subs. Theres not enough useable frequency range down there that you could fit both in it.
If you have a bass that plays lots of deep notes (or a sub bass and a regular bass), then you'll probably want the bass down there. Use the sine wave trick from above to find your limit on the low bass (once again, use a sine wave for testing because the fundamental is the important part). Below that, you want the sub blaring, but right after the limit you want to cut the sub and introduce the kick (probably with a resonating highpass). A little bit after that is where you want to introduce the other elements.
When the bass plays higher up, you pretty much want to do the same thing but in reverse, but this time you want to determine the limit by finding the lowest note fundamental frequency of the bass instead.
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For further processing your kick, you pretty much want to give it a very slight cut whereever another instrument has its emphasized frequencies - but don't cut too much. You don't want to get rid of the kick in those ranges, only attenuate it. If you have bass parts playing higher up at the same time as the kick, you might want to cut a little more in those places. But the most important part is to find the high sweet spot.
Fire up your equalizer. Set some band to -12. Now sweep it around at anything above maybe 3000. Find the two places where it sounds the thinnest/most muffled. Now, set that band to +12, and repeat the procedure, but find two places where it sounds the "biggest". See if you find a common frequency range. If you find two, use the one higher up. If you don't find any, repeat the procedure.
At that common frequency, you want to put a lowpass filter with a good bit of resonance. Also, on your highpassed bus (should you have one), go ahead and put a slight cut at that exact same frequency. The result should be a pretty big kick ... I hope . If the kick sounds a bit muffled, try to find a matching range thats a bit higher up. If the kick doesn't sound muffled but a bit weird, play with the 300Hz range. Usually you can do a narrow cut or notch in that area to make it sound less weird. Take advantage of the parametric nature of your equalizer - sweep it around until you find the spot. If your kick still sounds weird after, repeat the procedure or maybe consider a different kick sample.
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Now, no matter how much EQing you do, if you don't have a halfways decent kick sample to begin with, you're not gonna end up with a good kick sample. I don't really have too many tips on that since I found a few samples I use frequently becuse I like them, but other people often recommend to sample a kick from your favorite track, EQ it, layer it with others, place envelopes on it, compress it, etc.. I've done this but not enough that I'd say I could give some good advice on it. Maybe another time.
I hope this was helpful!"
