Kickdrum knowledge

"Yo many ofyou are saying goood things about this topic. I think the key doen't just lie in one aspect of the studio though. Its all the inter-related things that inpact the final result.

1. Speakers
2. Room
3. Experience
4. Hardware
5. Processing

So yes TO ME!! Pro Tools Hardware is extremely important to my sound. The reason is because it sounds fat (24 bit converters) But the fatness comes from the extremely well coded plug-ins. Typically inside the computer I use MCDSP FIlterbank for my eq and MCDSP Compressorbank for my compression.

But without good speakers sitting in a good room I wouldnt be able to use those tools to thier capabilities because I wouldn't be able to hear the resulting subleties as well.

Before things go into the computer I typically run them through either a pair of Avalon 737sp's or a pair of Vintech X73 (neve 1073 modules) and I have a Crane Song STC8 compressor (extremely high end mastering type transparent compressor)

Now, when I am sampling something from a record I have a cheap ass radio shack mixer that I run it through. Simply cause I had it lieing a round years ago and have just kept it in there ever since. But what I do is run the outputs from the mixer into a balance box to make the signal a +4 balanced signal then I patch straight into the 888/24 Audio interface. This helps make the mixer sound a little cleaner and much louder so when I start to process the sample there is not a ton of extra noise. I have my studio set up as a +4 balanced environment (My Pre's, compressors, interface ins and outs all operate at that "Pro standard" level). So in addition to running the TT's through a balance box all the keyboards get run through one first as well. Then I patch the keyboards into the pre-amps mentioned earlier. This process is no secret as pro studios either do this or use a direct box and patch the keyboards into the Mic inputs (either on the console or outboard pre-amp). Either way high end studios don't just take the crappy sounding outputs of -10dbu keyboards and run them into consoles or computers.

Drums, Drums Drums. . . well First off check out the Dance Mega Drums CD. . . smokin!!!! Lots of fat sounds. But they are just a bunch of good sounding samples that some people toook off records so you can do it as well. Yes I do have a masssive library of sample cd's (over 120) and CD's designed for Sample Cell about 50 ro so (Sample Cell is the sampler I used untill I recently switched to Emagic EXS)

OK here are a couple Drum tricks that will help.

1. EQ
Take out the lows of the kick, snare, hats so as to leave room for the bass. I use a high pass filter and many times I take out up to70-80 htz. This leaves room for the Bass to be big boomy fat and not have to compete with the kick (the next biggest inst.) So as your working up the frequency specrum take out the extra lows of all those instruments. Snare- usually out up to 160 or higher and maybe boost a little at 250-350htz to give it some richness. At this point usually nothing else has any of those low frequencies left in it as all the remaining sounds are high pass filtered to at least 200-300 and sometimes more if its competing with the snare. But mainly this helps to create space for the Kick and Bass and as a result those elements can be Loud!!!!

2. Compression (old School Mix technique)
OK now see if you follow this. Make 2 identical drum busses. (on a console output all the drum channels to both busses 1-2 and 3-4) So now there are 2 stereo busses. (In Logic with Pro Tools I tell each drum track to output to buss 32-33 then make 2 aux channels set to recieve that same input) So now there are 2 stereo busses with the same drum information.

Compress the shit out of one pair. The fastest attack you have and the fastest release with the lowest threshhold and the most amount of compression. Now with one channel being clean mix the other one underneath slightly. Now just adjust the level of the compressed buss with the main buss till you have the desired amount of thickness in the drums. REMEMBER IF YOU DO THIS WITH COMPUTER COMPRESSION you have to also put the same processors on the the clean channel just don't have them doing any prcessing so this way the plug in delay is the same. If you don't do this the two will be somewhat out of phase and sound like crap and you'll think this technique sucks.

Sometimes the compressed channel gets a little low and high shelf eq to bring out the fatness (bottom) and the crunchiness (top) at the same time. and aggain if you add eq to the compressed channel ad the same eq plug-in to the uncompresswed channel but don't set any of the parameters or have it bybassed.

learned about ths trick about a year ago and I love it!!

It basically brings out all this noise and crunchiness so even with real clean samples It can sound like a loop really quikly.

Hope this helps.

Alright, well I have to get to the studio (talking bout this get me excited to go make some music).

I was thinking of adding some of these studio thoughts on the Moulton Studios Web site and so I might have Olivier get that all set up and post here so maybe you might find some of the other things usefull.

Jay-J
Moulton Studios"

and

"I learned this technique from Dave Pensado who is a top tier engineer and does mainly pop, hip hop and rnb but the technique tranfers well into dance music.

Start with a good kick(s). That's the most important. Once you have this, setup a 2nd kick track triggering a sine wave with each kick with everything rolled out but 40-80hz. Put this in the key of your track and mult it with the kick sample(s) in a bus.

From there, split the kick mult into 3 aux channels. There's different ways of doing this depending on the system you're on but the basic jist of it is to get 3 channels of sound coming from the same kick. In logic, you create 3 aux tracks and set the source to your kick bus.

Channel 1: leave dry
Channel 2: knock about 10db off with a pretty high ratio 1:10. This is the 'knock' sound of the kick.
Channel 3: knock about 25 db off with a 1:10 ratio and then roll out all the mids, say 600-2k. This should give you a 'boom' and a 'tick'

Now that you have these 3 channels, mix to taste. If the kick needs more knock, bring that up or the others down. If it needs to cut through more, bring the tick channel up, etc. The tick part (1-3k) is one of the most important and sometimes un-attended to aspects of the kick. It's what really alllows it to cut through.

I've used this technique recently to really good results. Have fun!"