Mixing Kick Drums

FruitarGeek · 2014-01-08T14:52:45+00:00

For the Recording buffs out there, this question is for you. Ive been given a song to work on, and to my mind, it needs the kick to absolutely penetrate th...

Mixing Kick Drums

FruitarGeek

Yea I know the sine wave trick too. This pink noise is working well, although does it matter if its white or pink?

Other than that I'm going to try the midi trigger option. The other options don't have a dramatic enough effect. If I don't do midi, I guess my other option would be to (as Manfred suggests) make duplicate kick track and go crazy on it and blend in.

AlanRatcliffe

Adrian Rogowski wrote: This pink noise is working well, although does it matter if its white or pink?

Pink preferably - attack noise is pretty broadband and you can just highpass filter to the desired low frequency cutoff.

ryanguit

I know this may be obvious, but for someone else reading this later with a similar problem, I'm gonna add this.

Are you listening to track after master limiting and kick has lost its power? Like the kick is now fighting the bass guitar? I like to "master limit" the bass track alone super loud (6db louder at least than where it is going to sit in the mix). Then dial back the level of the bass track by the same 6db.

Now the bass is sounding fairly similar to how it was, however you just gave kick some space to move. It most likely has the master limiter to itself now.

P.S. This is a very application specific technique, I have only ever used this on metal tracks.

FruitarGeek

To be honest with you, I'm not exactly sure what you talking about. I havn't put anything on my master bus that would impact levels.

Another path I could take would be to increase the volume of the kick, although its already hitting at 0db, so I'd have to bring all other tracks down. But I'm just trying to find a way that the industry professionals use. There must be a trick they do to get it to slice the mix

Mixerboy

Boost 60hz (or there about's), cut all the mids heavily, boost around 6khz and pop on some transient designer type plug (cut sustain and boost attack)

Alternatively just trigger a low sin wav at 60hz, take the kick drum and hi-pass it up to 5 or 6khz and boost the volume on that, should sound like crap on it's own but work in a dense metal mix

Mixerboy

Also if you haven't sorted out the bass guitar and distortion guitars you can say bye-bye to the kick, you have to cut some space into those for the kick, high pass the guitars up to 100hz easy and cut a notch in the bass guitar around 60hz (or wherever the thump of the kick lies)

FruitarGeek

Wow there are a ton of suggestions here. Thanks. Now to try em all 8)

ryanguit

sorry, i misunderstood you. I thought you were mixing and mastering the track.

The overuse of limiters in music may be a dead horse, but almost all the stuff we listen to now has had huge compression applied mostly in the form of brick wall limiting (metal too obviously) which increases the volume of the track without letting it peak, but the trade-off is that the dynamics of the original material is lost to the same degree loudness is applied.

drag in the reference track (track you are using to compare) into your project. turn it down until it sounds the same volume approximately. don't look at meters. All mastering you do after mixing, requires remixing. But its a great ear training exercise to try hear and copy frequencies you feel are missing or too pronounced.

Use lots of reference tracks so that you don't become biased/influenced too much.

FruitarGeek

Yes, i definitely do use my reference track. I'm actually using Tool as my reference. One thing I've noticed with all these bands (not just metal) is that the overall mix sounds quite treble/high, as if the engineer just put a high shelf on the master bus and cut alot of the lows. Is there a reason for this?

Oh, I thought of another trick for the kick. How about if I put side-chain on the guitars and/or bass and trigger it to kick, that way everytime kick hits, it will compress the other instruments. Is that a decent method?

Manfred-Klose

the side chain method works nicely on certain genres of music.

setup up the kick, to let the bass guitar dip every time the kick hits and see how that works for the mix.
this also works nicely with vocals and electric guitars

FruitarGeek

Ok cool. Listen to the first 15 seconds of this song. Is this side-chain compression? Cause its quite heavy, but the kick certainly dominates

=

Manfred-Klose

yes, sound like they are sidechaining synths and other stuff as well, with a slow release settings, i created alot of space for the kick, but takes some of the other stuff away
but the actually kick is also compressed alot, which makes it even in the first.

look for some vids on sidechaining metal kicks on youtube

AlanRatcliffe

Adrian Rogowski wrote: One thing I've noticed with all these bands (not just metal) is that the overall mix sounds quite treble/high, as if the engineer just put a high shelf on the master bus and cut alot of the lows. Is there a reason for this?

Traditionally it was because the turntable needles (and disc cutting lathes) for vinyl records could only handle so much energy in the low end (which is also why you have RIAA equalisation on turntables - the low end was cut during mastering and the phono preamp would boost it back again). Still, even with the EQ, if you had too much low end, it would kick the needle out of the groove and send it skidding across the record (as any buyer of a locally pressed record could tell you).

Oh, I thought of another trick for the kick. How about if I put side-chain on the guitars and/or bass and trigger it to kick, that way everytime kick hits, it will compress the other instruments. Is that a decent method?

Yeah you can, but more common to gate the bass (or a mult of the bass) to tighten up the timing. If you use a slightly slower attack time it will let the attack from the kick come through clearly and then the bass note comes in to "tune" the sustain of the ADSR. The gate hold and release will let you determine the length and decay of the bass note (which is usually much longer than the pulse from the kick.

I'm one of those guys that likes the kick and bass to mask together to form one, tight sound - a percussive bass note or a tuned kick.

Adrian Rogowski wrote: Listen to the first 15 seconds of this song. Is this side-chain compression? Cause its quite heavy, but the kick certainly dominates

Yeah it's quite compressed, but the main reason it dominates is because there is no competing instrument in the low frequency at that point of the song. Just the guitar.

With all this talk of compression and gating "tricks", we're moving beyond the all-important basics - if you want something to stand out, it must have its own space in the frequency spectrum of the mix. Compress all you like, if there's no space, you're falling into the "everything louder than everything else trap again. Especially with harder rock and metal, the bass and guitar are often downtuned and/or bass frequency heavy. You must clear the Mix: EQ each instrument to boost the important frequencies and cut others to carve out space for the other instruments.

FruitarGeek

Yea Alan you right. I can already see myself falling into the trap of making things louder. I agree with you about the EQ, although I must ask now if I must let the kick have space on the higher frequency (the click) or the lower freq (the thump) cause right now the only other instrument competing for the low end is bass, but almost everything else is competing for the higher end.

I must say though that I've used many of these suggestions already and the kick sounds a million times better, definitely to my satisfaction, i'm just getting to a slight issue now when the song gets louder, towards the end, more guitars come in (during a guitar solo), the kick starts to hide a bit more now. What could I do to get the kick to still stay prominent without boosting levels.

*Although judging by Alan's previous response, he is gonna say, EQ more ?

AlanRatcliffe

Adrian Rogowski wrote: if I must let the kick have space on the higher frequency (the click) or the lower freq (the thump) cause right now the only other instrument competing for the low end is bass, but almost everything else is competing for the higher end.

Without the highs you lose the click and a lot of the clarity. Find where the kick click is centred and boost that a little with a fairly narrow Q. Cut the same from the other tracks (and if they lose definition, find an adjacent frequency and boost that). You have 20,000 Hertzes to chose from, y'know. ?

*Although judging by Alan's previous response, he is gonna say, EQ more ?

Well, aside from EQ, why not bring everything else down a little when the extra tracks cut in?

Audible-Anarchy

Biggest thing is to make space for the signal thats getting lost in the mix. 1.5-3db dip in the other signals where the kik is sitting should help.

Side chain the kick to the guitars as well. play with threshold til it starts popping the way you want it - but don't squash it too hard or you will get a pumping sound

otherwise add a bit of 200hz to give the kick a bit more crack.

tape saturation or a gentle tube distortion can help weak washy kicks sound a bit fuller too - Or a commonly used trick is to use a sample of another kick layered with your recording.

e,g if your recorded kick sounds a bit flabby / too boomy - add a sample that has a bit more thump / top end on top of it to help blend and comp your kick the way you want it.

Mo-Facta

In all honesty, most metal drum mixes these days implement some sort of sample replacement/augmentation/blending. Unless the kick has been recorded to meet the demands of a metal sound, it's incredibly difficult to get it to sit properly. If I got the mix and there were problems, I would probably blend in samples without discrimination.

However there have been some good suggestions so far so I'm not going to repeat any of them.

It's actually quite difficult to give suggestions without hearing the source. Can you post some examples and maybe we could give you more specific help.

Cheers ?

FruitarGeek

I actually think I came quite close. I used the pink noise, the EQ, parallel compression, side chain on guitars,

I will post a clip at a later stage so you can hear

DrGonzo

I am mixing my bands demo now, and there is alot of double bass - "metal-ish" drumming....
So in the same boat

Probably already suggested, but If its really fast, I would look at add a gate to the kick, so it cuts out some of the body of the sound, and leaves that first transient nice and clear.

You can do similar thing with compression, set a slower attack and slightly long release, so that the compressor, compresses lowers the tail sound of the instrument, but lets that clickyness through.

Also, Maybe look at High passing the kick at around 90-100Hz, if you have a nice deep bass that can go under it...

- Oh yes and adding a side chain compressor on the BASS Channel and sending the signal from the drum track via a bus or whatever its called in your DAW, so the bass dips un poquito when the kick hits.