A quick helpful hint

[lanky noob]

I just stumble on a new way to help the kick cut through a dense mix, although it may of already been touched on somewhere, but anyway, I've started doing this:

Take the dry kick track, eq it until it sounds great and stuff as per usual, but if it' still getting lost, Send it to a bus by itself and compress the living shit out of the bus, so basically just like parallel compression.

Then on the compressed bus, hpf until there's almost no bottom end (you should hopefully have a pretty good sounding bottom end in the original kick track) and then boost with a high shelf.

take the bus level all the way down, then slowly bring it up in the context of the whole mix, and it should cut through better than before


So basically, parallel compression with some eq pahahaha

 

[Uros]

so basically a multiband compression

 

[lanky noob]

hahaha I didn't think of that, excuse my noobyness

 

[Nimvi]

I still think it's cool you accidentally invented that technique for yourself! Having tools is one thing; understanding how and when to use them is another. I find that if I discover something that is "obvious" to others by myself, it sticks much better.

 

[Star Ark]

I've never had trouble getting a kick to punch through a mix. Do you filter your tracks?

 

[lanky noob]

Yeah, I just like relatively clicky kicks, sort of like pantera's kick but with a bit more low end to it, and I always seem to have a nightmare getting the click to cut through a dense wall of guitars and vocals and blah blah blah

 

[medic999]

im starting to hate those typewriter/plastic type kicks. they sound so much cooler when you can hear that beater sound cut through without the irritating over boosted plastic sound, try to cut some OH/guitars/vox around that area where the high slap of the kick sounds good without boosting anything first. might get you somewhere without having to boost too much and end up with a typewriter kick. just my 2 cents.

 

[RedDog]

I like a blended trigger track. Keeps it interesting.

 

[hurdy]

i blend the ball clap samples with the kick, make sure you don't use Protoolz or you won't get the BOOM

 

[lanky noob]

I can't blend in samples sadly, No money for any triggering software, and I figure trying to/learning to get a good sound out of acoustic drums is only gonna help me in the future

And i'll definitely try cutting from the overheads more, thinking about it, the fact i always boost them slightly for some more sizzle, is probably why the high end of the kick isn't coming through too much

 

[Uros]

^^sure you can, just depending on what DAW you use. If it happens to have a tab-to-transient sort of function, you can use it to paste samples manually on a new track. That would be your trigger track, which you can run along with the original track.

As for your original post, you being creative is a cool thing, as Nimvi said, so go for it!

 

[lanky noob]

^^sure you can, just depending on what DAW you use. If it happens to have a tab-to-transient sort of function, you can use it to paste samples manually on a new track. That would be your trigger track, which you can run along with the original track.

As for your original post, you being creative is a cool thing, as Nimvi said, so go for it!

hmmmmmm....... any idea whatsoever how to do this in logic? any time i've used samples before i've just imported the sample as an audio file, and copy/pasted it to be in sync with the original track, which obviously takes absolutely fucking ages and more often than not ends up relatively sloppy and sounding like there's two distinct hits

 

[mva801]

Doesn't Logic have some sort of sample replace feature or plugin in version 9? I haven't used it for actual production forever as I switched to Pro Tools, but I'm pretty sure it's got something you can use, to at least blend. And there's arseloads of free/ cheap samples on here....

EDIT: here you go!

http://audio.tutsplus.com/tutorials/production/how-to-use-logic-pro-9s-drum-replacer/

 

[lanky noob]

Thanks!

Hopefully this isn't exclusive to pro and they've got it in express

 

[mva801]

Not sure about that one. If not, here's another way to convert audio to midi using logic, and then you can get something cheap like aptrigga to replace from midi with. Or wait, I think aptrigga works off of straight audio as well....

Either way,

 

[lanky noob]

Well i'm using the aptrigga demo at the moment, but it fires white noise every few seconds and doesn't save the sample when you close down the project

 

[RedDog]

Well i'm using the aptrigga demo at the moment, but it fires white noise every few seconds and doesn't save the sample when you close down the project

There's workflow for that. I used the demo for a couple of months, but manually removed the noise and (coincidentally learned slip-editing, how bout that!) inserted samples by hand. You have to learn how to do that anyway. But doing that workaround teaches you the importance of printing only when your drums are finished with their edit process, before mixing. Also, if triggering from a VSTi like SD2, go into your MIDI editor and assign the instrument to a different channel and route that channel to an empty track, drop aptrigga on it and replace from there. that way you're triggering from MIDI instead of a fallible audio signal.

 

[infectdsniper]

try adding distortion to your high end kick track. it can sound very cool and will also compress it

 

[lanky noob]

Thanks everyone, i'll try these as soon as I can