Help Getting a Usable Natural Kick Drum Sound

guitarguru777

guitarguru777

Member
Nov 13, 2003
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www.jasonconstantine.com
Ok so first let me say before we go any further I have already looked through an entire mess of the threads here:
http://www.google.com/cse?cx=007593...cse/home?cx=007593470310830667409:4qw46y8lnza

LOL ..... Now that being said.

Yesterday I recorded another drum kit and while I was easily able to get usable if not good quality Snare and Tom tones the kick drum is still eluding me.

The kick drum was recorded used a D112 inside the kick and a 57 outside on the beater side.

I have been trying to do some EQ shaping and the second I find something I think sounds good to my ear out of the mix (solo'd), i put it in and it just sounds like a donkey taking a shit.

I have attempted some light compression with some gclip and some saturation but I still cant get anything I am happy with. Would anyone be willing to take a few seconds of the kick and try processing it to see if you can get anything usable? I am trying to figure out if its my micing technique or my lack of general kick drum processing knowledge.

Any help would be appreciated:
http://www.constantinestudios.info/help/naturalkick

If you can get something usable out of it please fill me in on what you did so I can see how my thought process on the processing differed from yours. I really think that I just have no clue how to process a kick and get a good metal / rock kick tone.

Thanks
 
Get a better kick mic. The D112 is dogshit, just my opinion. There so much bleed in that 57 it'd be really hard to process it and keep the kick isolated and the beater is where you get most of the attack.

Buy 2 Audix D6's, put one on the beater and one at the hole on the resonant head, thank me later
 
Mic choice is a big part of this, and placement. The D112 is not the most popular choice, but I like it. I have found it does not suit being inside the drum however. I prefer the D112 just outside the kick hole and if you want or need to use a 57, put it on the beater skin from the outside facing where the beater head hits the skin. Remember to keep the null point of the mic facing the snare to minimise bleed. For mics inside the drum try a D6 or a Beta 91 which is a good combo with the D112 on the outside.
:edit:
Make sure you phase allign the mics if you use more than one in the kick.
 
Please show me a record with 100% real kickdrum that sounds amazing. I mean it, I'd love to hear it. Should be rock/metal/punk though. I always failed when I was trying to get a usable natural kick sound. I always ended up using samples of the kit at least 40% blended.
 
I got this with just the one track...the low end thump is easily tuned with a HP (I actually wish I had the whole kit to mess with) to see how it sounds in context. I definately think that in a mix this could be workable.

http://www.ipaconnoisseur.com/crap/kick.mp3

In only 5 minutes, I think it can definlately be tuned.
 
Emdprodukt said:
Please show me a record with 100% real kickdrum that sounds amazing. I mean it, I'd love to hear it. Should be rock/metal/punk though. I always failed when I was trying to get a usable natural kick sound. I always ended up using samples of the kit at least 40% blended.
Click to expand...

I'm quite fond of the kicks on The Haunted's last two efforts, Versus and Unseen. Maybe not *amazing* kicks but the fact that they're natural and have a ton of dynamics but still sound really present/fat/punchy totally makes up for that.

Also pretty positive that Karnivool's album is real kick, slightly different style though.


For anything double-kick heavy... You're really going to want to blend a sample in just for consistency, to be honest. Even a sample of the guys own drum, just hit hard.

I agree with everyone else on getting rid of the D112, always sounds like a beachball to me. I absolutely love my D6 placed just inside the hole combined with a DIY subkick. I'd ditch the 57 altogether, to be honest.
 
I see the d112 as an "acceptable" live kick drum mic, nothing more. I despise it in the studio, it always brings out the worst in a kick drum (although, some people like the basketball sound... to each his own)


I'm curious about the electro voice re20, seen it on many pictures, but it's not a popular mic over here so i never had a chance to test it out
 
JeffTD said:
I agree with everyone else on getting rid of the D112, always sounds like a beachball to me.
Click to expand...

This is EXACTLY what I am getting sounds like your bashing on a 90% inflated beachball. Even scooping the shit out of it doesn't really help :(

As for the tuning ... you should hear the guys fucking toms, hes got 5 of em on the kit plus a Floor Tom and they are 8' 10' 12' 12' 14' 16' the are tuned so fucking high its scary ....lol

This is what I have so far. I am really not digging the toms all that much cause they are tuned shittily, but the guy refused to let me retune the fucking things. So they will probably get sample replaced as well. The toms on my last project I thought were perfect.

I do like the snare quite a bit on this though of course this isnt a FINAL mix just getting tones really.

The kick is a mix of the natural kick low passed to all fuck and LSD Slap Kick.

http://www.constantinestudios.info/help/naturalkick/Drums.wav

EDIT: Yes drums still need a pissload of editing ....lol
 
guitarguru777 said:
Any help would be appreciated:
http://www.constantinestudios.info/help/naturalkick

If you can get something usable out of it please fill me in on what you did so I can see how my thought process on the processing differed from yours. I really think that I just have no clue how to process a kick and get a good metal / rock kick tone.
Click to expand...

Okay, the 57 track is pretty much unusable, but the D112 was workable. This maybe not the best way to do it, but this is what I got after trying out a few things. It sounds a bit Motörhead-esquee, might need a bit more high end and you need to have the bass below the kick for this sound to work...

I noticed that the D112 tone has a lot of boomy low end and the attack was very soft so I started it by adding Flux Bitter Sweet to the first insert (it's a freebie similar to SPL Transient Designer). You can do it without the bitter sweet, but then the snap will be a lot softer, which might not be the thing you are after. If it's not cutting out properly in the mix after using one of these, put another one after this with the knob at like 2 or 3 o clock.

Then after I tried several EQ things, at one point I had like 10 bands and thought wait a minute and started bypassing stuff, and came to conclusion that I only used highpass filter, lowshelf plus one band in the low mids to cut out some of the muddy boom. I might've cut a bit too much, not sure tho. If the cymbal bleed is bothering in the mix, you can just put a lowpass filter at 8khz, otherwise just leave it be.

Then I used C4, tried various different things and ended up with setting the thresholds so that I used the low mid band so that it barely moved, like -3dB reduction at max. I boosted the highmids 6dB to bring up the snap of the kick just a bit and I found that it was just a more pleasing sound than the EQ, so I used this instead. Without the boost it is having like 6-9dB reduction per hit.

Then I tried various things to tame the dynamics, c1-sc, rvox, regular compressor, vcomp etc, but I thought they didn't make much of an improvement there and without having the thing in context, I decided not to do anything.

Then what I would maybe do after that is to add a limiter like L1 or T-racks Clipper to even out the peak dynamics, like shave off minimum of 1dB on the quietest hit and what ever the loudest hit will be. I used L1 and it shaved on an average about 2dB per hit, 3dB on the loudest hit. This is optional, but I still highly suggest to use it because it's this kind of low head heavy macro-dynamic sounds that takes away most amount of unnessecary headroom

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1338211/jason_kick.mp3 (before and after in the same clip)

Orange is the old one, pink is the new one:
jason_kick.png

(if someone is wondering why the almost 20dB of cutting of the low end doesn't show it the graph, it's because the low end is at approximate same level because I used unity gain, but since I didn't touch the high end it is boosted that 20dB, which you can see in the graph)


Settings:

- Flux Bitter Sweet, turn the knob all the way to the right
- 3 band EQ: highpass 80hz, -8dB lowshelf at 1khz, -9dB at 330hz with wide q
- C4: low mids 100hz-1khz (range 20dB), hi mids 1khz-7khz (range 20dB, makeup +6dB), lows and treble at bypass
- L1: Threshold and ceiling at -12, shaving off between 2-3dB
 
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