MIXING YOUR OWN KICK FROM SCRATCH!! (MIC IN/OUT)

[SirKnucklesmd]

This topic has surely come up many times before but I haven't found anything good when it comes to mixing your own dual mic'd raw kick samples. Most of what I see are how to mix in pre-packaged/bussed SSD, SD2 samples etc, which I have also been guilty of using for the past few years myself, but as of late i've been exploring further into taking my own approach to seperately mixing raw kick samples and even attempting at making my own from my live room.
So I suppose my main questions would be... Once you have your mics in place and are capturing a great in/out sound, should one bus the two together and eq/compress as one? Or mix them seperately and buss after individual eq, compression, HP etc.. It's obvious one must invert the phase, no need to cover that, but I notice that when I attempt to mix seperately some funny things happen in the low end when I play around with the HPF, an inverse effect when I raise the HPF up above say 30-40hz on my "in" channel, actually gives it more low end? Can anyone explain this pheonomena to me as well? Thanks very much guys!!

 

[Trevoire520]

when I raise the HPF up above say 30-40hz on my "in" channel, actually gives it more low end? Can anyone explain this pheonomena to me as well? Thanks very much guys!!

What's happening here is the low end on your inside and outside mic's are out of phase with each other, so they're cancelling out. As you filter the inside mic the cancellation stops and you can actually hear the lows coming from the outside mic.

This is most likely caused by you flipping the phase of one of the channels. Don't ever treat that as a rule, the only mic I "always" flip phase on is bottom snare as 95% of the time that's whats required. But on the odd occasion it'll actually sound better without the phase flipped. So it's always worth trying both ways to be sure.

Personally I tend to filter the bottom out of the inside mic and have that for the attack, and then use the outside mic for low end. I'll also gate the inside mic faster to catch the attack without cymbal bleed and gate the outside a bit slower to let the bottom end breathe. Then I'll bus them together for compression and other processing.

I've sometimes had the low end on both going but just focused them in different areas. e.g. the inside mic has a bell boost at 80hz for tight/punchy sounds, and the outside mic has a low shelf just under that for more subby stuff, this is more of a technique that I use for live sound though rather than studio stuff.

 

[SirKnucklesmd]

ah I see, well that clears up the sub freq issue. So I'm assuming that your agressive eq-ing would be done on the bussed chanel? I messed around with it alot the past couple days and think I'm beggining to get the hang of mixing it this way.

 

[Trevoire520]

Yeah I find getting too crazy with eq on seperate tracks can get things sounding a bit phasey, so I just filter & gate the individual tracks and then do the main comp & eq on the bus.

 

[SirKnucklesmd]

Man o' man, I feel like i've gone in over myself with this approach. Any suggestions when it comes to compression and/or using transient designers? I heard you say earlier you like to filter the inside mic boost around 80hz and use it for attack, would it also help to compress or increase the attack on an SPL designer or something to help increase that too or is that simply aiding more in the fact that my kick is beginning to sound like the beater is made out of marshmallow?