Slappy Kick Drum - Nocturnal

[Ragvard]

Hey guys,

I am new to this forum, and I wonder if you could help me out with the following "problem".

I am currently mixing for my band at home and focusing on drums.
As we have no possibility to record those ourselfes, I am using ssd4 for drums.

Now my question is kind of specific:
I have no problem creating a nice kick that cuts through, but I am really digging the kick drum sound on The Black Dahlia Murders "Nocturnal".

So I sampled the kick and tried to blend it in, which worked fine.
This could be the end of the story, but I am curious by nature and asked myself: what does this kick make it sound like that

It has a really nice low end which punches through in slow parts, but doesn't rumble in fast double bass parts. The Presence and "slap" is well defined and yet so subtle, it never becomes annoying or overwhelmes the mix with clickyness.

I managed to come close to the sound by processing stevens kick 5 ever so slightly with a little eq and compression, but I am not quite there.

So are there any hints you can give me, any experiences with those kind of kicks you could share?

 

[Paule]

Shannon used his alesis dm5 on nocturnal.

"It has a really nice low end which punches through in slow parts, but doesn't rumble in fast double bass parts."

You can automate an eq that pulls off some of the bass in fast double bass parts.

 

[Ragvard]

Thanks Paule,

automation sounds good, I will try that, maybe a multiband comp will do it too.

Don't get me wrong: I am not looking for the actual sample he used, I am more interested in how this particular sound can be achieved. I might not even be using this kind of kick sound, but I just can't get a grip on why it sounds like it does. It has this strange "flap" sound I just can't describe, but maybe I am seeing things... and this sound is just not as unique as I think it is

In many cases I can identify what was done to achieve a particular sound, but the whole Nocturnal album is kind of a mystery to me.

 

[harls]

It's achieved by using the right samples and EQing them a certain way (much like any other sound). Boosting/shelfing around 8-10KHz helps a lot in getting the click/cut and having lots of mids (1-2KHz) helps too. Although it's used a lot around here, Slate kick 10 is a great starting point for achieving a slappy kick. If your samples don't have that sort of sound to begin with then you might not have much luck.

 

[Ragvard]

Thank you harls, kick 10 was a great starting point indeed!

 

[KillFrenzy]

I think the sound you're after has a lot to do with the fundamental kick sound and most of the times EQ and compression are not enough. It comes from mic + position + drum + drumhead, essentially. Samples were also done this way. haha

 

[Ragvard]

Thanks for pointing that out KillFrenzy.
As i mentioned above, my first try was steven slates kick 5, which sounds great, but obviously doesn't quite match the sound i am looking for. Every attempt to make it sound more like the Nocturnal kick ended up in a mess.

Now with kick 10 i can get closer, also it gives me more possibilities as it feels less preprocessed to me than kick 5.

I couldn't make it sound like shannons kick though, but on my way there i managed to get myself some pretty cool kick sounds.

I really underestimated the role of the source material, which is quite devastating, as you are fiddling with EQs Comp and Transient Designers to get "that" sound and in the end it just sounds annoying and overprocessed.

So thank you guys for your help. Lesson learned

 

[Ragvard]

Just in case anyone is interested:

source was kick 10
hp at 50 hz (maybe just a slight boost at 50 hz with very narrow Q)
really aggressive and wide scoop at 500 hz
i think 4 or 5 db boost at around 7-10 khz

this way i have the "slap" i was looking for. The problem before was, that everytime i ended up having a pretty annoying "click" instead of a "slap". On lower volumes it sounded great but on higher volumes it was kind of piercing my ears.