so i learned a new trick for making drums THUMP...

[colonel kurtz]

so i was sitting in my recording arts class today, and our teacher was showing us a bunch of mixing he tricks that he used on a recent project, and there was one that i thought was pretty cool, and would probably be helpful for metal and whatnot

anyways...he was having a problem with a lack of low-end on the kick...even with the use of EQ, i guess he just couldn't quite get it to sound right

so get this...dude sidechains the kick into a signal generator(gated, set to 40hz). every time the kick hit, BOOM! pure 40hz thump in your face. maybe not the most revolutionary thing ever, but i've never heard of anybody sidechaining into a signal generator before, so i thought it might be cool to share.

 

[derfbonker]

Drumagog has this built in. Its pretty sweet.

 

[kaomao]

Yep that's a really really really old trick

 

[jhrv]

what is a signal generator?

 

[colonel kurtz]

it produces a perfect sine wave of a given frequency

 

[006]

Actually I think James Murphy has used that "trick" before on a few productions. I know he's talked about it before on AIM with me.

For the same thing I just use RBass and set it to 40Hz, it gives the kick a good even dose of 40Hz thump whenever it hits. Same difference.

~e.a

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Here is a video of how it's done in Pro Tools.

 

[colonel kurtz]

^'twas exactly how it was demonstrated to me this morning...good call on the vid

 

[Aaron Smith]

My friend and I did that on our old band's EP about 5 years ago, I think it was Pro Tools LE 5.2 or something, haha. Neither of us knew an awful lot about mixing back then, but we sure had a lot of fun!

 

[tarnationsauce2]

MDA SubSynth is great for this effect.
Free d/l: http://www.kvraudio.com/get/798.html
Use the "key osc.", then adjust frequency and decay. Quick, easy, and very small CPU hit.

 

[RKelly]

Be careful to tune the frequency to the key of the song. Using something like this http://it4musos.com/audio_workshop/guitar note frequencies.jpg you can make sure that the tone isn't dissonant with the song. I'll post a better graph when I have a second, that was just the first one I pulled up this time.

A bit of compression never hurts on the sine wave....and make sure your speakers are turned down when you open a signal gen.... Sometimes they start loudly

 

[Deus.exe]

Be careful to tune the frequency to the key of the song. Using something like this http://it4musos.com/audio_workshop/guitar note frequencies.jpg you can make sure that the tone isn't dissonant with the song.

Cool tip but the chart is only for standarly tuned Guitars. So concidering the amount of downtuning in metal I think that this chart would be more appropriate.
http://www.har-bal.com/images/frequency_chart_lg.gif

 

[JonWormwood]

ifl

 

[crosstalk]

MDA SubSynth is great for this effect.
Free d/l: http://www.kvraudio.com/get/798.html
Use the "key osc.", then adjust frequency and decay. Quick, easy, and very small CPU hit.

This is what I was going to suggest.

 

[doc_backmask]

So, if kick would naturally be around 40-50Hz for emphasis, what would be a good range to use to add some more pump to a snare? I would think around 300Hz, but am I off?

 

[colonel kurtz]

i usually find the thump in a snare to be around 200hz...but again, that'll depend on the size of the snare and the tuning, so it could possibly be up around 300

 

[JonWormwood]

MDA SubSynth is great for this effect.
Free d/l: http://www.kvraudio.com/get/798.html
Use the "key osc.", then adjust frequency and decay. Quick, easy, and very small CPU hit.

I go to the MDA site and cannot find subsynth. There's drum-synth and bass synth but I do not see subsynth.

 

[crosstalk]

I go to the MDA site and cannot find subsynth. There's drum-synth and bass synth but I do not see subsynth.

It looks like they may have renamed it sub-bass synthesizer.

 

[schust]

yea, i downloaded earlier and loaded up in Reaper the daw I'm using. they are calling it Sub-Bass Synthesizer on their site - but it's mda sub-synth when you get it loaded.

 

[Descent]

Actually I think James Murphy has used that "trick" before on a few productions. I know he's talked about it before on AIM with me.

For the same thing I just use RBass and set it to 40Hz, it gives the kick a good even dose of 40Hz thump whenever it hits. Same difference.

~e.a

yeah thats exactly what i do, usually more around 50-60hz tho, scared to go any lower than that on fast metal stuff.
I was thinking the other day that i wanna try this on bass guitar as well (around 80-90 hz), i've used rbass on bass guitar before but not sidechained so i wanna give that a go at somepoint (might help keep mid grindyness).