Triggering a muddy ass kick

[NSGUITAR]

So I am working with this death metal band right now.. Lots of double kick, lots of blast beats.


I had an "assistant" help me out a little bit. The way we had the kick setup was, the drummer had a trigger attached to his kick that he uses for live stuff. Then we also front mic'd the kick, as there was no hole in the front of the kick.. and I don't really have experience with taking off the front head of a kick.

So, I figured, "This will work out nicely..Use the trigger to trigger a kick later on, then use the front mic to keep it organic and thick".


BUT then the guy that was working with me decided it'd be a good idea to unplug the trigger because it "sounded bad".. I didn't know he did this becuaase after I got all of the levels set, I smashed down the trigger track so I didn't have to look at it.

When I imported the tracks into my computer today, I saw NO wav on the trigger track! I was pissed.... So now I'm trying to use drumagog on a front head mic WITHOUT a hole in it..

NOW when I try to trigger it, it'll work for some of his more solid hits, but when he does 16th note double kick.. it doesn't work... HELP?!

 

[Sinister Mephisto]

High pass filter and possibly a transient designer on the track before the sound replacer?

 

[Fragle]

program the kick for the fast stuff. you can try converting the kick to midi, and just delete the midi for the blurry parts and do them by hand.
as far as editing and flams during the double kick passages goes, i found that with faster death metal stuff you'll have to group and edit the top of the kick seperately anyways, so it won't be a big deal. just make sure you're filtering the OHs etc properly.

 

[Erik Monsonis]

Filter it, and try to make it trigger correctly, if not, then just program it (PITA)

 

[jimwilbourne]

I just did a ska band with no hole in their kick.
the kick was the only thing I did some replacement on.

what I did was gated & compress the hell of of it. then HP & LP to zero in on the impact of the kick. I got the kick pretty exposed at that point.
since you're using drumagog. I'd go with that method.
apply drumagog, then print the track with 100% drumagog on it.
bounce that back into your daw, then take off the processing of the raw kick and mix the 2 tracks to taste.

 

[006]

In the future, Nick, it's as simple as unscrewing the 8 or so claws around the drum head on the front and taking the head and ring off. Oh, and last time I was stuck with a front head mic'ed kick (with no hole in it) I just programmed the kicks in, way less time/hassle than getting it to trigger properly, for me anyway.

 

[FIXXXER]

filter and PITCH maybe?

 

[Pedro Teixeira]

Yeah, this is really simple, pretty common sense really, go through what your judgment and as I said "common sense" tells you:

Stuff like, hipassing, eqing to get a big click, transient designer, compression, etc whatever it does the job before hitting your triggering plugin.

 

[Tommy Gun]

Man, that kind of shit makes me really glad that I've taken the front head off for every single drum tracking session I've ever done.

Personally, I'd have them retrack and make the "ass-istant" foot the bill AND buy the drummer a 12-pack.

 

[crillemannen]

Just manually go over the track, and cut out bleed and other shit. And meanwhile you're doing it see to it that trigger takes all the hits. I know it is a pain in da butt but it is the only way to be certain that you cover all hits.

 

[Dollarosa]

agree with crillemannen, I usually manually cut out the bleed, high pass and transient designer if I get some tracks from another studio that are not usable

 

[Trevoire520]

Slap your "assistant" repeatedly.

 

[Paulie!]

Slap your "assistant" repeatedly.

+1 haha.. If everything is locked to the grid, I'd just program it....

 

[Jordon]

Manually drop a sample with tab to transient (or equivalent), the drumagog/trigger it with a multisample.

Usually works like a charm for me with poorly recorded kicks.

Manually cutting or gating then using a transient designer like suggested above also works really well.