7 Great Tricks on How to Make your Kick Drum Sound Better
16/04/15 16:15
How to make your kick drum sound better: 7 great tricks
So we finally got to the big question, the one we get asked all the time: how do I make my kick drum
sound amazing? Although a great kick drum may mean different things for different musical styles,
its always hard to get a bass drum to sound as big and powerful as the commercial releases out there.
Here are 7 great tips on how to make your kick drum sound better.
1. PUSH THE MID FREQUENCIES
Contrarily to what most people think, the bass drum is
not all about the low end. As with any other sound, the
perceived loudness of the bass drum depends on the
mid frequencies, as explained by the Fletcher-Munson
curves. Our ear canals resonate around 1k to 3k
depending on the size of our head and other variables,
which results in a bump in the mid frequencies. The
human ear is designed to better understand those frequencies and our whole communication system
revolves around it. In other words, our ears perceive better in the mid range. Another point to consider
is that the low end carries a lot of energy, and theres only so much low end we can push before
saturating the channel. However if we push the mid frequencies we can obtain more perceived
loudness without increasing the level too much. This is particularly useful if you bare in mind that most
people listen to music with cheap earphones and laptop speakers: they simply dont reproduce the low
end very well. Make sure that your mid frequencies are nice and loud to ensure the bass drum cuts
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7 Great Tricks on How to Make your Kick Drum Sound Better
16/04/15 16:15
through your mix.
2. USE SATURATION
Saturation is a great technique to add harmonics to a kick drum. You can make a sampled sound
stronger by saturating it a little. With saturation and in some cases distortion you can make a
kick sound grittier and give it more personality, to make it more distinguishable in a busy mix. You
might consider running a parallel channel of saturated kick drum and then add it to your original
sound, so you dont completely destroy the original sound but you add penetration and loudness to it
watch how we perform parallel compression on kick drum using Distressor and the Culture Vulture
Super 15.
3. TRIGGERING
You can try all you want to equalise the kick drum and
saturate the sound, but often times its the original
recording or sample that is just not powerful enough.
Try adding a different kick drum alongside the
original one. We like to use Steven Slate Trigger due to
its great selection of great drum samples and due to
the fact you can add to the original sound while
keeping both sounds completely in phase. You want
those speaker cones to move back and forth nicely:
having the original sound plus an additional sound in
perfect phase will help that air move!
4. PARALLEL COMPRESSION As you may know, compression means reducing the dynamic range of a
certain sound in order to subsequently push it louder. However when using compression on a kick
drum you sometimes kill the dynamic movement of the sound itself. Having the original sound on one
channel and a compressed version of it on the side and then sneaking it along with the original sound
will allow you to obtain great compression without compromising the original kick drum.
5. PARALLEL EQ If your bass drum lacks low end you can simply push the bottom end with an EQ
but EQ-ing might also compromise the sound in ways you dont want to. Once again, having an
equalised version of the kick drum pushing the low end alongside the original track can help you add
just enough to help the untouched original kick drum. Parallel compression and equalisation is a great
combination. You can first compress a sound then increase the low end with a good EQ we like to use
Pultec Style equalisers to bring great results for your sound.
6. MAKE SPACE IN THE LOW END
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7 Great Tricks on How to Make your Kick Drum Sound Better
16/04/15 16:15
Only the kick drum and bass should cover the low end.
Make sure to remove the low end from all other tracks
so your other instruments are not in the way of the
kick drum. We talked about this also in our article on
How to make your mixes sound professional.
7. 808 KICK
The 808 is a great sound, dont touch it! If you feel its
not strong enough, then youre probably using the wrong sample. Change your sample for a more
powerful one
Having said all this, remember that in a mix everything is about balance. You can obtain much better
results by choosing the correct balance in your music than by messing about with your kick drum too
much. Remember to keep a nice dynamic movement in your mix and make sure that your bass drum
has enough space to give your piece of music a great beat.
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